Four days after the release of the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff rankings, chaos has crashed the party.
Thanks to top-four-ranked teams Georgia and Miami losing in Week 11, the second set of rankings promises to be more intriguing—perhaps precedent-setting—than the first.
Miami’s fall from the fast-thinning ranks of the unbeaten felt like it had been coming for a while. The Hurricanes needed furious rallies in consecutive weeks to beat Virginia Tech and Cal, teams currently with 5-5 and 5-4 overall records.
Outgunning Louisville in a 52-45 shootout marked Miami’s third straight game winning a one-score contest. While beating Louisville added an important Top 25 victory to the Hurricanes’ resume, their string of close calls made it clear that a loss in a one-score Atlantic Coast Conference game was probably inevitable.
The 28-23 setback to Georgia Tech on Saturday was predictable enough that the playoff selection committee likely had a contingency plan for the ACC pecking order.
In Tuesday’s initial reveal, SMU was the next-most highly ranked ACC team. At No. 13, despite sporting two Top 25 wins over Louisville and Pitt, the Mustangs were arguably the most egregiously underranked team in the standings.
SMU will likely move into the top 12 by virtue of being the only undefeated ACC team in conference play, thus securing the conference’s automatic bid. But where will it be slotted?
The Mustangs were on a bye in Week 11, but in some ways, they lost as much as Miami did: Pitt’s 24-19 loss to Virginia likely removes a Top 25 win from SMU’s resume.
For SMU to overtake Miami, there needs to be a nine-spot swing. With SMU idle, one of its signature wins losing value, and Boise State winning after being ranked one spot ahead of the Mustangs, the room for Rhett Lashlee’s squad to make a significant jump is limited.
If anything other than Miami’s loss most benefited SMU’s case, it could have been BYU’s loss to rival Utah in the nightcap.
BYU defeated SMU earlier in the season, giving the Mustangs a quality loss. As long as the Cougars remained undefeated, even with the committee’s overall lack of enthusiasm for the Big 12, BYU would be a glass ceiling for SMU.
Utah’s 21-19 win provided a fitting punctuation to an upset-filled Week 11 and likely relegated the Big 12 to fifth place among the five automatic qualifiers in the Playoff field.
That group—which, through this week, had remained steady with Oregon in the Big Ten and Boise State—was otherwise shaken up by Saturday’s results. The SEC now has three teams with one loss in conference play, and Georgia isn’t one of them.
The Bulldogs’ placement in Tuesday’s rankings promises to be the most controversial insight into the committee’s strategy, regardless of where Georgia ranks. The Bulldogs beat Texas head-to-head and were rewarded last week by ranking ahead of the Longhorns. That made sense.
Following that same logic, Georgia should now fall behind Alabama and Ole Miss in the SEC pecking order, which means the Bulldogs could fall out of the top 12 altogether. Texas and Tennessee remain firmly in the field, both 8-1 overall.
Alabama, already in last week’s rankings, now has the same record as Georgia and the head-to-head advantage, which should place the Crimson Tide ahead of the Bulldogs. The same logic applies to Ole Miss, which was on the outside looking in on Nov. 5.
Head-to-head results must mean something, which means Georgia should be out of the bracket for now. That could change when the Bulldogs face Tennessee in Week 12.
In the meantime, sit with the reality that the heavy preseason favorite to steamroll its way back to the national championship could be eliminated from the field altogether by Nov. 16.
