BLOOMINGTON — Did IU football peak too soon?
The No. 10 Hoosiers (10-1, 7-1 Big Ten) dropped five spots in the latest College Football Playoff rankings following a 38-15 loss to Ohio State in Columbus.
Indiana was the lowest ranked one-loss team among the power conferences and dropped behind multiple SEC teams (No. 8 Tennessee and No. 7 Georgia) with two losses.
CFP committee chair on IU: ‘We still felt their body of work was strong enough.’
“There was a lot to sort out this week,” College Football Playoff committee chair Warde Manuel said, with seven top 25 teams losing last weekend.
The ACC has put themselves in position to potentially spoil IU’s playoff bid with SMU (9-1, 7-1 ACC) ranked at No. 9 — the Mustangs have already clinched a spot in the ACC title game — and Clemson (9-2, 7-1 ACC) ranked at No. 12 and the first team left out of the field.
Why is SMU above Indiana in new CFP rankings?
On his weekly conference call, Manuel outlined some key factors in ranking SMU over Indiana.
“SMU has been playing really dominant football as of late, with the way they played against Virginia at Virginia, they’ve had some great wins, only one loss,” Manuel said. “Kevin Jennings is one of the dynamic quarterbacks in the country at the present time.
“So we just felt that SMU and their play on the field, they moved ahead of Indiana this week, and we’ll continue to monitor it as we move forward.”
SMU has won eight straight games — six of those by 10 or more points — and put up more than 400 total yards of offense in each of its past seven games. During that stretch, the Mustangs beat the likes of TCU (7-4), Louisville (7-4), Duke (8-3) and Pittsburgh (7-4).
Indiana opened the season in similar fashion, but haven’t reached those same heights in recent weeks.
The Hoosiers won their first nine games by 14 or more points and scored 30-plus points in each of those games (both program records). The offense has sputtered in recent weeks with only three touchdowns over the last six quarters with just 169 total yards of offense.
While Indiana got credit from the committee for playing tougher opponents — its strength of schedule ranks (51st out of 134 FBS teams) ahead of SMU (77) — those recent struggles weighed heavily on the discussion.
“At this time I would just say the strength of schedule for Indiana improved greatly when they played Ohio State, but SMU just has been consistent in the last few weeks in terms of their performance and the committee as we looked at it ranked SMU ahead of Indiana,” Manuel said.
Could Clemson jump Indiana in CFP rankings?
Manuel made it clear later in the call Clemson wasn’t far behind the Hoosiers.
“They are pretty close,” Manuel said, of Indiana and Clemson. “They’re two away. Obviously you can see that we think that they are close in proximity to each other.”
Manuel’s comments make it clear that it will be important for the Hoosiers not only to beat Purdue, but beat them decisively since Clemson has an opportunity for a quality win this weekend against a South Carolina team that jumped into the top 15.
“We take the stance that we’re going to really look at these games, we’re going to look at the stats, we’re going to look at the strength of schedule, but we’re also going to look at how teams are performing against the competition that they have,” Manuel said.
