Updated 2015 bowl projections, with Stanford replacing Baylor in the College Football Playoff

Three quick things:

1. Stanford smothered an OK Washington on Saturday and has a chance to juuust about lock up the Pac-12 North next week at Washington State. Meanwhile, Baylor lost starting quarterback Seth Russell for a period that could include the Bears' tough games. Gotta wait and see how Baylor does without him before moving them back up. Can't really pencil a team in for a one-loss season when it's trotting out an unknown QB, because when has a Playoff team ever done that before?

2. At this point, we can start thinking about how the Playoff committee really evaluates things. The Cardinal should have an excellent schedule by committee metrics, with as many as nine bowl-eligible opponents (seriously, that's the committee's standard for a quality opponent) and perhaps five in the top 25. Alabama could have about 10 and five, while Ohio State's likely to finish a bit behind in both. Clemson, with perhaps only six bowl opponents, could have a tough case for No. 1 if everybody has a loss. I'll put the Tigers down for 13-0 at the moment, but I've got Ohio State losing at Michigan.

3. This is all just guessing based on what we've seen and how things could shake out. Let's have fun thinking about the Playoff we're gonna get to see soon.

Hey, Ohio State fans mad about ranking No. 4 here, your team is pretty good at winning national championships when it ranks No. 4 in the Playoff, right?

The hardest question here is basically, "Who wins the Pac-12 South: UCLA, USC or Utah?" The Trojans now have a tiebreaker edge over the Utes and get the Bruins at home right after those Bruins have to travel to Utah. They're probably a good bit better than their 4-3 record suggests anyway.

Baylor doesn't fall too far, because it's still loaded everywhere and because one Big 12 tiebreaker element (hooray, the Big 12 has tiebreakers now!) kind of comes down to margin of victory, a Bears specialty.

Ole Miss beating Texas A&M probably removes the Aggies from Sugar Bowl contention, while also raising the spectre of a team that lost to Memphis taking the spot. The SEC East champion could also take it, but I think the Gators would enjoy replacing Florida State in the Peach Bowl just fine.

Houston remains my non-power autobid as the AAC's top teams just keep piling up resumes for when they eventually start knocking each other off. Toledo's still in it, as is mayyybe Appalachian State, but that's about it.

Notre Dame's here. Sure.

Leaving us: Illinois, Missouri and Virginia Tech, depriving us of a 3-0 25OT VT-Mizzou bowl.

Joining us: Buffalo, CMU and Washington State, which suddenly has five wins and hosts Colorado.

Elsewhere: Boise State remains up top in the MWC, as one of Utah State's forecasted losses indeed happened. Oklahoma State and Texas A&M reunite, as do TCU and Utah. Texas Tech and WKU strive for 200 points. Hey Rich Rodriguez, remember WVU?

[Update: Switched this up a little bit since publish. Wasn't happy with UCLA in the New Year's Six over Michigan. This has meant Oregon plummeting past teams with excited fans and/or obvious geographic ties.]