Ohio St. is No. 1 in 1st CFP rankings
LSU, Alabama, Penn State round out top 4
NEW YORK — Ohio State, LSU, Alabama and Penn State are the top four in the College Football Playoff selection committee’s first rankings of the season.
Next up were defending national champion Clemson, Georgia and Oregon. The 13-member committee will produce four more sets of rankings each Tuesday before the only ones that really count come out on selection Sunday, Dec. 8.
The top four in the selection committee’s initial rankings have never all reached the semifinals in the playoff’s five-year history. Eleven of the 20 teams that started in the top four of the CFP rankings have reached the playoff, but, oddly, never the team ranked third.
Utah was eighth and Oklahoma, the highest ranked team from the Big 12, was ninth. Florida gave the Southeastern Conference four of the top 10 teams.
MINNESOTA: Coach P.J. Fleck has agreed on a contract extension through the 2026 season, including an annual raise of more than 25% from his current salary and an eight-figure buyout for the first year to cover the university if he were to leave. The contract, which is pending final approval by the Board of Regents, will pay Fleck $4.6 million in 2020 with a $50,000 raise scheduled for each season thereafter.
His prior deal from 2017, when he was hired away from Western Michigan, had him making $3.6 million this year. The original contract also called for a $1 million payment to Minnesota per remaining season on the deal if Fleck were to skip out, but now it would cost him $10 million to do so anytime before Dec. 31, 2020.
The Gophers (8-0, 5-0 Big Ten) host sixth-ranked Penn State on Saturday, the first time they’ve been a part of a game with two top15 teams in the Associated Press poll since 2004, when Michigan visited Minnesota.
MARYLAND: Last year the Terrapins took Ohio State into overtime before a failed 2-point conversion resulted in a 52-51 defeat. In the rematch Saturday, the Terrapins (3-6, 1-5 Big Ten) are a 43-point underdog — for several reasons.
No. 3 Ohio State is playing at home, unbeaten and riding a defense that has allowed a total of 42 points in the last seven games.
Maryland, on the other hand, has yielded 164 points during a four-game losing streak.
“We are a work in progress as a program,” first-year coach Mike Locksley conceded Tuesday.
TCU: Graduate transfer quarterback Alex Delton has left TCU’s team after not playing in the past two games.
Coach Gary Patterson acknowledged the departure of Delton during his weekly news conference Tuesday. The transfer from Kansas State was named a team captain at the beginning of the season and started the first two games for the Horned Frogs.
Patterson said Delton obviously wanted to play more. Freshman Max Duggan has started the past six games.
Duggan is dealing with an injured middle finger on his throwing hand sustained in Saturday’s 34-27 loss at Oklahoma State. Michael Collins came in for Duggan and took a hard shot to the midsection on TCU’s last offensive play. INDIANA: Quarterback Michael Penix Jr. will miss the rest of the season with an injured right shoulder.
Penix hurt the joint between the collarbone and sternum during the first half of Saturday’s victory over Northwestern. It’s the same injury Kansas City Chiefs star Tyreek Hill sustained earlier this season.
With Penix headed to surgery Monday, Peyton Ramsey reclaims the starting job he held the last two seasons before losing the job to Penix in August.
Indiana is 6-1 this season in games where Ramsey has seen action. He has three starts and has finished four other games, helping the Hoosiers (7-2, 4-2 Big Ten) post their highest victory total since 2007.