BYU Football: Predicting the College Football Rankings

The first college football playoff rankings will come out today and BYU Football will likely find themselves in a favorable position.

Everyone knows that the College Football Playoff rankings do not match the AP or AFCA Coaches polls. If you are wondering why that is, check out my deep dive of what goes into their thought process.

As the first rankings will be released tonight, and after researching countless hours the kind of indicators that the committee looks at while ranking teams, here are what I believe the rankings will look like and a brief explanation as to why on the teams that need some clarification.

San Diego State has a couple of nice wins P5 on their resume including over Utah and Air Force. The Aztecs had a tough loss this weekend to Fresno State who is posting a 7-2 record themselves.

Mississippi State is a big mystery as to how the committee will treat them. On one hand, the Bulldogs have losses to Memphis and LSU. On the other hand, they have nice wins over Texas A&M and Kentucky. It’s anyone’s guess to whether this team will be unranked or in the Top 20.

After falling off the radar of AP and Coaches poll voters, the Wisconsin Badgers have clawed their way back to relevancy. Their three losses are all to ranked teams, and in the past two weeks the Badgers have beaten two ranked teams in Purdue and Iowa. Wisconsin looks like a Top 25 team right now, and the committee will likely agree.

Utah is a victim of losing to good teams before anyone knew they were good teams. The Utes’ losses to BYU and San Diego State at the time looked like losses to mediocre middle of pack teams. Now with those teams posting a 13-3 combined record including seven Power Five wins, those losses are more excusable.

The Utes also have some nice wins over UCLA, Arizona State and Washington State.

Like it or not, the UTSA Roadrunners likely won’t get the benefit of the doubt. Last year, with a very small sample size of games, the committee ranked 8-0 BYU No. 14 behind teams who had only played five to six games.

With the UTSA posting a similar type of schedule as BYU last year, don’t be shocked to see a few three loss teams ahead of them. It also doesn’t help that the Roadrunners aren’t running over all of their competition, something BYU did do last year.