Forde-Yard Dash: Key Questions Ahead of First College Football Playoff Rankings

The No. 1 team is locked in, but the selection committee faces tough decisions beyond that for the inaugural top 25 reveal in the expanded 12-team playoff era.

Oregon offensive lineman Iapani Laloulu celebrates a touchdown during a game earlier this season. / Ben Lonergan/The Register-Guard / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football, where Texas A&M can at least afford a couple new defensive analysts to work on tackling after picking up a quarter-million in fine money from South Carolina. First Quarter: Ten Angry Fan Bases.

Second Quarter: The Playoff Rankings Are Back, With Triple the Intrigue

Whether it’s myopia or savvy counterprogramming, the first College Football Playoff selection committee rankings drop Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET, smack dab in the middle of the country deciding its future course. Both results will be contentious.

This is a markedly different playoff than in years past: expanded to 12 teams; with five automatic bids to conference champions and seven at-large selections; four first-round games pitting teams seeded Nos. 5-12 at campus sites, with the top four seeds earning byes; quarterfinals and semifinals at traditional bowl sites; and a national title game way off in the distance on Jan. 20.

It’s going to be a blast. But there may be some fan confusion along the way. The biggest wrinkle to keep in mind is this: the top four seeds will not necessarily be the four highest-ranked teams in the CFP committee’s top 25. They will be the four highest-rated conference champions.

So when the CFP top 25 shows multiple teams from the SEC and/or Big Ten in the top four, understand that they won’t be positioned that way in the bracket. The most likely top-four seeds, at present, are the champions of the Power 4 conferences—the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12. 

The fifth automatic bid goes to the top-ranked conference champion from a fifth conference, in what appears to be a showdown between the Mountain West and American Athletic Conference at this point (but don’t count out Louisiana from the Sun Belt yet).

With that as a backdrop, and The Dash’s current playoff bracket here, let’s tackle some key questions before the ratings drop Tuesday:

How many teams are still in the hunt (11)?

At present, there are 24 teams with two or fewer losses in the power conferences plus add-ons (see below). They are, in all likelihood, competing for 11 spots—four automatic bids and seven at-large selections. The breakdown by league: eight from the SEC; five each from the ACC and Big 12; four from the Big Ten; plus independent Notre Dame and Pac-12 Ultra Lite member Washington State would be in the at-large mix. 

You can subdivide that group into two categories. The A-listers, in alphabetical order: Alabama, BYU, Georgia, Indiana, Miami, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, SMU, Tennessee, Texas. The B-listers: Arizona State, Clemson, Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas State, LSU, Mississippi, Missouri, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Texas A&M, Washington State.

This is, as Rece Davis would say, a fluid situation. Teams could move from A-list to B-list and vice versa in the weeks ahead. (We could even concoct a C-list of teams that have three or more defeats but only two league losses, and thus could sneak into their conference title game. But 24 teams is enough for now.)

The 12th bid, for the top Group of 5 conference winner, currently is a five-team battle: Army, Tulane and Navy of the AAC; Boise State of the MWC; and Louisiana of the Sun Belt.

So the math is this: 24 teams battling for 11 bids; five others battling for one bid. Think how many more fan bases are still dreaming of a playoff run than in years past.

Who is No. 1?

Oregon (12), by a wide margin. That will be the easiest decision the committee has in Week 1. The Ducks are undefeated, with a signature win over Ohio State and another quality win over Boise State. Outside of a one-point game against the Buckeyes, they have dominated their new Big Ten competition—average winning margin in their other five league games is 25.4 points. We probably aren’t talking enough about the Oregon defense, which in conference play leads the Big Ten in points allowed (13.3 per game) and yards allowed (292.2).

If ranking No. 1 is easy, where will the hard decisions happen?

The first one figures to be the ordering of Indiana (13), Ohio State (14) and Texas (15). If a mock bracket places Oregon, Georgia, BYU and Miami in the top four, these three could be in spots Nos. 5, 6 and 7.

This will be the first big laundry test for the committee—do they bow down to tradition, or acknowledge what’s happened this season? The upstart Hoosiers are the lone unbeaten of those three, but have not beaten a currently ranked team. The blueblood Buckeyes and Longhorns each have a loss to a quality team (Ohio State at Oregon, Texas at home to Georgia). Ohio State has the best win of the three, at Penn State. Texas’s best win is at No. 24 Vanderbilt, a remarkable turn of events.

The committee probably will put Ohio State highest of the three, with Texas second and Indiana third. The Dash can make a minor case for the Hoosiers as highest of the three, and a major case for them to be higher than the Longhorns.

Indiana and Ohio State have two common opponents, Nebraska at home and Michigan State on the road. The Hoosiers dominated both of them, winning by a combined 86 points. The Buckeyes dominated one (the Spartans) and nearly lost to the Cornhuskers, winning by a combined 38 points. Combine a better record with more impressive performances against common opponents, and The Dash would rank Indiana ahead of Ohio State. But the strength of schedule counter-argument is legitimate. The laundry argument (traditional disrespect for Indiana) is not legitimate.

Fortunately for the committee, the two can settle it on the field in Columbus on Nov. 23.

Indiana certainly deserves to be ranked ahead of Texas. The Horns’ beatdowns of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Oklahoma in Dallas have lost a lot of currency, given their combined 10–8 record. Texas and Indiana will at least have a common opponent after this weekend, when the Hoosiers play the Wolverines.

The second hard decision could be SMU (16) vs. teams from the SEC (17) and Big Ten (18). This is another laundry/conference affiliation test.

The Mustangs, freshly upgraded to a power conference from the American, are currently positioned to play Miami for the ACC title. They’re 8–1 overall, 5–0 in the league, with a dominant win over No. 23 Pittsburgh, a road win over No. 25 Louisville and a three-point loss to undefeated No. 9 BYU. Assuming SMU is slotted behind Georgia and Texas, where does it land in relation to Tennessee (7–1), Alabama (6–2) and other SEC members?

And how about SMU vs. Penn State? Unlike the Mustangs, the Nittany Lions have not beaten a currently ranked team. Like the Mustangs, they have a loss to a ranked opponent. Does Penn State get a laundry bump?

The Dash presently ranks SMU ahead of Tennessee, Alabama and Penn State. We’ll see if the committee agrees. This will be a significant measuring stick for the ACC in its quest for multiple bids.

How contentious will the annual Notre Dame squabble (19) be?

In a word, very. The lightning-rod Fighting Irish are in the playoff hunt at 7–1, but that one loss is brutal: at home to 4–4 Northern Illinois, currently the ninth-place team in the Mid-American Conference.

We’ll find out how much the worst loss for any contender is held against Notre Dame. The Irish had a couple of quality wins—by 10 points at Texas A&M, and by 37 over Navy—but both lost some luster this past weekend when the Aggies and Midshipmen were upset. What looked like a major showdown with Florida State on Saturday has lost all luster, with the Seminoles a pathetic 1–8. Similarly, a victory in the season-ending rivalry clash with USC wouldn’t help the résumé much, with the Trojans tanking at 4–5. Undefeated Army improbably looms as a quality opponent on Nov. 23.

The longer Texas A&M remains a viable playoff contender, the more important that win will be. The Dash currently has Notre Dame as the last at-large selection in the field.

Can the G5 champion (20) leapfrog into the top four seeds?

First things first, let’s see where the top teams from the G5 land Tuesday. Expect Boise State to be the highest ranked, probably followed by Army. Tulane and Louisiana could factor in as well.

The most likely scenario in which the G5 grabs a top-four spot would be Boise State finishing 12–1, with a three-point loss to Oregon, and the unpredictable Big 12 descending into chaos with a multi-loss champion. (Colorado, anyone? Would that add some juice to the proceedings?) But don’t rule out Army as an agent of chaos, if the Black Knights take down Notre Dame and, say, Tulane to run the table at 12–0. (Their 13th game, the annual Patriotism Party with Navy, is a week after the 12-team bracket is selected and would have no bearing on the playoff, because college football.)  

Also worth remembering that even if the G5 representative to the playoff doesn’t get a top-four seed, that doesn’t mean it has to be No. 12, the last team in. Any of the slots, Nos. 5 to 12, would be available.

So that’s your basic pre-rankings primer. Last thing to keep in mind: this is the first of five installments of the CFP top 25 before the decisive rankings are released on Dec. 8. It’s a window into how the committee has viewed the season to date, but ultimately it barely matters.