The first College Football Playoff rankings come out Tuesday evening.
Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer won’t be watching.
“I won’t look at it,” Meyer said Monday during his weekly press conference. “I’m sure people will tell me about it, though, including my person of 27 years of marriage will tell me about it when I get home.”
So it’s settled: Meyer won’t be watching, but he’ll certainly know where his team stands on the first day of November.
History has shown us it doesn’t really matter where a team stands in these initial rankings. Sure, the higher the better, but there’s still a month left to play in the season and so many things can happen in this wild and wacky world of college football.
Back in 2014, the initial year for the College Football Playoff, Ohio State debuted at No. 16 in the rankings. The Buckeyes were 6-1 at the time. Then, Ohio State won its next six games and finished No. 4 to make the four-team playoff. We’re all well-aware of what happened after that.
In a matter of six weeks, Ohio State moved 12 spots.
In 2015, the Buckeyes debuted at No. 3 in the initial Playoff rankings. Ohio State was 8-0 on the season but didn’t have a great resume at that point in the year. The Buckeyes lost a few weeks later to Michigan State, finished the season 11-1 and in the final CFP rankings were No. 7. Ohio State missed a chance to defend its national title and had to settle for a Fiesta Bowl victory over Notre Dame.
The ever-changing college football landscape is a big reason why the Buckeyes say they don’t really care where they are ranked Tuesday night.
“I don’t care about it too much being that there’s still a lot of football left to be played,” Buckeyes quarterback J.T. Barrett said. “I understand that last year we were in it and then we lose a game in November and we’re not in it. The year before that, we weren’t in it, won a couple of games at the end of the year and then we are in it.
“That’s the thing: We’re not playing the playoffs this Saturday so it’s not that much to me.”
Ohio State is currently ranked No. 6 in both the Associated Press and coaches polls. Both are essentially meaningless outside of being discussion points, but in this instance, it’s probably a good barometer of where the Buckeyes will land Tuesday.
Anywhere between fifth and eighth seems like a reasonable landing spot at this point. But again, Ohio State doesn’t seem to care where it is ranked.
“We’ve just got to take it one week at a time,” Buckeyes defensive end Jalyn Holmes said. “I feel like if I’m thinking about right now, man, we’ve got to beat Nebraska before any of that to be possible. Just take it one week at a time and we’re going to see where we land.”
This weekend’s matchup with the Cornhuskers will go a long way in determining what ultimately matters — where Ohio State is ranked at the end of the season. The Huskers surprised some folks and figure to be a top-15 team themselves, so it’s another opportunity for the Buckeyes to add a quality win to a resume that already includes victories over Wisconsin and Oklahoma.
Ohio State also has its annual rivalry game against Michigan at the end of the season. The Wolverines, like the Buckeyes, are fighting for one of those top-four spots at the end of the season.
There are chances for Ohio State — and every team around the country, really — to improve its resume over the final month of the regular season. But the Buckeyes are going to find out where they stand in the eyes of the College Football Playoff committee Tuesday night — even if it comes from a second-hand source.
“It’s not going to change the way we work,” Meyer said. “We’ve got to improve and play well Saturday against a very good team.”
