Must-See TV: College Football Playoff Rankings Tuesday Night Should Be Very Interesting

Published|Updated

Other than the debut of the College Football Playoff rankings back on Nov. 2, the weekly show on ESPN has not exactly been must-see TV in the realm of, say, Succession or Yellowstone.

But this Tuesday (6 p.m. central, ESPN), it should be engrossing after the rankings-shaking 42-27 upset of No. 2 Ohio State by No. 5 Michigan on Saturday. How far will the Buckeyes (10-2) fall?

Will No. 3 Alabama (11-1) move back to No. 2? Maybe not. The Crimson Tide again did not look like an elite power as it took four overtimes for Alabama to beat unranked Auburn (6-5), 24-22. If Auburn tailback Tank Bigsby just stays in bounds on Auburn's second-to-last possession of regulation with a 10-3 lead with 1:47 to go in the fourth quarter, Alabama would have had to burn an extra timeout. Then, it may not have had enough time to tie it 10-10 with 24 seconds to play in the fourth period.

Should Michigan (11-1) leapfrog No. 4 Cincinnati (12-0) to Ohio State's former spot at No. 2? It did beat the Buckeyes by two touchdowns. Cincinnati had no trouble with East Carolina in a 35-13 win and could move up.

"The way it feels now, it feels like the beginning," Harbaugh said after his first victory over Ohio State as Michigan's coach following an 0-5 start.

The four teams below Michigan -- No. 6 Notre Dame (11-1), No. 7 Oklahoma State (11-1), No. 8 Baylor (10-2) and No. 9 Ole Miss (10-2) -- all won. But Oklahoma State had the most impressive victory, defeating No. 10 Oklahoma, 37-33, as the Sooners fell to 10-2 and lost coach Lincoln Riley, who chose USC over LSU.

There will be other movement lower in the rankings as No. 14 Wisconsin (8-4) lost to 7-4 Minnesota. No. 15 Texas A&M (8-4) will fall fast after a 27-24 loss to a 5-6 LSU team. No. 22 Texas-San Antonio is headed out after a 45-23 loss to a 5-6 North Texas.

This will be the final Tuesday night edition of the rankings. After the various league championship games on Saturday, the final CFP poll before the Playoff will be at 11 a.m. central on Sunday.

Follow along on Twitter: @LSUBeatTweet

Tags
Written by
Guilbeau joined OutKick as an SEC columnist in September of 2021 after covering LSU and the Saints for 17 years at USA TODAY Louisiana. He has been a national columnist/feature writer since the summer of 2022, covering college football, basketball and baseball with some NFL, NBA, MLB, TV and Movies and general assignment, including hot dog taste tests. A New Orleans native and Mizzou graduate, he has consistently won Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) and Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) awards since covering Alabama and Auburn at the Mobile Press-Register (1993-98) and LSU and the Saints at the Baton Rouge Advocate (1998-2004). In 2021, Guilbeau won an FWAA 1st for a game feature, placed in APSE Beat Writing, Breaking News and Explanatory, and won Beat Writer of the Year from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association (LSWA). He won an FWAA columnist 1st in 2017 and was FWAA's top overall winner in 2016 with 1st in game story, 2nd in columns, and features honorable mention. Guilbeau completed a book in 2022 about LSU's five-time national champion coach - "Everything Matters In Baseball: The Skip Bertman Story" - that is available at www.acadianhouse.com, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble outlets. He lives in Baton Rouge with his wife, the former Michelle Millhollon of Thibodaux who previously covered politics for the Baton Rouge Advocate and is a communications director.