NCAAF College Football Scores - Week 12

NCAAF College Football Scores - Week 12

There will be many changes in the rankings this week. Among the top six teams, four played patsies and the other two lost. (And one of the teams playing a patsy almost lost, as #4 Notre Dame barely hung on to defeat 3-8 Boston College.)

The losers in that group were two teams that had formerly been undefeated: #3 Ohio State and #6 Oklahoma State, both of which fell to other top ten teams (#9 Michigan State and #10 Baylor, respectively).

#7 Oklahoma fought off a furious fourth-quarter comeback bid from TCU for a 30-29 victory.

#8 Florida showed very little in requiring OT to defeat a weak squad from Florida Atlantic. That win may cause them to get passed by lower-ranked teams with more impressive wins, like Baylor, Stanford and Michigan.

Farther down the list, Houston's dream of an undefeated season went the same route as Oklahoma State's and Ohio State's, as they lost to UConn.

How it shakes out:

#1 Clemson remains undefeated. Their final games will be against South Carolina and North Carolina, the latter in the ACC championship game.

#2 Alabama finishes the regular season with a road trip to Auburn, a team in a down season. (2-5 in conference play.) If they win that, the SEC championship game will be against Florida, which has already clinched their half of the conference.

The new presumed #3, Notre Dame, has a very tough final game at Stanford, which still entertains its own hopes to make the Fearsome Foursome. The good news is that a strong win will just about assure the Irish of a spot at the adult table, since they (1) are an independent team and therefore do not face a bruising conference finale; (2) their only loss was a squeaker to the nation's #1 team on a missed two-point conversion. The bad news is that it will not be easy to produce such a win on the road against Stanford.

The new presumed #4, Iowa, is undefeated and will presumably remain so until the conference championship game, since their final regular season game is at 5-6 Nebraska (but don't count out the Cornhuskers at home, where they upset Michigan State earlier this year). Iowa will go to the Big Ten conference championship game irrespective of that outcome, and their opponent has yet to be determined, but Iowa will be underdogs no matter who it is. (Michigan State can clinch that spot next week with a win over Penn State. If they falter, the champ of the Big Ten East will be the winner of the Michigan/Ohio State game.)

The current situation causes us to look back at Oklahoma's disastrous loss to 4-6 Texas in Austin. If not for that, Oklahoma would probably now be rated #1 in the nation, and would be considered almost a sure-fire entrant into the Fab Four. As it currently stands, however, they will probably be rated #5, which means they will have to win their own tough game on the road and pray for one of the top four to falter. The Big 12 does not play a championship game, so the conference champ will probably be the winner of next week's game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. I qualified that with "probably" because Baylor still has a mathematical chance. If Baylor wins its two remaining games, they will be the conference champ only if Oklahoma State defeats Oklahoma. Baylor cannot win the conference if Oklahoma wins their Oklahoma State match-up because Baylor lost to Oklahoma earlier in the year. No matter what Baylor does, Oklahoma will win the conference with a win next week, but they will still have to await the outcome of various other games to see if they can make the Colossal Cuatro.

Sagarin's new computer rankings are out. He sees it this way:

1. Alabama
2. Oklahoma
3. Clemson
4. Baylor
5. Ohio State
6. Notre Dame
7. Stanford

(The computer ranks undefeated Iowa #17 - behind USC, a team with four losses.)