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Lincoln Riley addresses his mindset towards College Football Playoff rankings

Alex Weberby:Alex Weber•11/01/22
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Photo by Chris Gardner/ Getty Images

Welcome to the most exciting Tuesday of the college football calendar. Nine weeks into the season and with just a few more to go, the College Football Playoff committee will release its first rankings of the 2022 season, giving 25 ranked teams their first glimpse at how they stand in the eyes of a committee which ultimately ends up deciding who is in and who is out of the CFP.

USC head coach Lincoln Riley couldn’t care less about the ordeal. Those rankings, at this point in the season, are just fodder for the common fan in his eyes.

That was his sentiment when asked about the first rankings release and where he hopes his Trojans land. Instead, Riley went full anti-ranking, explaining how volatile and senseless they are until the very end of the season. He doesn’t even bother with them at this point in the year.

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“I don’t even look at them,” he said. “I don’t. Yeah, you ask all my friends back in Oklahoma. I don’t care about them. Like, most of the time, I don’t even know what it is, because it doesn’t matter, right. It does not matter one bit. Like you can go be ranked whatever. You go lose it, it don’t matter. If you keep winning, it takes care of itself. I mean, we told the team this…”

He continued with his memory from back at Oklahoma a few seasons ago, when the committee gave the Sooners whiplash with how much they moved around.

“I mean, we had a year where we lost the game in the middle of the year and we were ranked pretty high for it. Again, that didn’t matter. Then all of a sudden we were like 19. And within like a few weeks…Oh I got no shot in the playoff. Five weeks later we’re in the playoffs. Like it doesn’t matter. It matters none. Spend not one percent of my energy brain power attention. I could not care less. So I care about it at one time and that’s the last one. That’s all that matters.”

Take care of business, and those rankings will work themselves out. At least that’s Lincoln Riley’s philosophy.