Still lot of season left, but my alma mater the Cincinnati Bearcats entered today at 7th in the country coming off of a dominant win over a ranked and unbeaten SMU on the road the week before. They absolutely throttled Memphis today, which was probably their most difficult game left on the schedule (they do close at Tulsa which could be a tough out). 6th ranked Oklahoma State lost today, so now the Big 12 can't have an unbeaten team and UC will almost certainly move up to 6th. With Notre Dame fully in the ACC for this year only and playing Clemson next week a possible road block is gone. The Pac 12 is only playing 6 games and haven't even started yet and they don't appear to have any dominant teams on paper. It seems clear that the Clemson/ND winner will more than likely win out and make the playoffs (especially if it is Clemson w/o Lawrence), it appears Ohio State will as well (Wisconsin also has a good shot at it but they would meet OSU in the Big Ten title game so they both aren't unbeaten), and the SEC champion will of course make the playoffs (Bama is the only unbeaten, but a 1 loss SEC champ will make it in), so the question is if Cincinnati is sitting there at the end of the year unbeaten with 10+ wins and ranked very highly, would they get that 4th spot? Given all the strangeness that is this year it almost makes sense to let the little guy have their day.
Thoughts?