All four 6-3 SEC teams are ranked, including Ole Miss, which has a 24-point loss to Florida and a 35-point home loss to Georgia last week. Brian Bradshaw Sevald / Imagn
Indiana coach Curt Cignetti has no problem taking verbal jabs at opponents, particularly those from the Southeastern Conference. Now the 65-year-old defending national championship coach has added another tool to his trolling resume: emoji.
In a cryptic post on his X account, Cignetti wrote on Thursday: “Bad losses don’t count anymore? Are first downs still 10 yards?” After the first question, Cignetti posted six crying emoji, while his second question was followed by three clown emoji.
The passive-aggressive post appeared to reference the latest College Football Playoff rankings in which the Hoosiers (8-1) fell from No. 4 to No. 9 despite not playing last week. One possible target is No. 3 Alabama (7-2), which lost 26-10 to now-No. 8 Tennessee (7-2). The Crimson Tide moved up three spots after beating LSU (6-3) 31-13 on Saturday.
“Alabama’s got four really good wins in the view of the committee — at LSU, at Kentucky, versus South Carolina, and at Mississippi State back in September that was undefeated,” CFP chairman and Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek said.
Mississippi State, which lost quarterback Kamario Taylor to a season-ending injury, is now 4-5 overall and 2-5 in the SEC.
The weekly rankings have frustrated Big Ten coaches in recent weeks, including Cignetti. On his radio show last week, Cignetti said, “The SEC gets a lot of love from ESPN, and all their writers that they don’t technically pay but march to their drum. That’s why you see all these SEC teams up there, you know, some good two-loss teams from the Big Ten not quite as high.
But like I said, it’s all gonna be played out on the field.”
All four 6-3 SEC teams made the latest CFP rankings, including Ole Miss, which has a 24-point loss to Florida and a 35-point home loss to Georgia. The Big Ten has five 6-3 teams, but only Oregon and Ohio State are ranked. Wisconsin, Illinois and Northwestern are unranked. All of Wisconsin and Northwestern’s losses were to teams currently ranked in the CFP’s top 20.
Illinois coach Bret Bielema, whose unranked team beat now-No. 16 Oregon 21-10 as part of a four-game winning streak, also fired a shot at the committee and the SEC.
“If we were in the SEC, we’d probably be a top-15 team,” Bielema said Friday after beating Nebraska 24-13. “We’ve just got to continue to stay on track where we’re at and do a really good job of holding the moment and putting ourselves in a position to be successful.”
Even Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz — a lifelong Major League Baseball fan — criticized ESPN last week for only lightly covering the World Series. As for the rankings show, he said, “I won’t watch that.”
“I better watch out because I’m pro-Fox, right?” Ferentz said. “We’re a Fox conference and several others, but we’re not ESPN, so we probably won’t make the rankings. … I’m not too worried about it.”
Ferentz’s Hawkeyes (7-2) sit at No. 15 in the latest CFP rankings.
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