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Winners and Losers: The pool of CFP candidates is thinning

There’s a little more than a week until the first official College Football Playoff rankings are announced, and there are still a handful of teams that could make the Top 4.

As we saw Saturday with Ohio State, it’s difficult to stay at the top of the heap and more often than not the teams that appear at the top of the first CFP rankings aren’t necessarily the teams that go on to actually play in the playoff.

Here’s a quick look at the teams that still have a shot at playoff glory.

Alabama: Can anyone topple the Tide? For a moment on Saturday, Texas A&M made it look possible, but a few mistakes later and the Tide were heading off the field with another dominant victory. But it’s too early to anoint them repeat champions, especially with LSU and Auburn looming.

Michigan: With Ohio State probably out of the way, the Wolverines control their own path to the playoff. If they win out, which means a win against Ohio State and a victory in the Big ten title game, they’re in.

Clemson: The Tigers escaped N.C. State last week and now have one major regular-season hurdle remaining with next week’s game against Florida State. The Seminoles aren’t as tough as they have been in past years, but the Tigers also haven’t been as consistent as they were during their national championship run a year ago. And don’t discount how tough a conference title game might be.

Washington: The Huskies are the biggest surprise out of the Pac-12, but they’ve been as dominant in that league as Alabama has been in the SEC. Next week’s game against Utah will be the first, and perhaps last, tough challenge the Huskies will see before the conference title game.

Ohio State: Saturday’s loss against Penn State was tough, but not a deal breaker. The Buckeyes still have to beat Michigan. That was true going into Saturday’s game and it’s still true coming out. Win that contest and perhaps the committee will look favorably on the Buckeyes.

Nebraska: Week after week the Huskers continue to survive, and since the Big Ten West isn’t very good, the Huskers have a chance to squeak into the playoff if they can knock off either Ohio State or Michigan in the conference title game. And that’s a big if.

Baylor: The Bears have quietly moved up the national rankings by virtue of their wins and losses by teams ahead of them. Baylor has not hit the meat of its schedule yet and the Big 12 doesn’t carry a whole lot of cachet thanks to the struggles of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, TCU and Texas.

West Virginia: While Baylor was ranked ahead of the Mountaineers in the last national rankings, popular opinion is that the Mountaineers are the best team in the conference. However, as noted with Baylor, that’s not saying much. Still, West Virginia is dominating the bad teams in its conference and might squeak in if some teams lose and the Mountaineers go undefeated.

Boise State: Let’s go ahead and throw the long shot Broncos in here. Boise State is 6-0 and already the frontrunner to appear in a New Year’s Six bowl game. It has struggled a little bit in the past couple weeks, but the rest of the schedule is manageable for an undefeated season. That probably won’t be enough to get the Broncos into the playoff considering the strength of their schedule, but it’s fun to talk about.

Louisville: And while we’re talking about long shots, let’s add the Cardinals. The loss to Clemson is still hanging over their heads and they’d need to win out and get two Clemson losses to even be considered. That seems like a tall order, but stranger things have happened and quarterback Lamar Jackson is definitely an attractive sell.

With that out of the way, here are the rest of the winners and losers from Week 8:

WINNERS

West Virginia defeated TCU on Saturday to remain undefeated.
West Virginia defeated TCU on Saturday to remain undefeated. (Getty)

West Virginia: The 12th-ranked Mountaineers are one of the more surprising teams in college football. With a dominant 34-10 win over TCU on Saturday, WVU improved to 6-0 on the season. The Mountaineers haven’t played the toughest schedule, but have impressed the past two weeks with their defense, limiting high-powered Texas Tech and TCU to a combined 27 points. Coach Dana Holgorsen was firmly on the hot seat last year, and now he has his team in the College Football Playoff conversation through Week 8.

Navy: Navy has sole possession of first place in the AAC West after a big 42-28 win over Memphis on Saturday. The Midshipmen upset Houston earlier this year and are thriving offensively even after starting QB Tago Smith was injured in Week 1. On Saturday against the Tigers, senior Will Worth threw for two touchdowns and ran for three more. The Midshipmen had 447 yards rushing on the afternoon, including a game-high 201 from Worth.

North Texas: Seth Littrell is doing a nice job in his first season at North Texas. The former North Carolina offensive coordinator has the Mean Green at 4-3 overall after beating Army 35-18 on the road on Saturday. UNT went 1-11 last year and are now two wins away from bowl eligibility.

Bill Snyder: Things aren’t looking good for Charlie Strong at Texas, so longtime Kansas State coach Bill Snyder gave Strong some encouragement after the Wildcats held off the Longhorns 24-21 in Manhattan. Texas is now 3-4 on the year.

Troy Trojans: Neal Brown’s Trojans are now 6-1 after a 28-21 win over South Alabama on Thursday night. The team’s only defeat this season was a six-point loss at the the hands of the Clemson Tigers, one of the top teams in the nation. Following the win over its biggest rival, Troy is now bowl eligible for the first time since 2010.

Adam Breneman, UMass: Tight end Adam Breneman medically retired in January after three seasons at Penn State, but decided to return to the field after some time off. He’s now thriving at UMass as a graduate transfer. He entered Week 8 second in the nation behind Evan Engram in catches among TEs. On Saturday at South Carolina, Breneman led all Minutemen receivers with nine catches for 92 yards and two touchdowns. His big game wasn’t enough as the Minutemen dropped to 1-7 on the season. Still, Breneman is a nice story.

Eric Dungey, Syracuse: Syracuse sophomore Eric Dungey is having a big year under new coach Dino Babers. In a 28-20 win over Boston College on Saturday, Dungey completed 32 of 38 passes for a career-high 434 yards and three TDs. He also showed he’s not afraid to mix things up a bit. After throwing an interception, Dungey sparked a scuffle on the sideline after a ferocious out-of-bounds tackle on Boston College’s William Harris, who had just intercepted the Orange quarterback. We like his fire.

Hawaii: Air Force’s 15-game home winning streak is history after Hawaii came out on top of a 34-28 double-overtime slugfest in Colorado. With the win, the Rainbow Warriors are now 3-1 in the Mountain West for the first time since joining the conference in 2012. Hawaii has won three of its last four games.

LOSERS

Missouri: The Tigers invited Middle Tennessee in for Homecoming. Easy win, right? Nope.

Mizzou lost 51-45, the most points its given up in a nonconference home game since 1944. The Tigers defense gave up 584 yards and couldn’t make key stops in the fourth quarter to give the offense a chance to get back in the game. Missouri is now 2-5 and must finish the season 4-1 to get to a bowl game. If Mizzou doesn’t go bowling, it’ll be the first time since 2001-2002 that the Tigers have missed bowls in consecutive seasons.

UCLA lost its third game in a row to fall to 1-4 in Pac-12 play. (Getty)
UCLA lost its third game in a row to fall to 1-4 in Pac-12 play. (Getty)

UCLA: Many felt the Pac-12 South was UCLA’s to lose in 2016. Well, UCLA has lost it. A 52-45 home loss to Utah means UCLA is now 3-5 overall and, more important, 1-4 in the Pac-12.

Saturday was UCLA’s second straight game without star quarterback Josh Rosen after he suffered a shoulder injury vs. Arizona State. Mike Fafaul started at quarterback and threw 70 passes, completing 40 for 464 yards, five touchdowns and four interceptions. Meanwhile the Bruins ran the ball just 16 times for 46 yards as Utah running back Joe Williams ran for 332 yards on 29 carries.

Texas: It feels like piling on here, but it’s going to be a miserable week in Austin. The Longhorns dropped to 3-4 with a 24-21 loss to Kansas State. It’s the fifth straight time Kansas State has beaten Texas at home and the Wildcats are the only program in the Big 12 that has a winning record vs. Texas.

A big reason for Kansas State’s win on Saturday was the success of its run-based offense. The Wildcats held on to the ball for over 38 minutes. Oh, and Kansas State got 27 first downs. We’ll see how this affects Charlie Strong’s future as Texas’ coach.

Stanford’s offense: Star running back Christian McCaffrey returned for the Cardinal but it didn’t matter as Stanford lost 10-5 to Colorado at home. McCaffrey had 21 carries for 92 yards.

The loss drops Stanford to 4-3 overall and 2-3 in the Pac-12. And while Stanford won last week at Notre Dame, the loss continued what seems to be a season-long stretch of offensive futility. The Cardinal averaged 2.8 yards per carry vs. the Buffaloes, the third time Stanford has averaged less than 3 yards a carry this season. According to ESPN, that happened three times over the past eight years of Stanford football.

Michigan State: Yeah, this is piling on too. But we really expected better, Michigan State.

The Spartans fell 28-17 at Maryland on Saturday for a fifth straight loss. It’s the first time in 25 years that Michigan State has lost that many in a row.

MSU entered the fourth quarter leading 17-14 but gave up two straight touchdowns to the Terrapins. Maryland ultimately iced the game with a 10-play, 82-yard drive that culminated with a 9-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Perry Hills to Levern Jacobs for the winning margin.

Ole Miss DB who tried to tackle Leonard Fournette: You tried, Deontay Anderson. You tried.

Marshall: How the Conference USA mighty have fallen. It wasn’t too long ago that we were wondering if Marshall could sneak its way in to the Group of Five bowl berth in the New Year’s Six Bowls. Now we’re wondering if the Thundering Herd will make a bowl at all in 2016.

Marshall lost 27-24 at home to Charlotte on Saturday. Yes, the same Charlotte that made its FBS debut in 2015. The Thundering Herd are now 2-5 but may have to go undefeated the rest of the way to get to a bowl game. If there are more bowl eligible teams than there are bowls, a 6-6 team from Conference USA isn’t going to be too attractive.