LSU placed a pricetag of $91 million on its new coach, Lane Kiffin.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The committee can consider the availability of coaches and players when it sets the rankings. How it handles Kiffin\u2019s departure<\/a> over the weekend is among the biggest mysteries heading into the reveal of Tuesday night\u2019s final set of rankings before the bracket is locked in on Sunday.<\/p>\n The Rebels were ranked No. 7 in last week\u2019s top 25 and easily beat archrival Mississippi State \u2014 a result that would presumably push them up a notch due to No. 3 Texas A&M\u2019s loss. But they will play in the playoff without Kiffin, who announced his departure a day after the win.<\/p>\n Last week, with news about Kiffin\u2019s pending decision swirling across college football, committee chair Hunter Yurachek did not offer many hints when asked about the possibility of a coach\u2019s departure impacting a team\u2019s ranking.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll take care of that when it happens,\u201d Yurachek said. \u201cWe don\u2019t look ahead. The loss of player, loss of a key coach, is in the principles of how we rank teams, but we don\u2019t have a data point for how we look at Ole Miss without their coach.\u201d<\/p>\n Strange days in the ACC<\/p>\n The committee has been consistent about the team it likes the best in the Atlantic Coast Conference. It\u2019s the 12th-ranked Miami Hurricanes.<\/p>\n But the Hurricanes will not compete for the league title and the automatic bid that would come with that. It\u2019s thanks to a complex tiebreaking formula involving five teams with two conference losses that placed unranked Duke (7-5)<\/a> in the title game against No. 18 Virginia, with the Hurricanes sitting it out.<\/p>\n This could cost Miami its chance at an at-large berth into the playoffs. There\u2019s also an outside chance it could cost the ACC its automatic berth.<\/p>\n The playoffs award automatic spots to the five best-ranked conference champions. Though this has always been presumed to include the ACC \u2014 one of the Power 4 conferences \u2014 if there are two champs from Group of 5 leagues who are ranked higher than the ACC\u2019s champ, those teams would get the auto berths.<\/p>\n This would be possible if Duke wins, along with, for instance, No. 24 Tulane (American) and unranked James Madison (Sun Belt).<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Miami\u2019s AD, Dan Radakovich, is already lobbying for the ACC to rework its tiebreaker system.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t tell you what the answer is right now, but I think we\u2019ve 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,\u201d Radakovich said to ESPN this week.<\/p>\n Bubbles and other bubbles<\/p>\n The top four teams get first-round byes, and No. 3 Texas A&M\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n The next big focus in the rankings will be between 8 and 9 \u2014 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\u2019s 10-game winning streak.<\/p>\n \u201cYou talk about who are the best teams now. Not week one. Now, and it\u2019s hard to argue we aren\u2019t one of those teams,\u201d he said after a 49-20 win<\/a> over Stanford.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Alabama was ranked 10th in last week\u2019s rankings and squeaked past Auburn on Saturday. Where the committee places the Tide will shape this debate over the next week.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a> and here<\/a> (AP News mobile app). AP college football: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LSU placed a pricetag of $91 million on its new coach, Lane Kiffin. Now, the College Football Playoff…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[107987,138,86292,18809,107990,107989,246,5213,3717,107983,81794,107984,96524,7790,107988,8086,107985,107986,63403,111,139,69,244,245,213,14920,55374,5021],"class_list":["post-165113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-atlantic-coast-conference","tag-business","tag-college-football","tag-college-sports","tag-dan-radakovich","tag-duke-blue-devils","tag-finance","tag-football","tag-general-news","tag-james-madison","tag-la-state-wire","tag-lane-kiffin","tag-local-news-for-apple","tag-louisiana","tag-marcus-freeman","tag-mississippi","tag-mississippi-rebels","tag-mississippi-rebels-football","tag-ms-state-wire","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}