The new College Football Playoff rankings are good news for No. 4 Washington, if only because the Huskies already are ahead of No. 5 Michigan and get to play one more game -- and make one more impression -- while the Wolverines stay home. It's hard to believe that the committee would take Ohio State and Michigan ahead of the Big Ten champion, and it's hard to believe that the committee would take Ohio State, Michigan and the Big Ten champion. One damaging factoid from the Michigan résumé: 2-2 on the road, with the wins against Rutgers (2-10) and Michigan State (3-9). You want to schedule eight home games? Don't travel at your own risk.

1. The same can be said for Penn State, which, as ESPN Stats & Information points out, has road wins over Purdue (3-9), Indiana (6-6), and the aforementioned Scarlet Knights. So that raises the question: Which team performed the best on the road this season? Western Michigan is the only team that went 6-0 on the road; Washington and Clemson both went 5-0 on the road, and the Tigers beat Auburn and Florida State, which trumps the Huskies' wins over Utah and Washington State. Alabama and Oklahoma went 4-0; the Sooners' loss at Houston, played at NRG Stadium was neutral-site in name only.

2. Florida head coach Jim McElwain cut short speculation that he might be interested in the Oregon job. Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano, who had six winning seasons at Rutgers, makes a lot of sense. He is a seasoned head coach with a knack for defense, two traits that Oregon could use. He has never coached west of Chicago, but he has a national name and he can hire West Coast assistants. Unlike Schiano, USF head coach Willie Taggart coached for three years as an assistant at Stanford. He built winners at Western Kentucky and USF. Boise State head coach Bryan Harsin checks the geographic boxes and has shown he can win.

3. Bar bet trivia time: Name the five schools that have appeared in all 18 rankings issued by the CFP selection committee over three seasons. If you got Alabama, Clemson, Florida State and Ohio State, you're an attentive fan. But if you named Utah as the fifth team, you're either a die-hard Ute or you need a hobby. Here's what's doubly amazing about that stat. Utah is the only Pac-12 South team that has yet to play in the conference championship game in its six years of existence. The Utes tied for first in 2015, but USC went to the championship game.

4. It's not the ending that Taysom Hill wanted for his college football career, but the sixth-year senior can't say it's not an appropriate one. BYU announced Tuesday that its starting quarterback will miss the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl because of an elbow strain he suffered last weekend against Utah State. Hill suffered four season-ending injuries in his Cougars career, three of them against Utah State. But he did finish as the most prolific rushing quarterback at the pass-happy program. Hill, who is pursuing his MBA at BYU, is one of 12 finalists for the Campbell Trophy, the "Academic Heisman," which will be awarded in New York next week.

5. East Carolina wide receiver Zay Jones has 158 catches this season. That's a lot of catches. In fact, it's an FBS record. Here's context: Jones broke a record set by Freddie Barnes of Bowling Green, who caught 155 passes in 2009 in a 13-game season; East Carolina has played 12 games this season. Here's more context: 12 other Pirates caught a total of 201 passes. Jones never caught fewer than seven passes in any one game. And Jones, like Hill, is a Campbell Trophy finalist. Wow.

6. Just as the Heisman Trophy is usually awarded to the best offensive playmaker, the coach of the year is usually awarded to the coach whose team finished higher above expectations than did any other. That's why Nick Saban gets overlooked. He won it in 2003, when LSU won the BCS title, and in 2008, when Alabama improved from 7-6 to 12-2. And in a season when Mike MacIntyre has taken Colorado to the brink of a Pac-12 title, his shadow might blot out every other candidate. But as my colleague Alex Scarborough wrote this week, it's pretty silly that Saban has won five national titles and two COY awards.

7. Of the many awards that have been started in recent years, one of my favorites is the Broyles Award, given in Little Rock, Arkansas, to the nation's top assistant coach by the Frank and Barbara Broyles Foundation. Assistant coaches don't get enough recognition, but Broyles finalists sure do. The award names five finalists per season, and nine of the past 20 have gone on to become head coaches. This year's finalists include defensive coordinators Don Brown of Michigan and Jim Leavitt of Colorado, both former head coaches; defensive coordinators Jeremy Pruitt of Alabama and Brent Venables of Clemson, both two-time finalists, and offensive coordinator Matt Canada of Pitt.