Monday Tailgate: Lessons learned from Week 11 of college football

Eddie Timanus | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Week 11 Campus Conclusions: Playoff chaos is coming USA Today Sports' George Schroeder looks at lessons learned from Week 11 of the college football season.

The College Football Playoff selection committee says it starts from scratch each time its new weekly evaluations are compiled. It's a good thing, because four of its top 10 teams went down to defeat this weekend.

All this is to say that there's plenty more that can change over the final three weeks of the regular season as the 2015 campaign nears its conclusion.

Here's what else we learned from Week 11:

Don't write off the Pac-12 just yet.

Yes, Saturday was not a good day for the league's top contenders as both Stanford and Utah went down to defeat. It's true that no team with two losses has ever made the playoff. It's also true that the precedent for this is exactly one year.

A whole lot of things would have to break in the Pac-12 champion's favor, but a whole lot of dominoes had to fall a few years ago when twice-beaten LSU got an unexpected shot at the BCS title following the 2007 season. And that, remember, was only a two-team event.

What, no crazy lateral ending this week?

Boise State came close — about three yards short in fact —, but this time New Mexico made the needed tackle to get off the field with the win. There's a reason such endings are rare, and the last month or so of seemingly one a week has been the exception rather than the rule. Of course, we'll all watch next week to see where the next bunch of bananas gets picked, right?

It's really hard to go unbeaten.

Yes, we've learned that before, but it's always worth repeating. Only five remain in the club, and one, Houston, needed a fourth-quarter comeback with its backup quarterback in the game to overtake Memphis. Another, Iowa, held off a stiff challenge from a traditional rival, outlasting Minnesota 40-35.

We all knew it was only possible for one contender to emerge unscathed from the Big 12, and now Oklahoma State is the last one that can manage it.

And finally — this is still just a game.

The news from overseas drove that point home for sure.