LSU placed a pricetag of $91 million on its new coach, Lane Kiffin.
Now, the College Football Playoff selection committee gets to place a value of its own on Kiffin when it decides where to rank his old school, Mississippi, in its latest top 25.
The committee can consider the availability of coaches and players when it sets the rankings. How it handles Kiffin’s departure over the weekend is among the biggest mysteries heading into the reveal of Tuesday night’s final set of rankings before the bracket is locked in on Sunday.
The Rebels were ranked No. 7 in last week’s top 25 and easily beat archrival Mississippi State — a result that would presumably push them up a notch due to No. 3 Texas A&M’s loss. But they will play in the playoff without Kiffin, who announced his departure a day after the win.
Last week, with news about Kiffin’s pending decision swirling across college football, committee chair Hunter Yurachek did not offer many hints when asked about the possibility of a coach’s departure impacting a team’s ranking.
“We’ll take care of that when it happens,” Yurachek said. “We don’t look ahead. The loss of player, loss of a key coach, is in the principles of how we rank teams, but we don’t have a data point for how we look at Ole Miss without their coach.”
Strange days in the ACC
The committee has been consistent about the team it likes the best in the Atlantic Coast Conference. It’s the 12th-ranked Miami Hurricanes.
But the Hurricanes will not compete for the league title and the automatic bid that would come with that. It’s thanks to a complex tiebreaking formula involving five teams with two conference losses that placed unranked Duke (7-5) in the title game against No. 18 Virginia, with the Hurricanes sitting it out.
This could cost Miami its chance at an at-large berth into the playoffs. There’s also an outside chance it could cost the ACC its automatic berth.
The playoffs award automatic spots to the five best-ranked conference champions. Though this has always been presumed to include the ACC — one of the Power 4 conferences — if there are two champs from Group of 5 leagues who are ranked higher than the ACC’s champ, those teams would get the auto berths.
This would be possible if Duke wins, along with, for instance, No. 24 Tulane (American) and unranked James Madison (Sun Belt).
Meanwhile, Miami’s AD, Dan Radakovich, is already lobbying for the ACC to rework its tiebreaker system.
“I can’t tell you what the answer is right now, but I think we’ve got to look at some different things that might be able to streamline that and make sure that the league is going to put its best foot forward,” Radakovich said to ESPN this week.
Bubbles and other bubbles
The top four teams get first-round byes, and No. 3 Texas A&M’s loss figures to move No. 5 Texas Tech into the last of those spots, for this week at least. Undefeated Ohio State and Indiana will be ranked 1-2 in advance of their matchup in the Big Ten title game, with the loser at some risk of missing out on the bye.
The next big focus in the rankings will be between 8 and 9 — No. 8 gets homefield advantage in a first-round game, while No. 9 must go on the road. Notre Dame has been sitting in the No. 9 spot for the last three weeks and coach Marcus Freeman is now lobbying for a bump, pointing out his team’s 10-game winning streak.
“You talk about who are the best teams now. Not week one. Now, and it’s hard to argue we aren’t one of those teams,” he said after a 49-20 win over Stanford.
For the second straight year, Alabama figures to be the most intriguing decision for the committee. The Crimson Tide, passed over for the last spot last year by SMU, would lock in a spot by beating Georgia in the SEC title game Saturday.
But if the Tide suffers its third loss of the season there, it will reopen questions as to whether a team should be penalized for playing in the title game while others (Ole Miss, for example) sit at home and watch.
Alabama was ranked 10th in last week’s rankings and squeaked past Auburn on Saturday. Where the committee places the Tide will shape this debate over the next week.
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