The College Football Playoff selection committee last week released the first version of its rankings, triggering the annual reframing of commentary around “postseason positioning.” After debuting at No. 11, the Oklahoma Sooners can see a potential bid to the tournament if they squint really hard. It’s not like OU hasn’t made a late playoff charge before.
Even in a good year, the debate about which teams will make the playoff is tedious. The weekly update by the committee provides ample grist for speculation about its members’ motivations and criteria (In reality, you can reverse engineer a methodology that shows the committee makes fairly predictable decisions from week to week.