College Football Playoff rankings: The committee sends mixed messages
Push those AP Top 25 rankings aside, the first College Football Playoff rankings of the 2024 season are here!
Of course, the first CFP rankings of this particular season were more anticipated than perhaps any time in the decade prior. The move to the 12-team Playoff this year with five automatic berths for conference champions shakes things up in a big way, giving more games true College Football Playoff implications down the stretch fo the regular season.
However, it's also crucially important where these teams are ranked in the initial Top 25 from the CFP Selection Committee because, well, preconceived biases from the initial rankings can keep coloring perceptions as we move forward to Selection Sunday. So what do the initial rankings and bracket look like? There were some surprises, mostly because I'm not sure the Committee used the same methods from top to bottom to rank these teams.
College Football Playoff Rankings: First Top 25 revealed
- Oregon Ducks
- Ohio State Buckeyes
- Georgia Bulldogs
- Miami Hurricanes
- Texas Longhorns
- Penn State Nittany Lions
- Tennessee Volunteers
- Indiana Hoosiers
- BYU Cougars
- Notre Dame Fighting Irish
- Alabama Crimson Tide
- Boise State Broncos
- SMU Mustangs
- Texas A&M Aggies
- LSU Tigers
- Ole Miss Rebels
- Iowa State Cyclones
- Pittsburgh Panthers
- Kansas State Wildcats
- Colorado Buffaloes
- Washington State Cougars
- Louisville Cardinals
- Clemson Tigers
- Missouri Tigers
- Army Black Knights
Frankly, this is a bit of a hodgepodge in the rankings as the CFP Selection Committee. Ohio State jumps ahead of Georgia from what we saw in the latest AP Top 25 rankings, swapping No. 2 and 3, but why? The Buckeyes lost to Oregon just as the Bulldogs lost to Alabama and both have quality wins as OSU took down Penn State this past week in a tight affair while UGA throttled No. 5-ranked Texas.
The inconsistencies continue, though! If we're talking about quality wins, why is Penn State at No. 6 over teams like Tennessee, Indiana, and BYU, all of whom have wins over teams ranked in the initial CFP Top 25, something that the Nittany Lions don't have to their credit at this point? And if we're talking about losses and quality losses, Notre Dame has the worst loss of any team in the Top 25 save for Kansas State with their upset defeat to Northern Illinois. Yet, they're still a Top 10 team?
Perhaps the most brutal incongruences are outside of the Top 12 teams. Army is pushed down from their spot in the AP Top 25 for a soft schedule. But is losing to the good teams on the schedule more meaningful than beating up worse teams? Because right ahead of the Black Knights are the Clemson Tigers and Missouri Tigers, two teams who are quite short on wins against even projected bowl teams to this point in the season.
But since we're done piling on the committee, let's see what the playoff field would look like with a 12-team bracket based on these first CFP rankings.
First CFP 12-team bracket based on Week 11 rankings
First Four Out: 13 SMU, 14 Texas A&M, 15 LSU, 16 Ole Miss
Because Boise State came in at No. 12 in the first College Football Playoff rankings, there isn't a Top 12 teams who gets snubbed from these proceedings. Having said that, BYU being ranked No. 9 but projected as the Big 12 champion at this point pushes the seeding around a bit. And the team most hurt by that is definitely Ohio State, ranked second but sitting at the No. 5 seed in the bracket because Oregon is projected as the champion.
Of course, we still have four more weeks for this to all sort itself out, not including the now even more important conference championship games. But now that the initial CFP rankings are here, we know the true starting point for where things will progress from here.
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