The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dogs find out tonight where they fall among one-loss club
Other folks have been ranking college football teams since August. The people whose rankings ultimately matter will do so for the first time tonight.
The College Football Playoff selection committee is scheduled to release its initial Top 25 rankings of the season shortly after 9 p.m., during a live show between games of a college basketball doubleheader on ESPN. The 13-member committee, which includes Georgia Tech AD Todd Stansbury, convened Monday in Grapevine, Texas, for the start of two days of deliberations. The group will regather to re-rank teams each of the next five weeks, culminating Dec. 8 with rankings that will set the field for the four-team playoff.
One of the playoff semifinals will be played in Atlanta at the Chickfil-A Peach Bowl. The selection committee’s protocol calls for it to disregard the Associated Press and coaches’ polls and any other polls that began ranking teams before the season started. Even so, it won’t be a surprise if the top four teams in the committee’s initial rankings are the same as in the other major polls this week — in one order or another. This week’s AP poll has LSU No. 1, Alabama No. 2, Ohio State No. 3 and Clemson No. 4. The coaches’ poll has the same top four, all undefeated, but puts them in a different order: Alabama, LSU, Clemson and Ohio State. Unbeaten Penn State is No. 5, and once-beaten Georgia is No. 6 in both the AP and coaches’ polls.
Because the playoff committee’s protocol calls for an emphasis on strength of schedule, LSU’s victories over Florida, Auburn and Texas figure to give it an edge over Alabama in the group’s first rankings. The order in which the committee places those two teams this week doesn’t really matter, though, because they play each other on Saturday.
Justin Fields-quarterbacked Ohio State also likely will get serious consideration for the committee’s No. 1 spot today. Penn State likely will get a serious look for a topfour berth. Georgia will be outside the top four of the committee’s initial rankings. It will be interesting, though, to see the order in which the committee places one-loss teams Georgia, Oregon, Oklahoma and Utah.
Georgia has the worst loss among them, at home to South Carolina, while Oregon’s loss was to Auburn in a season opener on a neutral field, Oklahoma’s loss was at Kansas State and Utah’s was at USC. On the other hand, Georgia has the best wins among those one-loss teams, over Florida and Notre Dame. Wherever Georgia stands in the initial rankings, the Bulldogs will have a path to reach the top four by Dec. 8.
That presumably would require winning their four remaining regular-season games, then beating Alabama or LSU in the SEC Championship game. The playoff will begin Dec. 28 with the semifinals in the Peach and Fiesta bowls. The Nos. 1 and 4 teams in the Dec. 8 rankings will meet in one of the semis, with Nos. 2 and 3 meeting in the other. The national championship game is Jan. 13 in New Orleans.