College Football Rankings: B/R's Top 25 After Week 11

After many weeks of intense arguing over whether a team that opened the season with a 46-point loss deserves a shot at the College Football Playoff, Oregon went ahead and removed itself from the conversation with a 37-34 home loss to Washington.

It was an awesome back-and-forth game that featured one of the worst decisions you'll ever see (Michael Penix Jr. throwing into double coverage on 1st-and-goal from the 1-yard line early in the fourth quarter), a national-landscape-altering injury (Bo Nix got dinged up late in the fourth), a mind-boggling decision to not call a timeout to get Nix back into the game before a fourth-down attempt, a controversial "fake" injury with six seconds remaining and a flailing Hail Mary attempt as time expired.

But, in the end, Oregon is toast. (At least for playoff purposes. It could still win the Pac-12, which we'll touch on later.)

While that point-a-palooza was going down, North Carolina survived one of its own, improving to 9-1 and clinching a date with Clemson in the ACC championship with a 36-34 road victory over Wake Forest. And for the more defensively-inclined, TCU survived a low-scoring brawl with Texas to remain undefeated and very much in the mix for the playoff.

It was one of those weeks where it felt like wild upsets were going down left and right, but then you look up at the end of the night, and there was only one loss by a Top 10 team, and it came against a ranked foe.

Outside the Top 10, though, there was a fair amount of carnage, punctuated by UCLA's late-night loss to Arizona.

How does it all affect the rankings?

Bleacher Report's college football experts—David Kenyon, Adam Kramer, Kerry Miller, Morgan Moriarty and Brad Shepard—each submitted a Top 25 ballot.

This is the new consensus.

Bleacher Report's Post-Week 11 Top 25:

1. Georgia (Previous Week: 1)
2. Ohio State (2)
3. Michigan (3)
4. TCU (5)
5. Tennessee (4)
6. LSU (7)
7. USC (8)
8. Alabama (11)
9. Utah (13)
10. North Carolina (14)
11. Clemson (12)
12. Washington (22)
13. Penn State (15)
14. Oregon (6)
15. Ole Miss (10)
16. UCLA (9)
17. Notre Dame (19)
18. UCF (21)
19. Kansas State (24)
20. Florida State (Not Ranked)
21. Coastal Carolina (25)
22. Cincinnati (Not Ranked)
23. Tulane (16)
24. Oklahoma State (Not Ranked)
25. Duke (Not Ranked)

Other Receiving Votes: Oregon State, Minnesota

After last week's 21-7 victory over lowly Northwestern, many people expressed concern about the state of Ohio State's offense.

But it's a safe assumption that just about all of those people either A) didn't watch the game or B) are Michigan fans because the Buckeyes played in what might as well have been a wind tunnel, completely neutralizing their downfield passing attack.

On a slightly-snowy-but-much-less-blustery afternoon in Columbus, Ohio State was back to its usual self in a 56-14 rout of Indiana.

Heisman favorite C.J. Stroud threw for 297 yards and five touchdowns. Miyan Williams rushed for 147 yards in the first half, and then when he left with an ankle injury, Dallan Hayden took over for the second 100-yard rushing performance of his freshman campaign.

All told, Ohio State more than doubled the Hoosiers in total yards and quadrupled them on the scoreboard, improving to 10-0 with all 10 of those victories coming by double digits—the only team in the country able to make that claim.

There are some growing, legitimate concerns about the health of this offense. WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba (hamstring) has barely played this season, missing his seventh game. RB TreVeyon Henderson (foot) was also unavailable against Indiana, missing his second straight game and third of the year. Now we wait to find out how seriously Williams is injured.

What's impressive, though, is that it hasn't slowed down this juggernaut in the slightest.

Texas A&M lost a star wide receiver and subsequently forgot how to play football. But as long as they aren't trying to navigate gale-force winds, the Buckeyes just keep dominating with offense.

Best of luck to Maryland next week, which couldn't even keep Northwestern from scoring 24 points a few weeks ago. Ohio State has averaged 59.4 points in seven games played against the Terrapins since they joined the Big Ten, and that number might even increase in seven days.

The College Football Playoff selection committee had already made it abundantly clear that Liberty—even if it got to 11-1 by year's end—wasn't going to sneak into the New Year's Six bowl mix. Even though the AP poll had the 8-1 Flames at No. 19 this past Sunday, the CFP committee kept them unranked after back-to-back victories over BYU and Arkansas.

But now they'll be unranked in all the polls after a 36-33 loss at UConn.

Credit to the Huskies, who are bowl-eligible for the first time since 2015. Jim Mora has found water in a desert, going 6-5 in his first season with a program that had gone 4-32 over the previous four years. (Didn't play in 2020.)

However, this is a game that Liberty should have won by multiple touchdowns.

UConn came into Week 11 averaging a meager 18.5 points per game, including a 59-0 shutout at the hands of Michigan. UConn's only win against a team with a .500 or better record was a last-minute victory over Fresno State, notably when the Bulldogs were without second-team All-MWC QB Jake Haener.

But the Huskies scored five touchdowns (four offensive and one scoop and score) against a Liberty defense that had held six consecutive opponents to 24 points or fewer.

After a slow start, it looked as though Liberty had things under control. The Flames turned a 21-10 second-quarter deficit into a 27-21 lead before the end of the third and then scored on a 75-yard run by Demario Douglas one play after UConn regained the lead early in the fourth quarter.

But Liberty couldn't muster anything on offense the rest of the way, resulting in a substantial upset.

Liberty should still get to 10 regular-season wins by wrapping things up with home victories over Virginia Tech and New Mexico State, but there's no telling where the Independent, no-bowl-affiliation Flames will end up in the final postseason equation.

What we can confidently say is that the dream of being ranked higher than 17th in the AP poll for what would have been the first time in program history is now kaput.

Prior to last season, Tennessee's all-time record for scoring in a single season was 484 points, set in 1993. That Heath Shuler and Charlie Garner-led offense averaged 42.8 points per game during the regular season but fell a bit shy of eclipsing 500 for the year in a 31-13 loss to Penn State in the Citrus Bowl.

In Josh Heupel's first year as the head coach, the Volunteers smashed that program record with 511 points in 2021. The scoring average wasn't quite as high, but playing 13 games got them there.

But Hendon Hooker, Jalin Hyatt and Co. are well on their way to demolishing that record after their third 60+ point performance of the season in a 66-24 blowout of Missouri this week.

The Vols are now at 474 points for the year—already good for third-best in program history—with games remaining against South Carolina and Vanderbilt. And neither of those teams even ranks in the top half of the SEC in scoring defense.

If they were to maintain their 47.4 scoring average through those two games, the Volunteers would finish the regular season at 569 points. That's not quite enough to match LSU's mark of 584 points from 2019, but it might be enough to lead the nation in scoring this season.

And that could be an important distinction when it comes to debating whether the Volunteers, the Michigan/Ohio State loser or a one-loss Pac-12 champion is most worthy of a spot in the College Football Playoff.

The points explosions against the likes of Ball State (59), Akron (63) and UT Martin (65) weren't that impressive. But dropping 66 points on Missouri—which held Georgia to 26 points and was allowing just 21.4 points per game on the year—was one heck of a bounce back from last week's loss to the No. 1 ranked Dawgs.

After weeks of a general national consensus that TCU was bound to eventually lose a game, we've hit the tipping point where a 13-0 Horned Frogs squad in the College Football Playoff is a legitimate possibility.

They aren't there yet, though. And the Week 12 road trip to Baylor should be one of the stiffest tests that 10-0 TCU faces all season.

Unless the Bears completely no-show in Waco like they did this week in a 31-3 loss to Kansas State, that is. And with Baylor just about out of the hunt for a spot in the Big 12 championship—the Bears would need to beat both TCU and Texas, have Oklahoma State lose at least one game and have Kansas State lose to both West Virginia and Kansas—maybe they come out flat again. But it should be a good game.

Elsewhere, two big games in Pac-12 with No. 13 Utah at No. 6 Oregon and No. 8 USC at No. 12 UCLA in what might as well be the semifinals for the conference championship.

Three of the four teams have one league loss, while two-loss UCLA could still sneak in by winning out. And with the possible exception of Oregon beating Utah and then losing at Oregon State in Week 13, it's unlikely that either Week 12 winner would lose to a conference foe the following week to open up "Pandora's Box of Tiebreakers" for a spot in the Pac-12 championship.

While Utah-Oregon is for a likely spot in the Pac-12 title game, USC-UCLA is a battle for the Trojans to remain in the hunt for the College Football Playoff.

Fun little showdown between soon-to-be Big Ten rivals, no?

Beyond those three games, it ought to be a relatively quiet penultimate week of the regular season.

There are a few intriguing games in the SEC (Georgia at Kentucky, Tennessee at South Carolina and Ole Miss at Arkansas), but the road favorites figure to prevail. And while everyone is already looking forward to the regular-season finale between undefeated Michigan and undefeated Ohio State, it's unlikely that the Wolverines (vs. Illinois) or Buckeyes (at Maryland) are in any danger of losing a trap game.

But you just never know. Seems like there's at least one major upset every week, and maybe that trend continues.