The second College Football Playoff rankings of 2023 were released on Tuesday night.
The top six teams were unchanged from the previous week, with Ohio State maintaining its hold on the No. 1 spot ahead of Georgia and Michigan.
While some may have thought the Bulldogs deserved to leapfrog the Buckeyes due to the fact they beat a top-15 Missouri team while Ohio State had some struggled with unranked Rutgers, College Football Playoff committee chairman Boo Corrigan explained why his group left things status quo.
“Well, I can assure you, we talked about it early, we talked about it in the middle and we talked about it late to make sure that we had it, as a committee,” Corrigan said last night, via Saturday Down South. “The win over Rutgers, a top-20 defense, put up 28 points, another 7 on a pick-6, TreVeyon Henderson being back for his second game, the win over Penn State, the win over Notre Dame, the win at Wisconsin, seven wins over teams with winning records really drove the day.”
Corrigan later reiterated on ESPN that road wins over top-20 defenses are “hard to come by,” indicating that the committee was giving 6-3 Rutgers the respect necessary to justify keeping Ohio State at No. 1.
In case you missed it live, hear from Boo Corrigan, chair of the College Football Playoff selection committee, as he chatted with @ESPN‘s @ReceDavis after the reveal of the second Top 25 rankings of the 2023 season.#CFBPlayoff 🏈🏆 pic.twitter.com/rsHHroDDhl
— College Football Playoff (@CFBPlayoff) November 8, 2023
Ohio State (9-0) will finish out its 2023 regular season against Michigan State, Minnesota and Michigan, while Georgia (9-0) will close things out with Ole Miss, Tennessee and Georgia Tech.
There’s a lot of football to be played before the rankings are finalized next month.