Another week of college football is in the books, and we're another week closer less to the College Football Playoff selection committee dropping their first officials rankings of the 2024 season. It's hard to believe, but most teams have knocked out at least half of their 2024 schedule.
There were a ton of concerning performances last week, but none of the projected teams in our latest prediction took a loss -- and reflecting that, only one team dropped out and one new team moved in after this past week's results.
Now, let’s take a look as we enter Week 8 at how we expect the College Football Playoff bracket to shake out this fall based on what we have seen so far. To see where we were at entering last week, here are our projections entering Week 7 looked like before reading on.
How are these rankings determined?
Each week this season, HailWV will be releasing a prediction for what we expect the CFP field to look like -- it will not necessarily reflect what we expect the rankings themselves to look like each week, but how the field would be seeded. As a reminder, the official process for selecting the College Football Playoff (CFP) field is as follows:
"The CFP Selection Committee ranks the top 25 teams at the end of the season, and the 12 playoff participants consist of the five highest-ranked conference champions, plus the next seven highest-ranked teams. The four highest-ranked conference champions will be seeded one through four and receive a first-round bye. The schools seeded five through eight will host those seeded nine through 12 in first-round games. The quarterfinals and semifinals rotate annually among six bowl games – the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, Vrbo Fiesta Bowl, Capital One Orange Bowl, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl Game presented by Prudential and the Allstate Sugar Bowl."From the CFP website
PROJECTED 12-TEAM CFP FIELD ENTERING WEEK 8
Ranking | Team | Bid Type | Previous Ranking |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | Texas | SEC Champion | 2 |
2 | Oregon | Big 10 Champion | 5 |
3 | Iowa State | Big 12 Champion | 3 |
4 | Pittsburgh | ACC Champion | 4 |
5 | Ohio State | At-Large | 1 |
6 | Penn State | At-Large | 6 |
7 | Georgia | At-Large | 7 |
8 | BYU | At-Large | 12 |
9 | Boise State | Mountain West Champion (G5 Representative) | 9 |
10 | Indiana | At-Large | 10 |
11 | Miami | At-Large | 11 |
12 | Notre Dame | At-Large | NR |
DROPPED OUT: Tennessee
As mentioned, the makeup of our projections aren't too different this week, with 11-of-12 teams remaining in the projected bracket and 7 teams maintaining their previous ranking.
One team not maintaining from last week is Ohio State who drops to the fifth seed after a loss to Oregon, our new projected Big 10 Champ and No. 2 seed. Texas jumps back into the 1-seed spot after dominating bitter rival Oklahoma in a 34-3 win.
Iowa State is still the projected Big 12 champion and still sits at the third seed, with undefeated surprise story Pitt continuing to look strong and sitting as our projected ACC Champions and fourth seed.
The conference layout has also shifted this week, and while it's hard to fathom that we could see it play out this way in the end, only 2 SEC teams remaining in the projection as of now -- Tennessee was our lone team dropping out after a rough-looking overtime win against bottom-of-the-SEC opponent Florida to follow an upset loss to Arkansas a week before. The Big 10 still sits with 4 teams projected and the Big 12 and ACC also remain at 2 teams each in our predictions. Independent Notre Dame has reappeared, and Mountain West stalwart Boise State also remains projected to make the playoff.