Penn State is 8-0 and rolling right along.

Of course they’ve still got Ohio State and Minnesota on the schedule, but with the playoff committee releasing their first rankings this week, the Nits find themselves at #4 on the list, beating out defending national champion Clemson.

And the committee got it right, in my mind. PSU has been the more impressive team with the more impressive schedule, compiling wins against Michigan and at Iowa en route to their flawless start. They will have to beat a ranked Golden Gophers team and the #1 ranked Buckeyes to reach the Big 10 title game, where they will then have to beat Minny or Iowa again, or perhaps Wisconsin. Those three teams have yet to play each other.

Clemson, on the other hand, is really being dragged down by the ACC. Florida State stinks. Louisville and Miami and Pitt stink. The Tigers’ best win is in the out of conference schedule, a week two, 14-point win against Jimbo Fisher’s Texas A&M squad. Right now the ACC only has one other ranked team besides Clemson, which is #19 Wake Forest. Their inevitable trip to the conference title game will result in an easier opponent than whomever comes out of Big 10 West, since the ACC Coastal is a big fat joke right now.

Let’s put the schedules together and take a look, starting with Clemson:

And then PSU:

Clemson has the tougher non-conference, with South Carolina and TAMU making up for the cupcakes. Penn State has the more difficult Big 10 slate. It’s much easier for them to trip up, and one of PSU or Ohio State is going to knock the other out of the top four anyway. The Tigers have been killing bad teams, while Penn State could have certainly been more convincing against Pittsburgh and Iowa, but whatever, they’re unbeaten and I think the committee got it right. Only thing they should have done is dropped Alabama down, too, since they haven’t played LSU or Auburn yet.

College football is the best.