Greg McElroy irked at CFP committee ranking Ohio State ahead of Texas, Alabama

After taking its lone loss of the regular season on Saturday, a 30-24 defeat at Michigan, Ohio State slipped from No. 2 to No. 6 in the penultimate College Football Playoff rankings. ESPN’s Greg McElroy doesn’t think it’s far enough.

Now that Ohio State is on the one-loss tier with Oregon (which was ranked at No. 5), Texas and Alabama, McElroy doesn’t think the Buckeyes’ resume justifies placing ahead of the No. 8 Crimson Tide and No. 7 Longhorns. It starts with the fact that both of Ohio State’s big wins have lost some shine and, beyond that, the Big Ten has been poor in 2023.

“And these teams that are behind them, both at No. 7 and No. 8, have a chance to strengthen their resume drastically. But, right now, Ohio State’s a little too high. Their schedule has been very good. And we’ve all acknowledged the strength of the Big Ten this year — every year. But they have two wins against teams that have eight or more wins on the season, Penn State and Notre Dame,” McElroy said.

The other team with eight or more wins that Ohio State has played was Michigan. Otherwise, the nine other wins came against teams with a combined record of 51-57, or 43-53 for the eight FBS opponents.

Given that and the dearth of strong wins outside the two, McElroy isn’t sure how to justify Ohio State’s ranking ahead of Texas and Alabama.

“Two ranked wins, as well. Meanwhile, Texas and Alabama each have three. And I’m not trying to compare Penn State to Tennessee, I don’t think we necessarily need to compete or look at them through the same lens. But if you look at the sheer quantity of challenges that those teams had to pass, those tests that those teams had to pass with both Texas and Alabama, it’s just more. They’ve had more tests than what Ohio State’s had,” McElroy said.

Plus, Ohio State had a chance to pass a third test on Saturday but didn’t.

“They failed their biggest on this past weekend,” McElroy said.

Even with the perceived over-ranking of Ohio State, McElroy’s ESPN colleague and former Buckeye Kirk Herbstreit doesn’t think his alma mater is really in play for a back-in CFP bid barring a lot of chaos. Both Texas and Alabama would likely move ahead of Ohio State with conference championships and Florida State won’t slip from ahead without losing.

“Yeah, Ohio State to me, what they would need is a Texas loss and a Florida State loss to even be in the discussion. Outside of anything like that, they’re clearly on the outside looking in,” Herbstreit said.