"That won't make it any easier to decide who should be No. 2 on Tuesday night: Indiana, which escaped a 3-6 Penn State team, or Texas A&M, which soundly beat a CFP top 25 team in Mizzou. A deeper dive into the statistics and résumés of both undefeated teams -- plus the context of why the group ranked them No. 2 and No. 3 respectively last week -- will factor into their discussions. It might even be a bigger debate than how far No. 7 BYU should fall this week after a 29-7 loss to No. 8 Texas Tech."
"Why they could be here: Ohio State earned its fourth Big Ten road win of the season on Saturday, albeit against a 2-8 Purdue team that hasn't won a game since Sept. 6 against Southern Illinois. The Buckeyes entered Saturday ranked No. 33 in strength of schedule, according to ESPN Analytics, but No. 1 in Game Control and No. 3 in Strength of Record."
""So it was certainly close [between Ohio State, Indiana and Texas A&M], but when we looked at film, and we're blessed to have committee members and coaches that do a lot of film work, we just felt like Ohio State had a slight edge when we think about offensive line play and then a slight edge defensively," Rhoades said following the first ranking release on Tuesday. "That was really the outcome. Ohio State has some, I'm going to call them explosive players, that probably stood out as well.""
Selection committee members watch games and review film while weighing statistics, résumés, and contextual factors to determine rankings. A tight debate exists for the No. 2 spot between undefeated Indiana, which escaped a 3-6 Penn State team, and Texas A&M, which defeated ranked Missouri. Committee deliberations will factor deeper statistical analysis and prior ranking context and could generate larger debate than BYU's fall after a 29-7 loss to Texas Tech. The committee will reveal its second of six rankings Tuesday night at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN. Ohio State showed metric strengths despite a weaker schedule ranking.
Read at ESPN.com
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