College Football Playoff Standings 2015: Week 7 Rankings, Bowl Game Projections

The NFL may have had a stranglehold on crazy, unforeseen news in the offseason, but it may not hold a candle to college football during the season.

Up is down, and left is right. Crazy chaos may just be the theme of the 2015 season, and we’re just now entering the halfway point of Week 7. On and off the field, there is little substitute to this kind of drama, but it also makes things extremely difficult to project several weeks—or, heck, several days—out.

Case in point this week: Look at powerhouse programs USC and Florida. Each appeared to be going in opposite directions. The Trojans sank to 3-2 after a puzzling loss to Washington and then promptly fired their head coach nearly 72 hours later, the school announced. Yet as talented as the team is, would it surprise anybody if it inexplicably beat Notre Dame on Saturday and then somehow won the Pac-12 South?

Things are that crazy this year that such a thing can’t be completely ruled out.

And then there’s Florida. The Gators looked to be the prohibitive favorite in the SEC East, but it was announced on Monday that starting quarterback Will Grier would miss a full year after failing a drug test, as Mike Huguenin of GridironNow.com first reported. Even though the drop-off might not be gigantic to Treon Harris, it’s still a big blow to a squad just hitting its stride.

Now, a trip to Atlanta isn’t looking quite like the lock that it once was after beating Missouri on Saturday. That’s not to say it won’t happen, but anything is possible at this point.

And that’s the kind of thing that makes college football great and bowl projections so tough to do. Here they are anyway.

• Here are the full Top 25 rankings. The College Football Playoff selection committee will release its first rankings Nov. 3 at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.

• There are no changes to the top four in the College Football Playoff, but there is a slight tweak made in the Orange Bowl with Ohio State moving to the No. 2 seed and Clemson going to the No. 3 seed. Again, that's not much of a change, but it is based on some strong Buckeyes wins over Michigan State and Michigan at the end of the regular season boosting them ever so slightly over undefeated ACC champion Clemson.

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• It’s still going to be difficult to reach 80 teams hitting bowl eligibility, but we will certainly hover right around that mark. The number of SEC or Big Ten teams getting into the "New Year’s Six" bowl games will also have a big cascading affect on lower-tier bowl games trying to pick teams. The bottom line is we shouldn’t have any 6-6 Group of Five teams not finding a postseason home, but where it might be is anybody’s guess.
• The real winners among bowl games might just be the Russell Athletic Bowl. If Notre Dame misses out on the New Year’s Six games, it's likely to find a home in Orlando, and it could be against a nine-win Oklahoma team to boot.
• Likewise, the Sun Bowl could get a really good matchup with a 10-2/9-3-type Florida State squad taking on a back-sliding USC group. Sure the on-field product may not be as good as the name-brand matchup suggests, but it could bring a bit of fun to El Paso in the winter.
• Late December is also when college hoops season starts to pick up some steam, so how about Kentucky playing North Carolina? In this case, that would be in the Music City Bowl, but don’t rule out the Wildcats playing Duke in the Belk Bowl either.
• It will be hard to top the contrasting styles of offense in a potential bowl game of Air Force’s triple-option taking on Washington State’s Air Raid. It could also prevent it from becoming a four-hour game.
• There are not typically a lot of rematches in bowl games, but one certainly would think the Rose Bowl is OK with giving Michigan a shot at Pasadena newcomer Utah.
• The best bowl matchup among the smaller games might be in the GoDaddy Bowl, where a very good (and Top 25-ranked) Toledo squad could face off against a very good Georgia Southern team. It will still take a lot for either to be the top Group of Five team, but this could be a nice consolation game to see who is second- or third-best. 

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You can follow Bryan Fischer on Twitter at @BryanDFischer.