It’s about that time. Week 14 is here, and it’s rivalry week in the Big Ten. It’s the best week of the college football season, and the Big Ten College Football Playoff picture hinges on the results of every game. With the latest committee rankings, three teams are still sitting pretty in the field. Of course, there is a path to four Big Ten teams making the dance. Although that path gets thinner and thinner with each passing week, thanks to some ranking manipulation at the bottom of the pack to stack up resum\u00e9s.<\/p>\n
Regardless, four teams have a path to the Big Ten Championship and the College Football Playoff.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Buckeyes sleptwalked to a 42-9 win over Rutgers. Julian Sayin<\/a> faced his first real bit of adversity without Jeremiah Smith<\/a> and Carnell Tate<\/a>. While he responded by force-feeding Max Klare<\/a>, it left much to be desired when it comes to the depth of the receivers. Regardless, a win is a win.<\/p>\n The Ohio State defense continued its elite play, only allowing three points with the starters in. Aside from the Week 1 win vs. Texas, the Buckeyes are largely untested. That first test will come this week. Led by a host of national awards finalists<\/a>, Ohio State is favored to get the win.<\/p>\n Of course, betting favorites or not, Ohio State hasn’t beaten Michigan since 2019. On paper, Ryan Day’s team should be favored. The Game isn’t played on paper. It will take Ohio State’s best game of the year to go into Ann Arbor and get the win.<\/p>\n Ultimately, win or lose, the 11-0 Buckeyes are locked into the CFP. They get to Indianapolis for the Big Ten Championship with a win. There are paths with a loss, of course. Ohio State would make it with losses by Indiana AND Oregon<\/p>\n The Hoosiers had a rare Week 13 bye last week to prepare for their final game of the year against Purdue. Curt Cignetti’s team is pretty much locked into this year’s CFP field again at 11-0. Not even a nuclear collapse at Purdue would be enough to keep Indiana out of the tourney.<\/p>\n Led by current Heisman favorite Fernando Mendoza<\/a>, the Hoosier offense has been on another level this year. He’s thrown for 2,641 yards and leads the nation with 30 touchdowns thus far. Indiana’s offense is the ninth-best in the country in total offense and second-best in scoring. We said a while ago that Indiana’s Cinderella run isn’t over; it’s just getting started.<\/p>\n The Hoosiers aren’t a glass cannon, either. Defensively, Indiana is tied for second in scoring and fourth in total defense.<\/p>\n With a win over Purdue, the Hoosiers would make the Big Ten Championship for the first time in program history. The Hoosiers only have two Big Ten titles to their name, and those were way back in 1945 and 1967. Indiana would clinch a spot in Indianapolis with a win OR Michigan loss.<\/p>\n Next week<\/strong>: at Purdue (2-9, 0-8) (Friday)<\/p>\n Still flying under the radar, Dan Lanning and the Oregon Ducks are almost locked into the field. It’s not out of the realm of possibilities that the Ducks make the field with a loss this weekend, but a win would make them down in Sharpie.<\/p>\n Last week, Oregon finally got a ranked win over USC. In a game that started off back-and-forth, the Ducks pulled away for a convincing 42-27 win without their top receivers. Dante Moore<\/a> was fantastic, passing for 257 yards and a pair of scores. Despite not having the top receivers, Moore was able to find Mackey Award finalist Kenyon Sadiq<\/a> for 72 yards and two touchdowns. USC showed that it was a good team in the loss, just not quite CFP-worthy.<\/p>\n This week, Washington awaits. While the Huskies fell short of the lofty expectations from this writer, they’re still a good team. Add in the rivalry game aspect, and anything can happen. Last year, the Ducks came out on top to cap off a perfect Big Ten slate in their first year with the conference. The two years before that, Washington took three matchups, including in the final Pac-12 Championship.<\/p>\n With a win, Oregon clinches. To get to Indianapolis, Oregon must win AND have Ohio State lose. The Indiana-Purdue game has no bearing on Oregon’s chances.<\/p>\n Next week<\/strong>: at Washington (8-3, 5-3)<\/p>\n Finally, the fourth team in the discussion, Michigan has everything to gain and everything to lose this week. Against Maryland, the Wolverines flexed their muscles in a 45-20 win. Bryson Kuzdal<\/a> became the third Michigan back to go for 100 yards in a game this year while filling in for the injured Jordan Marshall<\/a>. On defense, the Wolverines held Maryland to a paltry 71 yards.<\/p>\n Despite the convincing losses to Oklahoma and USC earlier this season, Michigan is right there in the thick of it. At 15 in the latest poll, it would be difficult to make it as an at-large, though not impossible with a win this weekend. In reality, the Wolverines’ best bet would be to make the Big Ten Championship. They would do so with a win over Ohio State AND a loss by Oregon. If Michigan wins and Indiana and Oregon lose, we would have a rematch in Indianapolis between Ohio State and Michigan.<\/p>\n Next week<\/strong>: vs. Ohio State (11-0, 8-0)<\/p>\n There is only one path to four Big Ten College Football Playoff teams with USC’s loss. Michigan must win the Big Ten. There’s a shot the committee would reward the Wolverines if they just made it to Indianapolis, but a three-loss team would be a tough sell.<\/p>\n So, this weekend, if Michigan wins and Oregon loses, Michigan heads to Indianapolis. If Michigan wins in Indianapolis, we would have four Big Ten teams, assuming the committee doesn’t punish Oregon too harshly for losing to Washington.<\/p>\n Main Image: Ben Lonergan\/The Register-Guard \/ USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Only rivalry week remains. The Big Ten College Football Playoff picture is getting clear. Four teams are still alive, how can all make it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":83087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,35605,35631,35609,35602],"tags":[5144,9148,3348],"class_list":["post-83036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bigten","category-featured","category-indiana-hoosiers","category-michigan-wolverines","category-ohio-state-buckeyes","category-oregon-ducks","tag-curt-cignetti","tag-dan-lanning","tag-ryan-day"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4051"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83036"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83089,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83036\/revisions\/83089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}#2 Indiana<\/h3>\n
Win And In<\/h3>\n
#6 Oregon<\/h3>\n
Win And Pray For Chaos<\/h3>\n
#15 Michigan<\/h3>\n
The Path For Four<\/h3>\n