The College Football Playoff selection committee will release its first set of in-season rankings on Tuesday night. It’ll be our first chance to see how this particular committee views the teams we’ve been debating and evaluating all season long. This Top 25 — and the 12-team bracket we get when we plug the rankings into the format — is genuinely useful to have.
The first set of rankings is often the hardest to project, because we don’t yet know how the selection committee feels about certain wins and losses. For example, we don’t yet know how the group considers Alabama’s Week 1 loss to Florida State or Notre Dame’s two early-season losses (and whether or not the Irish’s head-to-head loss to Miami will keep them below the ‘Canes, or if the teams have enough separation between the two to keep Notre Dame comfortably ahead).
I think we will surely see Ohio State, Indiana, Texas A&M and Alabama as the committee’s top four teams (in some order). As a reminder, the top four seeds do not need to be conference champions anymore. That rule changed this offseason, so don’t be startled to see multiple teams from the same conference in the top four.
Nicole Auerbach and Joshua Perry discuss Julian Sayin’s near-perfect performance against Penn State and why the sophomore might be the leader in the Heisman Trophy race after Week 10.
I think the committee will keep Ohio State ahead of Indiana because of its consistent dominance and the nonconference win over Texas (that looks better now, thanks to the Longhorns’ four-game winning streak). Ranking Ohio State ahead of Indiana could help make a point about nonconference scheduling as well.
I also predict that the committee keeps an unbeaten Texas A&M (with a nonconference win over Notre Dame) ahead of a one-loss Alabama (with the worst loss of teams in CFP contention) despite the Tide’s string of ranked wins. We’ll see if there’s a drastic difference in ranked wins between the Aggies and Tide once we see the committee’s official Top 25 (because beating teams that were ranked in the AP poll at the time doesn’t matter to the committee), but I expect there will be enough meat on the bone to justify Texas A&M ahead of Alabama. The Aggies also have the country’s No. 1 strength of record, per ESPN (Alabama ranks fifth).
I have Georgia ahead of Ole Miss based on the head-to-head result, but I’m less certain about the ordering of teams below No. 6. I’m leaning unbeaten BYU ahead of one-loss Texas Tech at this point, and most advanced metrics back that up as well. Soon, we’ll have a head-to-head result — the Cougars play the Red Raiders this weekend — but until then I defer to unbeaten BYU while including Texas Tech in the bracket as the final at-large team.
I don’t see a path to two ACC teams right now, not after Miami picked up its second loss (this one coming to an unranked opponent) and Georgia Tech earned its first loss of the year. There aren’t a ton of opportunities for signature-boosting wins in the ACC to make up for that, and if the league continues to cannibalize itself, we’re looking at a one-bid league with one of the Football Bowl Subdivision’s five highest-ranked conference champions.
That’s how Virginia snuck into my bracket; I would not have the ‘Hoos ranked high enough to make the field without the ACC’s automatic qualifier (because I consider the close calls against two teams with losing records concerning enough to offset one ranked win over Louisville). But the Cavaliers would slide up to the No. 11 spot regardless of ranking lower because the rules require us to include five conference champions. The American champion (the fifth-highest-ranked champion) would then slide in at No. 12 despite ranking somewhere in the 20s. That’s why I’ve put Memphis in the field as the 12th seed.
I’m very curious to see what the committee makes of both Oregon and Notre Dame. The Ducks have been considered one of the best teams in the country all season, but they do not have any signature wins to prop up their resume. It’s not their fault Penn State collapsed after that top-10 showdown, but it’s potentially going to be very important for Oregon to pick up two wins from its games against Iowa, USC and Washington to avoid missing the CFP entirely.
The loss to Indiana is a quality loss, but the Ducks have just one win over an FBS team that’s .500 or better (Northwestern) and struggled against two-win Wisconsin last time out. It’s possible that Oregon is lower in the CFP rankings than it is in the AP poll.
SMU, Mississippi State lead top Week 10 showings
Nicole Auerbach and Joshua Perry explain why SMU and Mississippi State are their top performers from Week 10 of college football.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame has been the highest-ranked two-loss team in the AP poll all season. Will it be the same in the eyes of the committee? Or could 7-2 Oklahoma be ranked ahead of the Irish thanks to its two top-25 wins (Michigan and Tennessee — if the Vols are in the committee’s rankings)?
That answer will give Irish fans an idea of how nervous they need to be the rest of the season. If they’re in the bracket now and their two losses are chalked up to really good opponents and/or this Notre Dame team growing as the season went on, then the team will be sitting pretty heading into the final few weeks of the regular season.
A bunch of the teams ahead of the Irish will have to play each other, and the selection committee would be telling Notre Dame that a resume anchored by a win over USC (and with two good losses) is enough to make it into the 12-team field this year. There won’t be a ton in the coming weeks that would change the Irish’s resume, so this would be a stamp of approval for Notre Dame in general.
It’s possible that Notre Dame’s loss to Miami comes into play now that both teams have two losses, but the committee could separate them by enough spots that the head-to-head result doesn’t come into play as a tiebreaker. That’s something else to keep an eye on.
Miami ‘all but eliminated’ from CFP conversation
Joshua Perry and Nicole Auerbach Miami’s ‘collapse’ in the second half of the season, discussing the Hurricanes’ loss to SMU and how their College Football Playoff chances have drastically decreased.
