SALT LAKE CITY — All the doubters, and there were plenty, scoffed at the notion that Utah has a decent shot to make the College Football Playoff.

Yet, despite the boisterous blowback at the thought, the Utes remain in line for a berth into the 12-team postseason tournament. The playoff committee’s latest poll will be released tonight, with the final selection coming Dec. 7 — one day after the conference championship games.

Last week, Utah was ranked No. 13 in the first poll, a lofty position considering the Utes have suffered conference losses to Texas Tech and BYU. Coming off a bye week, Utah doesn’t deserve to drop any in the new poll.

Expect Utah’s archrival to drop several spots, possibly even below the Utes. BYU, which was ranked seventh in the initial poll, fell flat against No. 8 Texas Tech on Saturday. The Red Raiders, who likely will get a bump, outclassed the Cougars and dropped them from the ranks of the unbeaten.

Using the Associated Press as an indicator, BYU slid four spots to No. 12. The AP poll ranks Texas Tech at No. 8, one spot up from last week, and Utah at 15.

With three weeks remaining in the regular season, Texas Tech is a virtual lock to make the conference championship game. The Cougars can earn the second bid by beating, in order, TCU, Cincinnati and UCF.

“These guys have worked really hard,” BYU coach Kalani Sitake said. “We’re in a really good spot where we can still control our destiny, and the destiny starts with this week.”

As anticipated, in his first public comments since the playoff poll was released, Utah coach Kyle Whittingham on Monday briefly addressed the ranking. The coaching code insists on the one-game-at-time approach.

“Our thinking is really focused on Baylor right now,” Whittingham said. “We just know we don’t have any margin for error; we understand that. I think it was a nice show of respect for our program from the committee to rank us where we’re ranked.”

At 7-2 overall and 4-2 in the Big 12, Utah needs help to play for the conference championship. Power Four champions get the automatic bids, but at-large bids are available.

“We’re still in the hunt and we’re playing some good football right now,” Whittingham said. “I think we’ve had a couple of good outings the last two outings.”

That’s about as far as Whittingham will go in promoting his team — at least for now. Better to leave the politicking to conference commissioners, whose primary job this time of year is to push their respective playoff candidates.

Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark began stumping for the conference to get two teams in the playoff in July during the annual media days, but he needs to up his game. Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey raised the stakes during public remarks on Monday.

“I think there is a real scenario where the SEC is an eight-bid conference,” he said. “I’ve had many conversations with individual selection committee members, and we have discussed how Missouri, Vanderbilt, and even Tennessee simply deserve to be in the playoffs.”

He added: “It’s a no-brainer that the SEC has carved out at least 6-8 spots in the playoffs.”

Nine of the 16 SEC teams are in the latest AP poll, with Texas A&M holding the highest spot at No. 3. The Aggies are followed by, in order, No. 4 Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi.

At 6-3, 3-3 in the SEC, Tennessee has played three ranked conference opponents and lost to all of them. Missouri also has lost all three games against ranked SEC teams.

With wins over Utah and BYU, Texas Tech is the only team to beat two top 15 teams ranked in the playoff poll.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.