Find someone who loves you as much as the College Football Playoff Selection Committee seems to love the Utah Utes. No, it does not help that Utah athletic director Mark Harlan has replaced former committee chairman in Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades as the Big 12 representative on the committee. Furthermore, the powers at be being all about Utah has indirectly impacted Miami a ton...
Heading into rivalry week, or the final week of the regular season if you playing someone like Pittsburgh if you are Miami, Utah was ranked one spot ahead of Miami at No. 12 in the most recent playoff rankings. Miami came in at No. 13 last Tuesday night. So with both teams at 9-2 on the season heading into Week 14, there is no justifiable reason to have Utah ahead of Miami moving forward.
According to ESPN's Football Power Index, Miami is being given a 31.7-percent chance to make the playoff. While that is only the 14th-best mark in the country, just look at where Utah is at... Those delightful Utes have a 17.5-percent chance to make the 12-team field. That has them with the 19th best chance of making it in heading into the final week of the season. Michigan comes in 20th at 6.8...
Not only does Miami have better wins, but Utah nearly lost to a Kansas State team that is only 5-6...
There is no reason Miami should be ranked behind Utah for another week
Looking at the two schools' body of work, here are Miami's best wins and its two losses. Miami has a win over a top-10 Notre Dame team and a fringe AAC contender in South Florida. Miami's two losses are vs. ACC foe Louisville and an SMU team that will surely be ranked at 8-3 this week. Utah may have two really great losses vs. Texas Tech and BYU, but its wins of note are Arizona State and Cincinnati...
The other really big thing here is Miami can actually boost its resume this week with a win over Pittsburgh, while Utah needs to beat a 5-6 Kansas team to avoid total embarrassment. Again, the real big key here is Utah's playoff percentage chances. Between Miami at No. 14 and Utah at No. 19, we have Virginia (28.9), Tulane (27.8), Vanderbilt (21.3) and SMU (21.3). All are more deserving than Utah!
At this stage of the game, it should matter a bit more about who you beat vs. who you lose to. When you pick a team with no bad losses, but no real quality wins, you end up with an Indiana or an SMU from a season ago. Did both deserve to make the playoff? Sure, but neither stood much of a chance taking on Notre Dame and Penn State at their respective places in the first round. Miami is not a fraud.
Miami may not get above the cut line, but the Hurricanes deserve to be in the mix more than Utah.