Kirk Herbstreit names top-10 college football team on ‘slippery slope’ right now

College football analyst Kirk Herbstreit was joined by Joey Galloway on Monday morning to debrief the weekend of action as part of their weekly YouTube live stream. Midway through their conversation, the two debated the Big Ten in terms of the College Football Playoff picture, with Herbstreit issuing a warning to one of its top teams.

Ohio State is obviously the reigning national champions and have given zero indications through their nine wins this season that they won't repeat in January. Meanwhile, Indiana proved every last doubter wrong and followed up 2024's surprise playoff campaign with 10 straight victories of their own to open the year. That's an easy way to say: Both programs are in immaculate position to make the big dance, assuming they don't totally implode.

However, there's a third Big Ten team earning a benefit of the doubt right now that still has room to slip up and miss on their ultimate postseason goal. That's the Oregon Ducks, who Herbstreit singled out as a team to watch in case of a late-season stumble.

"By the way, let’s not just assume Oregon’s going to keep winning out," Herbstreit said. "I mean, Oregon is on a slippery slope. Yeah, they are not the dominant team that we just thought. You know, you just throw those jerseys out, they just blow everybody out by 40. It’s not that way this year for them as we’ve seen."

Herbstreit says that, in part, because Oregon still has tests to pass, and they don't have that benefit of being undefeated like Indiana and Ohio State. With one loss, they could still very realistically drop a couple of more games.

A home contest against Minnesota is up next and appears fairly winnable, but the Gophers won't bury their heads in the dirt over a little cold and drizzle up in Eugene, so that could be a sneaky difficult win. Then, staying out west, Oregon welcomes a USC squad that's currently surging and could be playing for their College Football Playoff lives in Autzen. Finally, Dan Lanning's group closes out the year at Washington, a solid squad that is certainly capable of pulling off the upset.

At the same time, Oregon can virtually guarantee a College Football Playoff spot with two straight wins, or really, just two out of three wins in their final stretch here. But drop two and the Ducks could be quacking frm the outside of the 12-team field.

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