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What to Watch, Week 9: The CFP rankings are coming! The CFP rankings are coming!

graham watson

The College Football Playoff rankings are finally here.

At the conclusion of Week 9, the committee members will assemble and come up with the first College Football Playoff rankings of the season, which will begin several weeks of questioning, criticizing and lamenting about the slew of teams fighting for four spots of glory.

While 10 teams had games on Thursday and Friday, including some teams that should appear in the committee’s Top 25, several other key games will be played this weekend as teams begin jockeying for position.

Here’s a look at what to watch in Week 9:

Game of the week:
No. 8 Stanford at Washington State, 8:30 p.m. ET
Stanford is close to wrapping up the Pac-12 North title, but Washington State, which is arguably playing its best football ever under coach Mike Leach, might be standing in the Cardinal’s way.

Stanford has beaten its last four conference opponents by an average of 23.5 points per game. Much of that success has come because of the all-everything game of running back Christian McCaffrey, who leads the nation in all-purpose yards per game and has rushed for 953 yards and six touchdowns this season, including at least 100 yards in each of his last five contests.

And the Cardinal are going to need that offense if it wants to keep up with the Cougars, who have scored no fewer than 45 points in wins against Oregon, Oregon State and Arizona. The Cougars offense is centered around its passing game, which has had attempts of 75, 52 and 62 passes in their past three games. Quarterback Luke Falk leads the nation in attempts (387), completions (282) and completion percentage (72.9); and leads the Pac-12 in yards (2,885), yards per game (412.1) and touchdowns (26).

But the Cougars have not had a lot of success against Stanford, losing the last seven in the series. And in those games, the Stanford defense has done well keeping the Washington State offense fairly quiet. The Cardinal have allowed 15.1 points while averaging 41.7.

If Stanford were to beat the Cougars, it would have at least a three game lead in the race for the Pac-12 North title.

Game to Watch:
Georgia vs. No. 11 Florida in Jacksonville, 3:30 p.m. ET
The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, as this rivalry between Georgia and Florida is affectionately called, would put the winner in the driver’s seat for the SEC title and a trip to the SEC championship game.

If Florida wins, it will have a two game lead on its competition with two games to play. If Georgia wins, the Bulldogs would be tied atop the division standings with the Gators and hold the head-to-head tiebreaker.

This scenario sound eerily familiar.

In 2012, Florida had a chance to secure its first SEC title game berth since 2009, but a 17-9 loss to Georgia gave the Bulldogs the division crown. A similar situation happened in 2002.

Florida is coming off a 35-28 loss to LSU, the Gators first loss of the season and their first game without quarterback Will Grier, who is serving a year-long suspension for performance enhancing drugs. Still, Florida’s passing game thrived under quarterback Treon Harris, who threw for 271 yards and two touchdowns in the loss.

He’s a far different version of the quarterback the Bulldogs saw a year ago when he threw just six passes and the Gators rushed for 418 yards.

Georgia has its own offensive concerns after losing star running back Nick Chubb to a knee injury a few weeks ago. The Bulldogs’ offense struggled in their first game without him — a 9-6 win against Missouri — and will need to find a way to generate some offense against a stingy Florida defense.

Also check out…
No. 9 Notre Dame at No. 21 Temple, 6 p.m. ET
This is the only contest between ranked teams and it might not end up being that competitive.

Temple is 7-0 and off to its best start in school history. However, it hasn’t faced an opponent as good as Notre Dame, which will truly prove whether the Owls are as good as their record suggests or a product of mediocre competition.

Notre Dame is trying to stay in the hunt for a College Football Playoff spot and a loss to Temple would knock the Irish out of contention. Notre Dame is the better team in this scenario, but it’s really going to come down to how seriously the Irish take the Owls. A couple weeks ago, Ole Miss got a two-score lead against Memphis, another American Athletic Conference team, started to relaxed and ended up being upset. Notre Dame faces a similar scenario with a Temple team that plays decent defense and has the AAC’s top rusher in Jahad Thomas.

Notre Dame will look to stretch the Temple defense with speedy wide receiver Will Fuller, who is averaging 100.3 receiving yards and has eight touchdowns, and wear down the interior of the defensive line with running back C.J. Prosise, who has a team-high 922 yards and 11 scores.

While conventional wisdom and statistics say Notre Dame should run away with this game, the AAC already has had a charmed October and this would finish the month in grand fashion.

Channel surf through…

USC at Cal, 3 ET: USC is coming off a big win against Utah while Cal has lost its last two games. There’s a bit of desperation for both teams as Cal tries to right what was an undefeated start and USC tries to be perfect in its final five games to challenge for the Pac-12 South. The offenses will be on display in this contest.

Vanderbilt at No. 18 Houston, 7 p.m. ET: As noted above, AAC member Memphis already has knocked off an SEC opponent and Houston could make it two for the conference. Vanderbilt is coming off a win against Missouri, the program’s first conference win under coach Derek Mason. Houston is one of three undefeated teams in the AAC and has rolled through most of its competition. It, along with a handful of other schools, are vying for a spot in a New Year’s Six Bowl and a win against the Commodores would go a long way toward that.

Tennessee at Kentucky, 7:30 p.m. ET: The seat of Tennessee coach Butch Jones has been getting a little warm in the past couple weeks as his team has failed to live up to high expectations this year. The Vols are 3-4 this season and a loss to rival Kentucky might just have Jones hitching a ride back from Lexington unemployed.

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Graham Watson is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter!

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