New College Football Playoff rankings, with only 5 days to go

We're only one weekend of conference championships away from the last College Football Playoff rankings of 2016. So here are the second-to-last ones!

Some of the paths are simple. Alabama and Clemson only need to win one more game each. And Bama's already won 12, something no other Power 5 team has done, so it might not even need to beat Florida; don't tell Nick Saban that. Washington's probably also win-and-in, though the committee hasn't been too impressed with UW's schedule.

Nobody really knows yet how to handle the Big Ten's representative. Either Penn State or Wisconsin will win the conference, but Ohio State's one of the country's best teams.

Two Big Ten teams in? Only Ohio State in? Champ in the Playoff, which would mean OSU falling from No. 2 to No. 5* one week after reaching 11-1 by beating Michigan? The committee explicitly values conference titles, but also explicitly reserves the right to include non-champs. We're about to learn a lot.

Here's the updated College Football Playoff top 25.

Could Colorado sneak into the Playoff with a win over Washington and some help elsewhere? Sure, maybe.

Could Oklahoma or Oklahoma State, with a Big 12 championship but without a win in a 13th game? OU has ranked curiously high at times this year, but I don't see it happening.

It's likely the Playoff race is now down to six teams, with three of them in the Big Ten.

* Everyone remembers TCU falling from No. 3 to No. 6 in 2014, but the Frogs had been No. 5 the previous two weeks anyway, whereas 2016 OSU has been No. 2 for three weeks now and just beat the previous No. 3. This would be a bigger tumble in multiple ways.

There's also other business still to sort out.

The committee also matches up the rest of the New Year's Six bowls. This year, that means the Cotton, Orange, Rose, and Sugar.

The Rose is simple: the top non-Playoff Big Ten team (Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, or Wisconsin) vs. the top non-Playoff Pac-12 team (Colorado, USC, or Washington).

Same for the Sugar with the Big 12 (Oklahoma State-Oklahoma winner) and SEC (Auburn, unless Florida beats Bama).

The Orange pairs the top non-Playoff ACC team (Florida State or Louisville) against the next-highest from among the Big Ten, SEC, and Notre Dame (this year, that basically means another Big Ten team).

The Cotton is left to take the top mid-major conference champion (Western Michigan or the winner of Navy-Temple) and the highest-ranking at-large from any conference (could be yet another Big Ten team).

Here's how it'd go if the season ended before conference title weekend.

Here's how I think it'll turn out.

From this week's bowl projections:

I have Wisconsin winning the Big Ten, Ohio State falling due to its lack of a conference title but staying within the top four, Louisville overtaking Florida State due to Alabama's (presumed) win over Florida devaluing one of FSU's best wins, and so forth.