MN could be as high as
4 and lowest SHOULD be around 7-9.
A 10 would be unusually low and the CFP committee would have a hard time explaining how they came up with that.
A few things to watch this week.
1. How far does PSU drop compared to Alabama. PSU will suffer the bigger drop for losing to MN vs LSU, but IMO PSU should still be top 8-10 for losing to an unbeaten team on the road.
2. Are any two-loss teams ahead of Minnesota? There shouldn't be at this point.
3. For one loss teams ahead of Minnesota, why are they there? Alabama and Georgia are two examples.
- Alabama has no good wins, so that's a really tough argument other than they played LSU close. (Quality loss argument).
- Georgia's best argument is they have two wins against Top 25 teams. That's all Georgia can cling to right now as they cling to those wins and hope people forget the S.Carolina loss.
- Oregon and Utah are two more. Both were ahead of MN for better conference wins. Their best win for each team is over a 6-4 team. (That's Illinois' record). Utah beat Ariz St who beat MSU. MN beat Illinois who beat MSU. And Illinois is now our 2nd best win instead of our best.
4. From a SOS standpoint, Clemson and us are both in the 65-75 range only a couple spots apart. How big of a gap between these two unbeaten teams? Minnesota has the better "best win".
5. All of this doesn't matter if we win out and beat OSU.
But it definitely matters if we win out and lose close to OSU. An argument can be made in that case that Minnesota has more quality wins (WI, IA, PSU) and a quality loss to OSU. Compared to Alabama's schedule which would only have an Auburn win in a 12 game schedule and a loss at home to LSU. A 12-1 Minnesota might have a better resume than an 11-1 Alabama.
The biggest thing against Minnesota right now is Name Brand. If our name was Alabama, we would be no lower than #3 right now after this weekend's win (behind LSU and possibly OSU).