Sports shorts Alabama, Clemson, LSU, Notre Dame top first CFP rankings

Alabama, Clemson, LSU and Notre Dame are the top four teams in the first College Football Playoff rankings of the season.

The 13-member selection committee released the first of its five weekly top 25s before the fourteam field is set for the College Football Playoff semifinals on Dec. 2.

Michigan is fifth, followed by Georgia and Oklahoma.

The top four teams were no surprise. The same four teams are Nos. 1-4 in the latest Associated Press college football poll, except with Notre Dame third and LSU fourth.

Next week’s rankings figure to look a lot different. Four games matching top-20 teams will be played Saturday, including Alabama at LSU.

UCF was the highest ranked team from outside the Power Five conferences at 12th.

If form holds, two schools ranked in the top four this week will go on to play in the semifinals.

Of the 16 teams the committee ranked in the top four of its initial rankings from 201417, half made the playoff. Last season, for the first time, three teams (Georgia, Alabama, Clemson) started in the top four and finished there (Clemson was the only team to be somewhere in the top four in all six rankings from the committee).

In 2015 and ‘16, two teams in the committee’s first four made the playoff. Both of those years, Alabama and Clemson started in the top four and never slipped out. Clemson was No. 1 in every committee top 25 in 2015 and Alabama was top-ranked in all six 2016 rankings.

Among the eight teams over the past four seasons that were part of the initial committee top four but did not make the playoff, only one was unranked on selection Sunday. Texas A&M in 2016 was somewhat of a surprising No. 4, and then proceeded to lose three of its final four games. Auburn (2014), LSU (2015) and Notre Dame (2017) were the other teams to start in the committee’s top four, but wind up not even making a New Year’s Six bowl.

The playoff team that made the longest climb from first committee ranking to final was Ohio State, which started 16th in 2014 and made the semifinals as the fourth seed and won the championship. Oklahoma in 2015 was 15th in the first top 25 and fourth on selection Sunday.

The last two seasons, none of the eventual playoff teams were ranked worse than sixth (Ohio State in 2016) in the committee’s first ranking. Golden Tate is bringing his show to Philadelphia.

The Eagles acquired the 30-year-old wide receiver nicknamed “Showtime” from Detroit for a 2019 thirdround draft pick on Tuesday. Tate has 44 catches for 517 yards and three touchdowns this season.

He joins Alshon Jeffery, Nelson Agholor and Jordan Matthews, giving Carson Wentz another target to go along with tight ends Zach Ertz and Dallas Goedert.

Tate averaged 93 catches, 1,056 yards receiving and five TDs the past four seasons in Detroit. He went to the Pro Bowl after the 2014 season. Tate spent his first four seasons with Seattle, helping the Seahawks win the Super Bowl his last season.

Tate is in the final season of a five-year, $31 million contract. The Eagles would likely receive a compensation pick after the third or fourth round if he leaves in free agency.

WWE has downplayed its upcoming Crown Jewel event in Saudi Arabia as public backlash spreads against its lucrative long-term deal with the kingdom.

Criticism from fans and politicians started because women were excluded from competition in an April event, then shifted and spread after writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

The financials are murky but WWE is expected to make between $20 million and $40 million per event from two Saudi Arabian shows this year under a 10-year deal.

WWE fans have booed each time Crown Jewel is mentioned when a wrestler cuts a promo. The video feed hyping the event was abruptly shut off to the crowd at its first all-female event Sunday to squash unfavorable reaction.

WWE has tried to distance itself from the international outcry over the killing and downplayed its ties to Riyadh.