Head of College Football Playoff Committee Explains Controversial Georgia Ranking

CFP Committee Chair Warde Manuel weighed in on where the Bulldogs were slotted this week.

Kirby Smart's Georgia Bulldogs were ranked 10th in the latest CFP rankings. / Petre Thomas-Imagn Images

The latest iteration of the College Football Playoff rankings were released on Tuesday evening and yet again there was much debate over the placement of Georgia. The Bulldogs, who rank No. 8 in the AP Top 25 poll, were slotted in at No. 10 despite boasting head-to-head wins over Texas (No. 3) and Tennessee (No. 11).

It sparked a continuation of the discussion that has been running alongside the CFP rankings all season— why is the committee not rewarding Georgia for a difficult schedule that features multiple wins over ranked opponents?

In a conference call immediately after this week's rankings were released,CFP Committee chair Warde Manuel attempted to explain why the 'Dawgs belong where they were slotted on Tuesday (transcript via ESPN).

"Well, obviously Georgia has a very good win at Texas," Manuel said when asked about the gap between Georgia and the Longhorns. "As the committee analyzed the body of work of Texas versus where Georgia is at the present time with two losses, even to top-25 teams, we came out that Texas was still a very strong team deserving of a 3 seed."

"They have a top-5 defense. Quinn Ewers is leading one of the top passing offenses in the country. We just looked at them and thought -- and came out, I should say, with them at 3. It's nothing against Georgia. Georgia is a great team, but they did struggle against Ole Miss at Ole Miss but had a great win this past week against Tennessee."

"We will continue to monitor both teams and see how it goes in the next few weeks."

Manuel was then asked if there was any discussion to move Georgia up to the point where they might host a playoff game based on the criteria used to rank Texas highly, as well as Georgia's very strong strength of schedule in terms of facing ranked opponents.

"The answer is yes," Manuel stated. "We really had a long debate as a committee about Georgia and Mississippi, Miami, Alabama, those teams and really all the teams as we went through. But we really had intense conversations about those teams, and there was a lot of consideration about where teams were ranked and why and a lot of conversation about it."

"It was very, very thorough. We're dealing with very small margins in terms of the different things that we're looking at and comparing, so I can assure you the committee went through it intensely in the last couple of days."

Georgia will wrap up its 2024 season by hosting UMass and Georgia Tech over the next two weeks. The final CFP ranking will come on December 8.

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