Ohio State moves up to No. 1 in playoff ranking

NCAA rejects Missouri appeal, postseason ban looms for 3 sports

Ohio State jumped LSU to No. 1 in the College Football Playoff rankings with two weeks left to go before selection Sunday.

LSU slipped to second Tuesday night and Clemson remained No. 3 while Georgia held on at four. If playoff history holds form, three of those top four teams will reach the semifinals.

Alabama remained No. 5 in the selection committee’s third rankings, with Utah moving up a spot to No. 6. The Utes are the only Pac-12 team in the top 10 after Oregon dropped eight spots to 14th.

Oklahoma is seventh followed by Minnesota, Baylor and Penn State.

In each of the first five years of the playoff, three of the top four teams in the rankings heading into rivalry weekend reached the semifinals, including the No. 1 team every time.

MISSOURI: The NCAA rejected an appeal by the University of Missouri to limit or overturn sanctions for infractions tied to the case of a former tutor Tuesday, angering school officials and leaving in place postseason bans in three high-profile sports along with other restrictions.

The school had filed a 64-page brief to the NCAA’s appeals committee in March, arguing that the penalties handed down Jan. 31 were contrary to precedent, not supported or appropriate given the nature of the allegations and could have a chilling effect on future NCAA enforcement.

The five-member NCAA infractions appeals committee rejected those assertions, and said in its decision Tuesday that it was “hesitant to overturn a penalty within the appropriate penalty guidelines unless there is a clear indication of arbitrary decision-making.”

“Last night when we received the decision, obviously very disappointed and then shock set in. Now I’m just angry,” athletic director Jim Sterk said at the Sprint Center, where the Missouri men’s basketball team was playing in the consolation game of the Hall of Fame Classic. “I’m angry because of our student-athletes and coaches who were wrongly affected by this decision.”

The Tigers’ basketball programs were not involved in the case.

“The NCAA has proven once again,” Sterk said, “that they cannot effectively serve its members and studentathletes they’re supposed to protect. The decision today is just wrong.”

The case in question dates to 2016, when tutor Yolanda Kumar acknowledged she had violated NCAA rules by doing course work and ensuring athletes in football, baseball and softball passed certain courses. The school immediately launched an investigation and self-imposed many penalties, hoping its proactive approach would curry favor when the NCAA rendered its punishment.

The Tigers were instead hit with postseason bans and scholarship and recruiting restrictions in each sport while the entire athletic department was placed on probation.

MINNESOTA: University of Minnesota football player and four-time cancer survivor Casey O’Brien is facing more surgery this week to remove a spot in a lung. O’Brien was nearly two years cancer-free when he wrote about the surgery update Monday on Twitter.