The first CFP show tonight on ESPN ranked ND #10.

I didn't make it up or populate the column with my own thoughts...this is what cites and news outlets use to speak to ranked wins.

It may help if you put in context what ranked teams are and are not. Team rankings (especially pre-season and in-season) are not some quantitative rock solid measure of how good a team actually is. They are a running popular opinion (vote) of how good a team is thought to be at that time.

While not a perfect measure by any means, where a team is ranked when you play them does matter...if not how would anyone be able to claim a win over the #1 team, since the popular opinion of the team will change (and their ranking will drop) after you beat them.

We know that football is the ultimate team sport and how good a team actually is, is more than a measure of how much raw talent they have.

Team chemistry, leadership, mental strength, resiliency, stubbornness, pride, momentum, injuries, luck, etc, can all affect how good or bad a team is.

We know FSU is not a good team and if we beat them we will not get credit for beating a ranked team, but we won't be playing the same team that GA Tech did in week 0. Likewise the teams who played ND at the end of 2014, when we were in the midst of losing 5 of our last 6 games, weren't facing the same team that an FSU team that went 13-0 faced in a Top 5 mathup between 6-0 teams that they needed a terrible homer call to save them from losing.

Again, while rankings aren't perfect there is a reason that when the playoff committee parsed over all the data they have, they came out with a top 15 nearly identical to the AP Poll. Until polls go away all together, they will be ingrained in college football and how high the popular opinion of a team was 'when you played them' will have value.

You have to stop treating games as ranked opponents when they completely drop out of the rankings and have 3, 4, 5 losses. But we all differ in what we think is right.

Trust me the CFP committee knows better