Curt Cignetti Trolls CFP Rankings After Indiana's Drop to No. 9 in Latest Bracket Projection

Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti is not impressed with the College Football Playoff selection committee's decision to drop his team five spots in their second ranking of the season.

The Hoosiers started out at No. 4 but are now ranked No. 9 after falling behind Alabama, UCLA, Notre Dame, Texas and Tennessee.

"Bad losses don't count anymore? Are first downs still 10 yards?" Cignetti wrote Thursday in a social media post accompanied by laughing and clown emojis.

Indiana could bolster its case to gain some ground in the CFP rankings with a win Saturday over visiting No. 18 USC.

This isn't the first time Cignetti has criticized the CFP selection committee's decision-making this season. He cited bias toward the SEC when discussing the committee's initial ranking of Indiana behind Miami, Georgia and Utah.

"SEC gets a lot of love from the ESPN, and all their writers that they don't technically pay, but march to their drum," Cignetti told Don Fischer in a Nov. 4 appearance on the Inside IU Football radio show. "So, and that's why you see all these SEC teams up there, and some good two-loss teams from the Big Ten not quite as high."

Indiana, which is coming off a bye week, is 8-1 after losing to its lone ranked opponent of the season so far in an Oct. 17 matchup against Ohio State.

The Hoosiers started out the season with a non-conference slate against North Texas, Howard and Western Kentucky. The team has gone to overtime in each of their last two wins at Michigan and against visiting Minnesota.

UCLA earned a top-eight spot after going 9-0 to start the season, while both Alabama (7-2, losses to No. 2 Georgia and No. 14 Tennessee) and Notre Dame (8-1, loss to No. 8 BYU) have only conceded defeats to ranked opponents.

Other teams above Indiana in the latest CFP ranking have remained on track for a playoff bid despite losing to unranked opponents.

That includes 7-2 Texas— which was No. 1 in the AP Top 25 before conceding back-to-back defeats to Oklahoma and Florida— and 7-2 Tennessee, which conceded a loss to top-ranked Texas but also suffered defeat at South Carolina.

Indiana would risk falling out of the playoff picture altogether with a loss to USC. Cignetti's hopes of leading his team to defend their national title could be on the line when the matchup kicks off at 3:30 p.m. ET in Bloomington.