Last week, three Big 12 teams occupied the 4-5-6 spots in the rankings, making the Big 12 look like an obvious contender to take one of the four spots in college football’s first ever playoff. Then week 7 happened.

Yesterday, West Virginia won at home against Baylor, 41-27, while Oklahoma lost in Manhattan to Kansas State, 31-30. ^[1]The Sooners not only missed an extra point, but a 19-yard field goal in the game’s final minutes. TCU blew out Oklahoma State, 42-9, which only increases the pain associated with how the Horned Frogs blew the Baylor game a week ago. When SEC teams beat up each other, it shows the strength of the conference. When every other conference beats up each other, it shows how the conference isn’t as good as we thought. That’s an extreme version of the narrative, but that does seem to be the thought process for many in the media. After week 7, the Big 12’s big three is now a big four with Kansas State ^[2]Why not West Virginia? Sure, the Mountaineers are 5-2 with only losses to Alabama and Oklahoma, but the SRS so far thinks WVA belongs in a lower tier than the top teams in the conference. joining the mix. All four are in the top 12, but none are in the top 4. More importantly, TCU, the top Big 12 team, ends the season with Kansas, Texas, and Iowa State. It’s going to be tough for TCU to gain a lot of momentum in December with that finish to the schedule, and will TCU look that much different than say, the winner of the Oklahoma/Baylor game? Kansas State could wind up undefeated in the conference, but what will that say about the Big 12 relative to the SEC if KSU’s only loss was to Auburn?

It’s definitely too early to really think through possible scenarios, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. Below are the week 8 ratings. As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs. Some more playoff thoughts about the jump:

The playoff picture is beginning to emerge, although we should always expect the unexpected once we hit November. But for now, the SEC West champ (assuming it wins the SEC Championship Game) is a lock for one spot; assuming Florida State can handle Louisville and then go through the rest of the schedule unscathed, the Seminoles will lock up a second spot.

You might wonder why FSU ranks just 15th in the SRS. Well, the Seminoles barely beat #17 Notre Dame at home last night, so that doesn’t help matters. The worst game on the schedule was a 37-12 win over The Citadel; I won’t argue if you want to exclude that game, which would bump FSU’s rating up to 57.2, putting them just inside the top ten. ^[3]Although if you do that for FSU, you’d want to exclude blowouts against bad teams that hurt all teams, not just FSU’s blowout. The bigger issue is that lack of dominant wins: FSU scored about 60-61 SRS points in its three biggest wins: a 38-20 road win against Syracuse, the 6-point home win against Clemson, and the Notre Dame game. But none of those games were dominant; as a result, FSU still is not an SRS favorite. For a reminder of what a dominant FSU looks like, you can still see the 2013 SRS single game ratings here.

The big takeaway from this week’s SRS ratings is that the SEC West has the top four spots. That’s incredible, of course; Alabama’s 59-0 thrashing of Texas A&M checks in as the single best performance of the year. Considering Auburn’s impossible schedule and the tendency for the Crimson Tide to get every benefit of the doubt, we should assume there’s a great chance the winner of the Iron Bowl winds up in the playoffs even if a team from Mississippi wins the division.

The fourth spot? Right now, the Pac-12 is struggling to get much respect nationally, and for good reason: Oregon is the only team in the top 15 of the SRS, and the Ducks check in at only #8. Perhaps a victim of past success, right now Oregon looks like a team having a down year and yet still the top team in the conference. Stanford, Utah, and the Pac-12 Championship Game are the main threats to a 12-1 season; if the Ducks run that table, they should take the fourth spot.

If not, things open up for the Big 10. The November 8th game between Michigan State and Ohio State in East Lansing will almost certainly be a play-in game for the Big 10 title game; both teams are expected to otherwise go undefeated in Big 10 play, so that game will determine the East champ. A 12-1 Big 10 champ will have a great chance of making the playoffs, but that won’t be the case if Oregon is 12-1, too. That goes double if the Big 10 champ is Michigan State, losers in Eugene back in September. What about an 11-1 Big 12 champ? Good luck figuring all that out. Ditto goes if Notre Dame can finish 11-1. How do we pick among 1-loss Oregon, Ohio State, Kansas State, and Notre Dame? Who knows; fortunately, the odds are we won’t have to make that decision. Right now, it’s still too early to do much other than read the tea leaves, which are shouting “TWO SEC TEAMS.”

Below are the week 7 results. You can view the results from each game this season here. The top three performances in week 7 came from the SEC, with Alabama, Ole Miss, and Missouri getting blowout wins over Texas A&M, Tennessee, and Florida.