Projecting the new College Football Playoff rankings: What to do about Utah?

It should be relatively easy work for the College Football Playoff selection committee this week.

No team ranked in the committee's top 14 lost this weekend. No. 2 Indiana, No. 5 Texas Tech and No. 6 Ole Miss were all idle, while No. 3 Texas A&M and No. 10 Alabama played FCS opponents. Top-14 teams in action on Saturday outscored their opponents 438-147 on a weekend that featured blowout after blowout after blowout. Yawn.

The selection committee could, in theory, just copy and paste most of last week's rankings into this week's if it wants to. I fully expect the top four teams — Ohio State, Indiana, Texas A&M and Georgia — to remain the same. I even think spots 4-8 will remain the same, even after No. 7 Oregon picked up a big win over USC. It's the Ducks' best win of the season, but it's not as good as No. 6 Ole Miss's best win (over Oklahoma). So, I'd keep both Ole Miss and Oregon in the order they were last week.

Tulane was the lone Group of 5 team ranked a week ago, and the Green Wave handled business against Temple, so they'll stay in the bracket as the No. 12 seed — as the projected highest-ranked Group of 5 conference champion. Of course, nothing is quite so simple in the ACC so the No. 11 spot remains up in the air. It will almost assuredly go to the ACC championship game winner, which will secure the league's auto-bid. I've put Virginia into that spot as the placeholder, even though the standard practice for most sports outlets (including this one and also ESPN) doing CFP projections is to label the highest-ranked team from a conference as its projected champion. If I followed that protocol, I'd have to put Miami in the bracket as the ACC champion even though the 'Canes are extremely unlikely to even qualify for the ACC title game. I think that's confusing, and I'd rather put Virginia in my projection because the Cavaliers will make the ACC championship game if they beat 3-8 Virginia Tech on Saturday. They'll be the highest-ranked ACC team not named Miami in Tuesday night's rankings, so we can consider them a CFP contender as a potential ACC champion/AQ — while we continue to discuss the Hurricanes as an at-large CFP candidate.

I strongly suspect that the selection committee will have its most interesting conversations this week about Utah. The Utes are 9-2 with two quality losses (to Texas Tech and BYU) but only one win over a team currently ranked in the committee's Top 25 — and it's Arizona State, ranked 25th a week ago. The committee likes Utah more than AP poll voters and the coaches who vote in the coaches' poll, which was always a bit confusing until you realize this particular committee loves teams that have what we call "good" losses. Most years, we have a committee that values good wins more than it dings teams for bad losses ... but not this year!

This committee has also largely given teams credit for winning, even if it's ugly. Last week, new committee chair Hunter Yurachek said this about Texas A&M, after the Aggies fell behind 30-3 and came back to beat unranked South Carolina by one point: "From a committee standpoint, I think the second half definitively neutralized the way they played in the first half, especially when you find a way to win a game like that, when you are not very good and you're not your typical self in that first half."

Will the committee view Utah's win over Kansas State similarly? Or could the committee dock the Utes for their shaky performance against a Kansas State team that is now under .500 on the season? Utah allowed an astounding 472 rushing yards to the Wildcats on Saturday! And the Utes needed a big fourth-down run and subsequent touchdown run from Devon Dampier in the final minute to come back and beat a middling Kansas State. I would think that the former football coaches in the selection committee room might feel a certain way about a team that allowed its opponent to gash it on the ground to the tune of 11.2 yards per carry. Might they bump Utah down a spot or two?

I've projected Utah to drop one spot, from No. 12 to No. 13. The Utes were on the outside looking in a week ago, and I think Saturday's poor performance even in a win could cost them some bubble positioning. At the same time, Miami continues to impress — passing the eye test, etc. — and that could give the committee another reason to drop Utah one spot and slide the 'Canes up one, flip-flopping the two. That's what I would do, but I am not totally sure this committee will do the same.

One other bubble team to pay attention to this week is Texas. The Longhorns were all the way down at No. 17 last week after their lopsided loss to Georgia. They were a few spots behind No. 14 Vanderbilt despite beating the Commodores earlier this month; it was obvious that the committee was treating Texas as a team that would not be directly compared with Vandy because the Longhorns had three losses and the 'Dores had two. I take issue with that because one of Texas' three losses is a seven-point road loss to the No. 1 team in the country, and I wouldn't have penalized that team too harshly for losing a game that many programs in college football wouldn't schedule in the first place. But I digress. The committee obviously felt differently and created some clear separation between Vanderbilt and Texas, which meant that the head-to-head result would not come into play as a tiebreaker.

Well, the two teams that provided the buffer between Vandy and Texas both lost this weekend. Down went No. 15 USC, and down went No. 16 Georgia Tech. I think it's possible, if not likely, that the committee ends up comparing Vanderbilt and Texas directly this week — which means the on-field result from Nov. 1 should come into play. Texas could slide up three full spots this week, which means the Longhorns are not out of the CFP picture just yet. Not with No. 3 Texas A&M on deck.