The penultimate edition of the College Football Playoff rankings were released on Tuesday night, and the top five stayed the same with Alabama, Notre Dame, Clemson, Ohio State and Texas A&M taking the top spots, respectively. The real fun came behind the top five.
Iowa State jumped into the coveted No. 6 spot, while Cincinnati dropped a spot to No. 9 despite not playing a game.
Which teams are overrated and underrated in the latest edition of the rankings? Let's break them down.
No. 13 USC — Underrated
The Trojans haven't exactly looked pretty and their strength of schedule hasn't exactly been stellar, but the same can be said for several of the teams in front of them. The difference is that most of those teams have losses in games that they have looked ugly, while Clay Helton's crew found ways to prevail.
That has to count for something, especially considering some of the inexplicable losses that teams in front of them have. Do Iowa State's losses to Oklahoma State and Louisiana not matter? Does the fact that Georgia doesn't have a win over a current Top 25 team not matter? Apparently not.
Quarterback Kedon Slovis is averaging 320.2 yards per game (seventh nationally), tossed 15 touchdowns and only four interceptions. Wide receivers Amon-Ra St. Brown and Drake London have been stellar, and it's not the Trojans' fault that they Pac-12's season has been a hot mess.
Let's be real … the reason USC is so low is East Coast bias. That's it and that's all.
Cocktail partiers — Overrated
As mentioned above, Georgia doesn't have a win over a single team ranked in the current Top 25, and the only two "signature" wins on its resume are over Missouri and Auburn. Really? Come on.
Now, in Georgia's defense, it solved its problem at quarterback thanks to the emergence of JT Daniels. Does that negate the failed D'Wan Mathis/Stetson Bennett offensive experience? It shouldn't.
Did the committee not watch Florida play last week? It looked entitled, poorly-prepared and unable to take a punch from an overmatched opponent. LSU was down in the low 50s in terms of scholarship players and it still dominated the Gators for the majority of the game.
Cincinnati, Oklahoma, Coastal Carolina, USC and Indiana all deserve to be ranked ahead of the Gators and Bulldogs.
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No. 9 Cincinnati — Underrated
CFP selection committee chair Dave Barta, who is also Iowa's athletic director, mentioned on the television broadcast that part of the reason that the Bearcats dropped was because it hasn't played since beating UCF on Nov. 21. Really? That's the reason that there are THREE teams with two losses ahead of them? Give me a break.
I understand that they don't have a win over a current Top 25 team, but they've been flat out dominant. The rank second in the nation in defensive yards per play at 4.25, fifth in scoring defense at 15 points per game, 11th in offensive yards per play at 6.94 and 13th in scoring offense at 40.9 points per game.
There's a word for that and it's something that several teams above Cincinnati in the rankings can't use … "consistency." What's more, the Bearcats have been consistent on an elite level.
Let's be honest about what's really happening here. The selection committee is trying to make sure that, if chaos ensues at the top, that a Group of Five team won't make the CFP.
