Projecting the first College Football Playoff rankings: What to do with Texas? Does Wake Forest sneak in?

It’s crunch time for college football. The air has chilled, and the calendar has flipped to November. We’ve got just four weekends left in the regular season.

And we’ve also got the first College Football Playoff rankings coming out. On Tuesday, the selection committee will release its first set of in-season rankings. It’ll be our first chance to see how this particular committee views the teams we’ve been debating and evaluating all season long. This first Top 25 — and the 12-team bracket we get when we plug the rankings into the format — is genuinely useful to have.

The first set of rankings is often the hardest to project, because we don’t yet know how the selection committee feels about certain wins and losses. For example, we don’t know if committee members will keep BYU ahead of Notre Dame because the Cougars beat the Irish in Provo a few weeks ago. AP voters are ignoring that head-to-head result now that BYU lost to UCF. But the committee might consider the Cougars and Irish close enough to one another to require the use of the head-to-head result as a tiebreaker. I, personally, think the committee will keep BYU ahead of Notre Dame for this reason, since both are one-loss teams (and BYU’s win over the Irish is far better than Notre Dame’s best win).

I expect we’ll see Miami, Georgia and Utah all ranked in the top four. With so few undefeated teams left and the way Miami and Utah have dominated most (but not all) of their competition, it seems quite likely they’ll be high. Georgia is playing like one of the best teams in the country and should be able to overcome its bad loss to unranked Auburn thanks to its very good win over Alabama. (If Florida sneaks into the committee’s Top 25, that will give the Bulldogs as second top-25 win, which could also help.)

I’ll be curious to see how high the highest-ranked Big Ten team is. In my projection, I’ve got undefeated UCLA at No. 6, one-loss Indiana at No. 7 and two-loss Ohio State at No. 10. The Buckeyes have to stay behind Texas, since they lost to the Longhorns earlier this season, but the other two teams could be in a variety of spots. UCLA’s strength of schedule is far lower than a lot of other CFP contenders, but the Bruins do rank third nationally in strength of record (which reflects the chance that an average top-25 team would have team's record or better, given the schedule.) Indiana has eked out a number of wins with an unimpressive offense; I’ll be curious to see if the Hoosiers get dinged for that.

Takeaways from College Football Week 9: USC wins big, Indiana finds their way yet again

College football is unpredictable and delightful, which is why we live for what happens on Saturdays.

• Nicole Auerbach,

The committee is going to have its hands full with the two- and three-loss SEC teams this year. Even as we sit here in early November, it’s hard to sift through the non-Georgia SEC teams and figure out the correct pecking order. Some have better wins than others but worse losses. When do the head-to-head results come into play? I think the committee will keep Kentucky ahead of Alabama despite a four-touchdown loss to the Tide because it can say that the Wildcats’ one loss puts them in a different grouping of teams than the two-loss team grouping. (Yes, they can and totally do draw arbitrary lines like this to justify ignoring a head-to-head result when they want to. See: Notre Dame ahead of Miami most of last year.)

For now, I expect the committee to give the nod to Texas on the strength of its wins over Ohio State and Ole Miss, making the Longhorns the top two-loss team. That also keeps Texas above both the Buckeyes and Rebels. I have Ole Miss on the outside looking in for now …

… because I’ve got Wake Forest as my last team into the field as an at-large. The Demon Deacons have been one of the few reliably good road teams this season, with four road wins against Power 4 opponents. They’ve been dominant against all competition over the past month, and their only loss is to the projected No. 1 team in the country. If the committee ends up putting a two-loss Alabama or two-loss Ole Miss in over one-loss Wake Forest in the first set of rankings, Wake fans (and fans of other ACC teams) have every right to be upset. Brand bias — or even just defaulting to giving significantly more credit to the rigors of an SEC schedule — would certainly be coming into play.

My hope is that the committee is thoroughly watching and evaluating teams in the Big 12 and ACC this season — and that it will give them their due. Wake Forest can only play the schedule it is given, and it’s done a remarkable job against it. That’s not to say an SEC team may not leapfrog the Deacs down the road if it stacks up more quality wins to offset its two or three losses. But at this point, Wake Forest should absolutely be ranked high enough to be in the first 12-team bracket we get when we plug the rankings in.

College Football Playoff first-round byes

1. Miami (projected ACC champion)
2. Georgia (projected SEC champion)
3. Utah (projected Big 12 champion)
4. BYU

CFP on-campus first-round hosts

5. Notre Dame
6. UCLA (projected Big Ten champion)
7. Indiana
8. Kentucky

Final teams into the CFP field

9. Texas
10. Ohio State
11. Wake Forest
12. Boise State (projected highest-ranked Group of 5 champion)

First teams out of CFP

Alabama

• Best win: at Kentucky. Likely just one other ranked win
• Close loss to my projected No. 1 team, lopsided loss to top-20 team

Ole Miss

• Best win: vs. LSU. Likely just one other ranked win
• One close loss to my projected No. 9 seed, but lopsided loss to unranked team

Nicole’s top questions for the actual selection committee:

Where is Notre Dame in the initial rankings? Are the Irish behind BYU? And at what ranking? This should give us a better sense of whether Notre Dame could weather a second loss (to Miami next weekend) and have a shot to stay within the committee’s top 12.

How does the committee evaluate Texas’ resume? It’s the most confusing resume among the CFP contenders, in my mind. The Longhorns have two of the better wins in the sport so far this season (over Texas and Ole Miss), which could also help keep them ahead of fellow CFP contenders if head-to-head results are used as tiebreakers. But Texas also has an inexplicable loss to a bad Oklahoma team and a loss to Florida that likely will depreciate by the end of the season (and end with the Gators not considered a top-25 opponent).

Is there a clear path for a multi-bid Big 12? There should be. What about a multi-bid ACC? Keep a close eye on which teams from those leagues are ranked — and where. Though I’ve projected Wake Forest into the field in the first rankings, I do not know if the committee will do the same thing (yet). The Demon Deacons do not have any wins over currently ranked teams, but they played the No. 1 team in the country quite well, have four road wins against Power 4 teams and have been dominant in every game they’ve played over the past month.

What will the committee say about the injury to Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin? Will they ignore what they’ve seen from the first half of the season with Sayin at quarterback and only evaluate what the Buckeyes look like from Week 9 onward — because that would be the roster/offense that would be playing in the CFP?