Cincinnati Bearcats move to No. 5 in new College Football Playoff rankings
The University of Cincinnati Bearcats football team ranks No. 5 in the College Football Playoff selection committee's latest Top 25 rankings.
The committee, led by chair and Iowa Director of Athletics Gary Barta, ranked UC No. 6 last week in the first release of its rankings.
Cincinnati (No. 2 in the latest Associated Press Top 25 poll and No. 3 in the latest USA TODAY Sports AFCA Coaches poll) moved to 9-0 overall and 5-0 in the American Athletic Conference after holding off Tulsa 28-20 Saturday at Nippert Stadium.
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Bearcats head coach Luke Fickell said he wasn't concerned with how the committee would judge his team after the Bearcats struggled for the third consecutive game to impress against a team in the bottom half of the AAC standings.
"I don't know," Fickell said earlier this week. "I won't think about it. I won't worry about it. We'll let everybody that's outside (worry about it). What do we got? Three more regular-season games? We'll take three one-point wins or whatever it takes to find a way to continue to win. ... For us, most importantly, and we said it last week, it's about winning. We're not going to try to live up to what somebody else expects of us and how we do things. We all would like some things (to be) a little bit better. But the reality is, it's a hard-fought game with lots of shifts in momentum and a lot of things that went on this week that our guys had to handle. I thought they did a good job of it."
Only two Power Five teams – Georgia (9-0) and Oklahoma (9-0) – remain unbeaten after losses this past weekend by Michigan State and Wake Forest.
"We have no control," Fickell added earlier this week. "Let's let it be. Let's do what we can do, control what we can control and let the chips fall where they may. If you guys continue to win, then at some point in time at the end of the year, we'll be up there pounding the table. If it ain't good enough, it ain't good enough. We can do nothing about that. It is what it is."
Tuesday night marked the release of the second of the committee's six rankings, as the 13 members determine the four teams that will participate in this season's College Football Playoff – with semifinals set for Dec. 31 and the CFP National Championship Game to take place Jan. 10, 2022, in Indianapolis.
Cincinnati will look to stay unbeaten Friday night at South Florida (2-7, 1-4), with kickoff scheduled for 6 p.m. on ESPN2. Fickell said Tuesday that he's not sure whether leading rusher Jerome Ford will be available to play against USF after suffering an injury against Tulsa.
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This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: College Football Playoff rankings Week 2: UC Bearcats ranked fifth
