By Anthony Caruso III | Publisher
The initial 12-team FBS College Football Playoff rankings have been revealed. It was released on Sunday after the Conference Championship games were played.
The Oregon Ducks were the No. 1 seed. The undefeated team received the first round bye following their 13-0 mark.
The Georgia Bulldogs were the No. 2 seed after they defeated the Texas Longhorns in the Southeastern Conference Football Championship on Saturday. The Bulldogs also received a bye.
The Bulldogs were 11-2 overall.
“One of the things we have to understand is that on the conference side, you can’t control who you play,” Warde Manuel, College Football Playoff Chairperson. “You can’t control how those teams will be playing and how highly ranked they will be or not. What we also value is competition and playing competition at the non-conference, if you schedule that way, or in the conference.
“We look at who these teams play. From my perspective, I think what we did and what we said is those teams, we’re going to look at these last games and use it as a data point to determine how we will rank teams. Those teams, if you look at those games that were played very closely, those teams weren’t penalized in the terminology that people use.”
The committee, according to Manuel, valued “watching the games.”
“We didn’t talk about penalizing the team or not, but in the sense of penalizing the team, we looked at the game they played,” he said. “SMU played a game against Clemson and lost by three. For us, it just came down to watching the games.
“We watched those games together, seeing the outcome of those games and how those teams played. They earned the right to be in those conference championships. We value watching those games and seeing the results and the outcome.”
The Boise State Broncos are the No. 3 seed. They received a third first round bye after defeating the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels in the Mountain West Conference Championship on Friday night.
The Broncos finished with a 12-1 mark. Their only regular season loss came to the Ducks, the top seed.
The final first round bye went to the Arizona State Sun Devils. They were the No. 4 seed.
The Sun Devils defeated the Iowa State Cyclones on Saturday to win the Big 12 Conference Championship game.
Arizona State finished 11-2.
The Texas Longhorns were the fifth seed. The Longhorns finished the regular season with an 11-2 mark.
They will receive an on-campus home game in Austin, Texas.
The Penn State Nittany Lions were the sixth seeded team. The Nittany Lions were also 11-2
Like Texas, they will host an on-campus game.
The next two home playoff games were awarded to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Ohio State Buckeyes. The Fighting Irish received the seventh seed.
The Buckeyes received the eighth seed.
The Fighting Irish finished an 11-1 mark. The Buckeyes were 10-2 overall.
The Tennessee Volunteers will clash with the Ohio State Buckeyes. The Volunteers were 10-2 overall and the ninth seed.
The Indiana Hoosiers made the inaugural College Football Playoff. They are slotted as the 10th seed with an 11-1 record.
The Hoosiers will face in-state competitor Notre Dame at Notre Dame Stadium.
The SMU Mustangs were the 11th seed. They lost to the Clemson Tigers in the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship game in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Despite the loss, the Mustangs close loss to the Tigers and their 11-2 record was good enough to get them in. They’ll face the Nittany Lions in Pennsylvania.
The Clemson Tigers were the last conference champion in. They received the 12th seed after being the final conference champion in as the 16th overall seed.
The 10-3 Tigers will play the Longhorns in Austin, Texas.
The first two teams out were the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Miami (Florida) Hurricanes.
The final debate came down to SMU and Alabama.
“Your debate on television really sums up the debate in the room,” Manuel said. “We looked at the number of wins that Alabama had against ranked opponents. We looked at SMU’s schedule, and they were undefeated in conference. Their losses were to ranked teams. But we also looked at Alabama’s loss to unranked teams.
“And it was quite a debate. I mean, we value strength of schedule. That’s why Alabama, as a three loss team, is ranked ahead of other teams that have two losses.”
Ultimately, it was SMU that they favored.
“It is something that we talk about quite a bit. But in the balance of it, in the way SMU played in that game, losing on the last second field goal, great win by Clemson, great game,” Manuel said. “We just felt that in this particular case, SMU still had the nod at 10 above Alabama.But it’s no disrespect to Alabama’s strength of schedule. It’s merely looking at the entire body of work for both teams.“
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