Who dropped back in the playoff discussion, and who stepped into their places?
Nebraska did much to improve its position in the pecking order for teams looking to make the playoffs, but the Big Ten as a whole did not do a lot to help its members have additional leverage for future at-large bids. Let’s look at the positives first….While the hard-to-please Nebraska fans likely feel that the 2nd half of Saturday night’s game left a lot to be desired, it likely played out almost as well as possible as far as garnering positive media attention.
As for Nebraska being ranked now, yes, it matters. Keep winning, and we’ll keep climbing. It’s tricky making a splash this week against Northern Iowa, an FCS team, so it would be ideal for the Huskers to get up early with a few halftime highlights, which will be what most people will see and remember.
As defending national champion and 3x Big Ten champion, Michigan’s current team probably has been overrated after losing Harbaugh and other key coaches and a bus-full of key players to the NFL. Still, getting manhandled at home by Texas is an image that’s probably more enduring than the way Texas beat Alabama handily at home last year. Anything good that Michigan does in-conference from this point forward will serve to make Texas look better while likely only hurting the Big Ten in comparison.
As a general rule for all non-SEC fans, besides losing to teams from other conferences, the best way to alleviate the SEC stronghold on the top of the rankings is to have as many upsets as possible from other SEC teams that are NOT highly ranked. Auburn, Arkansas, Kentucky, Texas A&M, and Mississippi State are all unranked with a loss, so any wins by any of them over the highly ranked SEC teams would go a long way towards pulling pieces out of the logjam.
With the new 12-team playoff system in place, more teams will have more chances to make the playoffs, and their opportunities will last much longer into the season. This series of articles is intended to continue all season with three subjects per week: reflections on the past week; games to anticipate for the coming week; and an overview of how the whole system is coming together and evolving with projections for who will make the playoffs, bubble teams, power rankings, etc.
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