The first College Football Playoff Rankings will be out later today. As you all know, these rankings will change wildly by the time we reach the end of the season. I do find it funny how many people are trying to downplay the importance of these initial rankings. It’s similar to those people who believe the only cool thing to do is to portray the popular thing as not cool.
There is this misnomer out there that the committee changed their methodology on the final rankings weekend in order to push Ohio State into a playoff spot. This couldn’t be more wrong, as the reason Ohio State earned a spot was because they were an undisputed conference champion. If you examine the committee’s own selection process guidelines, championships won is the most important. That was not the case with TCU and Baylor, who can simply blame the Big 12’s stance on co-champions as to why they were eliminated in the end.
But I digress. These rankings matter only to establish that last year’s methodology for determining the playoff participants are still the same for this year. Here is what we should be looking at for these initial rankings.
Clemson
LSU
TCU
Michigan State
Ohio State
Baylor
Alabama
Florida
Notre Dame
Utah
Stanford
Iowa
Oklahoma State
Oklahoma
Memphis
From a rankings standpoint, the top four are pretty straight forward. All are undefeated and are ranked with strength of schedule, strength of record, and game control in mind. For Ohio State and Baylor, their rankings in strength of schedule are significantly behind the top four teams at this point in the season. This will change as the season moves on.
For Alabama, Florida, Notre Dame, Utah and Stanford, their rankings are simply stronger than the next grouping of undefeated teams. Consider Florida, who has played the 6th ranked schedule in the country in terms of strength of schedule. Iowa has played the 63rd toughest while Oklahoma State has the 66th toughest. Basically they have been more impressive verse a tougher schedule than some of the other undefeated teams in the country.
We will see tonight how it all turns out.