Texas’ season hasn’t gone as planned, but the Longhorns could be sitting pretty after the first College Football Playoff rankings. Oregon, meanwhile, suddenly finds itself in a more precarious spot.
FOX Sports lead college football analyst Joel Klatt sees 11th-ranked Texas as the team outside the 12-team CFP field most likely to get in. Conversely, he believes ninth-ranked Oregon is the team currently in the field most at risk of dropping out before the season ends.
Klatt even suggests that Texas’ 7-2 record and No. 11 ranking could give the Longhorns some leeway — essentially a “mulligan” — and still put them on track for the College Football Playoff.
“This ranking, the first thing that jumped out at me is that Texas, at 9-3, is almost alive, if not certainly in,” Klatt said on his podcast, “The Joel Klatt Show.” “Someone would have to fall out, but there are some teams above them that you could see losing a game or two and opening up a spot for Texas in the playoff.”
Klatt’s reaction to the first College Football Playoff Rankings of the season
That someone could be Oregon. While the Ducks are 7-1, they suddenly have three games remaining against teams ranked in the top 25 of the CFP poll. One of those teams, Iowa, hasn’t been ranked in the AP Poll this season, and Oregon is set to take on the now 20th-ranked Hawkeyes on the road this Saturday.
That game begins a four-game stretch for Oregon as it closes out the season with home matchups against Minnesota and 19th-ranked USC before taking on 23rd-ranked Washington on the road. Klatt is not only unsure if Oregon survives that stretch unscathed, but he also wouldn’t be surprised if the Ducks have multiple losses.
“Of all the teams in the top 10 most likely to lose a game, and maybe even two, is Oregon,” Klatt said. “I think very highly of Oregon, Dan Lanning, that staff and team. Do I think they’re going to lose? Probably not, they’re going to be favored in all those games.
“But at Washington is a scary proposition. Washington owns Oregon at Husky Stadium. At Iowa is no picnic, particularly with the weather coming in for Saturday. Oregon, of the teams in the top 10 right now, and I had to pick a team that had something happen to them and fall out, it would be Oregon.”
Which team is most vulnerable to fall out of the top 10? 🤔
To Klatt’s point, Iowa gave Indiana its toughest test this season, falling to the Hoosiers by five points at home in Week 5. Iowa has also pulled off some memorable upsets at home against top-10 teams in recent years. As for the game at Washington, the Huskies have only lost one home game over the last four seasons.
Klatt’s view that Oregon could be the team most likely to fall out of the 12-team CFP field might raise eyebrows, especially with a top-10 matchup this weekend. Still, he sees a path for the loser of Saturday’s BYU-Texas Tech game to remain in CFP contention.
“It could easily be BYU [that falls out], too,” Klatt said. “If they were to lose to Tech in this game and to Tech again in the Big 12 Championship Game, I think BYU would be out at that point. But the remaining schedule is the most daunting for Oregon.”
As for the other teams in the top 10 (Ohio State, Indiana, Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss, Notre Dame), Klatt either doesn’t envision them losing another game or believes that one loss will knock them out of the top 10. But he believes that the goal should be to make the top 10 because the winner of the ACC and the best Group of 6 team will be ranked outside the top 12.
Even though Texas sits just outside the top 10, the Longhorns still have a clear path upward, with games remaining against fifth-ranked Georgia and third-ranked Texas A&M. And even if they drop one of those matchups, Klatt believes an earlier loss could still work in their favor.
“There’s a lot of talk [among the committee] about how they should view non-conference games. Behind closed doors, the strong push is to make sure that we’re valuing teams that schedule difficult non-conference games,” Klatt said. “Texas scheduling the Ohio State game, the committee isn’t going to want to knock them for that. They aren’t going to want to put them down for losing that game on the road in the opening week of the season with a brand-new quarterback.
“If we’re going to penalize a team like Texas for playing and losing that game, then we’re going to lose that game on the schedule. We don’t want that in college football.”
Surprised that Texas is No. 11 despite recent close games? 🤔
Not only was Texas’ trip to Ohio State arguably the top non-conference game in college football this season, but it was also a much tougher non-conference matchup than some of the other teams around them had this year. Oregon’s top non-conference game was against Oklahoma State, while BYU and Utah took down Stanford and UCLA, respectively. Texas Tech didn’t play a power conference school in non-conference play this season, but Oklahoma (Michigan) and Notre Dame (Miami, Texas A&M) each scheduled games against ranked teams.
So, even though Arch Manning hasn’t necessarily lived up to the hype this season and Texas has taken a drop from its No. 1 preseason ranking, that loss to Ohio State (which is the closest any team has played the defending champs this season) has lifted Texas. And Klatt likes that.
“Them at 11 is going to draw some people’s ire and also solidify what others think about Texas and what they could be in the course of the backend of the season,” Klatt said. “I get where Texas is ranked and, candidly, I don’t disagree with it.”
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