Grading the College Football Playoff committee’s first rankings from smart picks to glaring mistakes

It's a good thing that most of the country was focused on a different set of results on Tuesday night, because the College Football Playoff selection committee's first top 25 rankings of the year were ... interesting, to say the least. And that's especially true if you happen to root for a team that doesn't play in the SEC.

Miami, Georgia and Utah at Nos. 1-3 were certainly no surprise. From there, though, things quickly went off the rails, highlighted by two-loss Alabama and Texas vaulting all the way to No. 5 and 7, respectively. All this while Notre Dame and Ohio State fell out of the top 10 entirely, and non-SEC contenders like Texas Tech (No. 15) and Wake Forest (No. 16) got no love at all.

It's hard to overstate just how unexpected a lot of those choices were, and how widely they deviate from the AP poll we'd previously been using as a guide? But is the selection committee onto something here, or are they simply off the reservation? Let's hand out a grade to their first pass a top 25 this season.

What the first College Football Playoff rankings got right

It's hard to quibble with the committee's top three: Miami has looked increasingly wobbly of late (especially on defense), but they're one of three remaining unbeaten teams in the country and have arguably the best player in the country in receiver Malachi Toney. Utah is another one of those unbeatens, but given how underwhelming their schedule has been so far, I can understand why the committee slotted one-loss Georgia ahead of them — the Dawgs' win at Alabama, combined with last weekend's steamrolling of Florida, is more impressive than anything the Utes have done.

I also want to commend the committee for the way it handled both Notre Dame and Ohio State. Both were slotted just on the bubble, leaving them able to play their way in down the stretch but also making clear that they have no more margin for error. And, really, that feels fair: The Irish will have an awfully weak resume if they don't beat Miami this coming Saturday, while the Buckeyes bear the burden of proving that they're still a Playoff-caliber team without Julian Sayin. They deserve to be in the mix, but they don't deserve to be comfortably in the bracket right now.

Unfortunately, that's about the end of anything nice we'd have to say about these initial rankings.

What the first College Football Playoff rankings got very, very wrong

Let us count the ways. We'll start in the top 10, which features numerous head-scratchers. What, exactly, has Indiana done to date that makes them a full four spots more impressive than UCLA? Sure, the Bruins have yet to really play anyone, but wins at Oregon and at home against Wisconsin match up pretty well against Northwestern and Michigan by the committee's own criteria. A loss to Ohio State by mere inches is certainly respectable, but it is still a loss, one in which Sayin didn't play for the final quarter-plus. UCLA has looked more impressive on the whole, even with their backup quarterback — and hey, the Hoosiers might also be without Josh Hoover moving forward.

And then we get to the SEC of it all. Kudos to the committee for rewarding Kentucky, even if the Wildcats have been getting away with a little bit; wins over LSU and South Carolina are still meaningful, and 7-1 is 7-1. But why exactly are we putting Alabama so far above the rest of the two-loss pack? Why are they eight spots above the same Tennessee team that throttled them in Knoxville last month? I don't think the Tide's resume is all that much different from the Vols, or Ole Miss, or LSU, and that's to say nothing about the next bone we have to pick: Texas.

This team just lost consecutive games to Oklahoma and Florida not that long ago! They were thinking about benching Arch Manning! Sure, there's been an upset win over Ole Miss in the interim, but is that lone data point really enough to vault them back to the top of the SEC's second tier? You can't even use head-to-head as an excuse here, because clearly it didn't matter when putting Alabama ahead of Tennessee. Add in the undue respect shown to teams like Oregon and USC, and the way the committee snubbed one-loss Wake Forest, and it's hard to avoid the impression that the size of your brand is more important than what you actually do on the field.

Grading the College Football Playoff selection committee's first bracket

They made their layups, I guess, but beyond that, it's hard to feel great about what the committee put forth on Tuesday night — or what it bodes moving forward. After all this time, it's clear that teams like Alabama and Texas still get a longer leash than everybody else simply by virtue of being themselves, which is exactly the sort of inequality that this new Playoff format was supposed to address.

Ultimately, most of this stuff will be settled on the field. Notre Dame can't have any beef if they don't finally prove it against good teams. BYU will be just fine if it wins the Holy War on Saturday, as will LSU and Ole Miss if they beat Alabama and Georgia, respectively.

What are we supposed to tell a team like Wake, though? It seems pretty clear that, unless they beat Miami in the ACC title game, they'll be on the outside looking in, all while more than enough benefit of the doubt is given elsewhere. That's what I keep coming back to, and that's why I can't give the committee more than a middling grade here.

Grade: C-

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