Good morning, Bucknowdors. Welcome to the Bucknowdors.

Good morning, Bucknowdors. Welcome to the Bucknuts Morning 5 here on Wednesday, November 2, 2022. I am Dave Biddle. I'm very happy to be joined by Matt Baxingdale.

Buck guys, number two in the initial college football playoff rankings of 2022, my friend. Your thoughts, I wasn't sure if they'd be two or three. It had to be one of the two and they are number two. Your thoughts.

I'm surprised Tennessee is number one. It's amazing how much currency you get for beating Alabama. I mean, like they had a big 12, circa 2004 game against Bama who, you know, doesn't look like the Bama of old to say the least. And I guess, I don't know if Ohio State have beaten Penn State by an extra touchdown, but they have been one. I think this is the biggest surprise of all this to me, I think is that Michigan isn't in the top four. I was really surprised about that.

But for Ohio State, the only thing that really matters out of all this is is that we're number two and we went out, we're in. We knew that anyways. It's all semantics at that point to me.

So you touched on this. So Tennessee number one Michigan is fifth. Alabama is sixth. So you know, Tennessee won Ohio State.

Two, you go Georgia three. I'm not even out here. Clemson. Clemson four and then Michigan five. So any surprises there.

Well, Clemson, they suck. But I mean, that'd be glib about it. Right. But Michigan's only fifth because the first month of their schedule was a complete farce. That's the only reason they're there.

I think Clemson, if you watch them play, they are not on par with Michigan. Michigan would absolutely bludgeon them into submission.

So I think that this is a byproduct of just simply strength to schedule. I think the bottom line is they looked at both of them and they said, okay, we got two undefeated teams here, one has a better strength to schedule than the other.

And I think the other thing and correct me from wrong here, Dave, I'm always a conspiracy theorist when it comes to this playoff committee, right.

I think they looked at it and said, if we start with two SEC and two big 10 teams, it's going to look bad. And then when those teams lose, they're going to say, well, I lost to a top four team. Why should I get dropped out?

So I think they're trying to say, yes, we want another team outside of the two big leagues in the top group since they have a viable team in Clemson that not that long ago was in a championship game.

It seems like the easy political decision and makes it easier to move these guys around when somebody may or may not win or lose because Tennessee plays Georgia this week in Ohio State plays Michigan in a couple of weeks.

So I don't think they want to back themselves into a corner where they're like, what happens if Georgia beats Tennessee and Tennessee drops only to fourth and Clemson doesn't get in.

What happens if Michigan is at number one in Ohio State's at number two, right. They're trying to set it up so that these matchups don't just result in two SEC and two big 10 teams, even though that might be the best matchup based on actual talent.

That's my conspiracy theory, Dave. I don't know how you feel about it. But to me, that's how I see it.

As you were saying that, it feels like there might be something to that. I don't know if they got that deep with it. I really think Michigan's non-conference schedule is the biggest factor here.

It literally we could say it was bad. It was the worst non-conference schedule in college football this year, backs number one.

Last place out of one 31. Right.

131 college football Michigan had the 131st hardest schedule. So the first easiest schedule in all of college football in the non-conference portion.

Yep.

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