CFP Poll, Week 1: What It Means For The Russell Athletic Bowl
The first of seven Top 25 rankings decided by the 12-member College Football Playoff selection committee was released Tuesday night. You can get a better understanding of how the committee ranks teams with a couple of helpful breakdowns: one from BusinessInsider and another from Sports On Earth.
The following are the committee’s Top 25 teams through week nine of the season:
- Mississippi State
- Florida State
- Auburn
- Ole Miss
- Oregon
- Alabama
- TCU
- Michigan State
- Kansas State
- Notre Dame
- Georgia
- Arizona
- Baylor
- Arizona State
- Nebraska
- Ohio State
- Utah
- Oklahoma
- LSU
- West Virginia
- Clemson
- UCLA
- East Carolina
- Duke
- Louisville
The Russell Athletic Bowl gets the first ACC pick after the College Football Playoff series of games and the second Big 12 pick after the CFP and the Valero Alamo Bowl. If the season ended today, the Russell Athletic Bowl could potentially host No. 24 Duke or No. 25 Louisville from the ACC and No. 18 Oklahoma or No. 20 West Virginia from the Big 12.
If Duke played Oklahoma in the Russell Athletic Bowl, it would be the first time in 56 years that these teams step on the same field. The last time Duke played West Virginia was in 1985 -the Mountaineers earned their first win in the five game series. In 1997 and 1999, Louisville squared off against Oklahoma – the Sooners claimed both victories. Louisville has played West Virginia 13 times. When the schools last met in 2011, the Mountaineers walked away with the win and their 10th victory in the series history.