Kirk Herbstreit comments on Oregon being fourth in playoff ranking debut

College football analyst Kirk Herbstreit gave his take on Oregon’s fourth-place ranking in the first College Football Playoff rankings of the season. Oregon earned the No. 4 spot in the nation ahead of Ohio State after beating them early in the season.

Kirk Herbstreit on Oregon’s ranking

Before the rankings were officially revealed, Herbstreit broke down his thought process on where Oregon should be ranked and why. Herbstreit drew particular attention to the fact that the entire season needs to be considered to make accurate rankings.

“What I think is interesting about Oregon — and again this system is built for the end of the year,” Herbstreit explained. “Here we are with about five weeks still to go and we all are intrigued about Cincinnati and Oregon. Oregon of all these teams — you could argue has the best win — had some injuries, beat Ohio State in Columbus.

“You could also argue of all these teams, Oregon has the most embarrassing loss. Losing to Stanford. Yeah, Joe Moorhead wasn’t there [and] yes they had injuries. But it still shows up on their resume as a loss to a 3-5 Stanford team. So what do they do with Oregon? Because to me it’s not as simple as ‘they beat them head-to-head.’ Well if that’s the case, Stanford must be better than Oregon because they beat them. So it’s not just about beating teams head-to-head, it’s about the entire body of work.”

“Every week matters and what you do — and we’ll see what the committee says about that,” closed Herbstreit before the rankings debuted.

Oregon ranked fourth in nation

“It’s interesting that Oregon is at four, it’s such a great debate about head-to-head and what they did in that game,” Herbstreit outlined about Oregon’s signature win over Ohio State. “And then what they did on the back end of that game for really three straight weeks.”

“Oregon’s kind of sliding down and Ohio State’s going in a different direction,” continued Herbstreit on Oregon’s slumping performance after the win over Ohio State. “It’s easy to put Ohio State ahead of them. Now if they didn’t have that UCLA win and they followed it up with a dominating win against Colorado, they’re not sitting there [at fourth]. Even though they could have won those games and not looked good doing it. I think they turned their fortunes around in the last two weeks. And that’s why they’re up in the top four.”

The night was not without some controversy, as both Oregon and Ohio State were ranked above undefeated Cincinnati. Ohio State was ranked fifth, while the Bearcats took the sixth spot. Critics of Cincinnati’s ranking claim that their undefeated record combined with a win over Notre Dame should push them over Oregon.

The committee however, seems to have decided that Oregon’s win over Ohio State and their recent impressive wins was enough to give them the edge.