My Top 25 College Football Teams (at the end of the regular 2016 season)

Get over it, Penn State supporters. Your Nittany Lions did fairly well this year, but they absolutely don't belong in the college football playoffs. In fact, the committee got it exactly right this year. They actually selected the four best teams of the year. I might quibble with the seedings (see my rankings below), but I completely agree with their choice of the top four.

There are many reasons why but the main one is you have to examine a team's performance over the entire season, not just in the last two-thirds like the Penn State advocates are arguing. The top four teams had one loss or less. The next four had at least two losses (an argument against expanding the playoff to eight teams) and one of them had three, for crying out load. The regular season has to mean something and expanding the field to include two- and three-loss teams renders the regular season far less meaningful. And how can you ignore the fact that Penn State lost to Michigan by 39 freaking points? Don't blame the committee for ignoring a conference champion, blame a conference that might think about adjusting the way it choses its champion.

And now for my final rankings for the current regular season. Last week's rank is in parenthesis.
1.  Alabama 13-0 (1)
2.  Ohio State 11-1 (2)
3.  Washington 12-1 (5)
4.  Clemson 12-1 (3)
5.  Michigan 10-2 (4)
6.  Penn State 11-2 (8)
7.  Oklahoma 10-2 (10)
8.  Wisconsin 10-3 (6)
9.  USC 9-3 (9)
10. Florida State 9-3 (11)
11. Colorado 10-3 (7)
12. Western Michigan 13-0 (12)
13. Stanford 9-3 (14)
14. Auburn 8-4 (15)
15. Louisville 9-3 (16)
16. LSU 7-4 (13)
17. West Virginia 10-2 (17)
18. Washington State 8-4 (20)
19. Boise State 10-2 (22)
20. South Florida 10-2 (23)
21. Iowa 8-4 (24)
22. Oklahoma State 9-3 (18)
23. Virginia Tech 9-4 (21)
24. Temple 10-3 (NR)
25. Florida 8-4 (19)
Dropped out: Navy