Hoosiers Jump Tennessee with 'Big Win' Win Over Michigan Says CFP Committee

Written by Sammy Jacobs (@Hoosier_Huddle)

The 10-0 Indiana Hoosiers moved up three spots in the latest College Football Playoff rankings and saw their seed jump from nine to seven. In the latest rankings the Hoosiers jumped over the 8-1 Tennessee Volunteers. The CFP committee credited Indiana with a ‘big win’ for beating Michigan on Saturday.

“Tennessee, the offense has struggled some the second half of the season, not being consistent early in the year, and we just felt as a committee that at this time Indiana has been playing very well, a close win against Michigan, but other than that, they've dominated everyone they've played.” Explained CFP Chair Warde Manuel.

Before Saturday, IU had defeated every opponent by 14 or more points, essentially offsetting their lack of schedule strength.

“We do have a metric that looks at each individual opponent, and so we do analyze every opponent that they play and their strength of record as it relates to that opponent.

In terms of strength of schedule, we have overall strength of schedule but we also have individual strength of records for each team, and that's part of the analysis that we do and part of the discussion amongst the committee as we evaluate each team.” Manuel added. IU’s strength of record is much more impressive than their strength of schedule.

Many people like to project out what the rest of the season will look like especially with teams who play common opponents. Fellow Big Ten member Penn State is ranked just above IU at four despite having a loss. That loss was a seven point defeat at home to Ohio State. The Hoosiers next game is at Ohio State, so naturally there will be a comparison. However, the CFP committee does not like to do that.

“We have to evaluate based on the performance on the field that we see. We can't determine who would hypothetically win a game on paper. That's not any of the things that we do. It's not a part of our protocol to try to predict what would happen in the future. So we don't have any conversations about that as it relates to how we rank the teams.” Manuel said.

The Hoosiers enter their second bye week in a great spot for making the College Football Playoff. Their next game is on November 23rd against the No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes.