Ohio State remains No. 1 in second College Football Playoff rankings
Ohio State remained at No. 1 in the latest College Football Playoff poll unveiled Tuesday night.
In the second of six rankings put together by the selection committee, it held off Georgia for the top spot.
The two-time defending champion had loomed as a threat to unseat the Buckeyes, thanks to the Bulldogs' 30-21 win Saturday over No. 14 Missouri.
"We talked about it early, we talked about it in the middle and we talked about it late," said Boo Corrigan, the athletic director at North Carolina State who chairs the committee.
The victory over the Tigers gave the Bulldogs with their first win over a ranked team. The Buckeyes own two wins over teams ranked by the committee in Penn State at No. 10 and Notre Dame at No. 20.
That win over the Irish lost a little luster over the weekend when Notre Dame fell at Clemson, a declining powerhouse that has floated around .500 this year. The Irish have three losses now following the upset.
But the Buckeyes are one of only two unbeaten teams, along with No. 5 Washington, with multiple wins over ranked opponents, a resume that put them atop the rankings for the first time since 2019 last week.
Corrigan emphasized the strength of their resume as something that "really drove the day," pointing out that seven of the Buckeyes' nine wins have been against teams with winning records. (One of them is Youngstown State, a member of the Football Championship Subdivision.)
Ohio State's 35-16 win at Rutgers was also viewed favorably by the committee. Corrigan noted their scoring against the Scarlet Knights' top-20 defense.
"It’s not something necessarily that everyone looked at and bumped them up," he said, "but they continued to move on, they continue to play well."
Corrigan said the Buckeyes have been further elevated by the return of running back TreVeyon Henderson, who rushed for over 100 yards for a second consecutive week.
There was little movement at the top of the rankings with the eight highest-ranked teams holding onto their spots.
Michigan is No. 3, followed Florida State at No. 4 and Washington at No. 5, rounding out the five unbeaten teams from Power Five conferences.
Joey Kaufman covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch. Follow him on Facebook and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. He can also be contacted at jkaufman@dispatch.com.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State remains No. 1 in second College Football Playoff rankings
