I was curious about something: over the history of the CFP rankings, what is the farthest down a team has come from to land in the top 4 at the end?
The following shows the CFP ranking, over the six rankings they released in the season, for the top 4 teams in the last ranking (the Tues after the Conf Champ games)
2018:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_NCAA_Division_I_FBS_football_rankings#CFP_Rankings
1 Bama -- 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 Clemson - 2 2 2 2 2 2
3 Notre Dame - 4 3 3 3 3 3
4 OU - 7 6 6 6 5 4
2017:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_NCAA_Division_I_FBS_football_rankings#CFP_Rankings
1 Clemson -- 4 4 2 3 1 1
2 OU -- 5 5 4 4 3 2
3 Georgia -- 1 1 7 7 6 3
4 Bama -- 2 2 1 1 5 4
2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_NCAA_Division_I_FBS_football_rankings#CFP_Rankings
1 Bama -- 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 Clemson -- 2 2 4 4 3 2
3 Ohio State -- 6 5 2 2 2 3
4 Washington -- 5 4 6 5 4 4
2015:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_NCAA_Division_I_FBS_football_rankings#CFP_Rankings
1 Clemson -- 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 Bama -- 4 2 2 2 2 2
3 Mich State -- 7 13 9 5 5 3
4 OU -- 15 12 7 3 3 4
2014:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_NCAA_Division_I_FBS_football_rankings#CFP_Rankings (7 rankings)
1 Bama -- 6 5 5 1 1 1 1
2 Oregon -- 5 4 2 2 2 2 2
3 Florida St -- 2 2 3 3 3 4 3
4 Ohio St -- 16 14 8 6 6 5 4
Furthest a top 4 team came from, in the initial ranking:
Ohio State #16 (2014)
Oklahoma #15 (2015)
Furthest a top 4 team came from, in the intermediate rankings:
Ohio State #14 (2014, 2nd ranking)
Michigan State #13 (2015, 2nd ranking)
Oklahoma #12 (2015, 2nd ranking)
But in the last three seasons (2016-2018), no top 4 team has started, or had an intermediate ranking, lower than #7.
The team that most resembles us in the last three seasons is Washington, which is not a traditional helmet school and started the first ranking at 8-0. They improved to 9-0 over unranked Cal, then lost to #20 USC at home. They beat #23 Washington State on the road, then beat #9 Colorado in the PAC champ game, to make the top 4.
If you think of their USC game as our game vs Penn St, their road game vs Washington St as our road game vs Iowa, and their champ game over Colorado as our home game with Wisconsin, it matches up decently. Trouble for us is, then we have the champ game vs Ohio St (most likely).