Projecting the new College Football Playoff rankings: How far will Alabama fall?

The College Football Playoff selection committee has its work cut out for it this week.

And that’s not just because it has a new member and a new committee chairman, which throws the whole process for a loop in the middle of the most important month of the season … But I digress.

The selection committee will actually have to make some difficult decisions! It will have to decide how far Alabama should fall after it picked up its second loss — this one coming to Oklahoma at home. The Crimson Tide had been ranked No. 4 overall in each of the last two sets of CFP rankings, which positioned them to land a first-round bye in the projected bracket. The committee was treating Alabama almost as if it didn’t have a loss (to Florida State back in Week 1), ranking the Tide ahead of all of the other one-loss SEC teams and explaining that the committee was very impressed by its four-game stretch of wins over Georgia, Vanderbilt, Missouri and Tennessee (who were all ranked at time, but only three are currently ranked by the committee).

Now that Alabama has a second loss and will be compared to other two-loss teams, I’m curious to see how significant the impact of a bad loss to Florida State will be. It’s the worst loss of any legitimate CFP contender, and I wonder if the committee will take that into account when comparing Alabama (which has one of the best wins in the country, over Georgia) to a team like, say, Notre Dame — which has a less-impressive best win (USC) but better losses (to Texas A&M and Miami).

Joshua Perry and Nicole Auerbach recap Oklahoma’s fantastic defensive display against Alabama, breaking down how Brent Venables’ unit was able to halt Ty Simpson and Co.

And remember, Oklahoma is a two-loss team, too. So, the Sooners will need to be ranked ahead of Alabama. We’ll have to see if the committee keeps the two of them as a package deal and ranks them one spot ahead of the other, or if there’s some separation as I suggest in my projection below. I projected it this way considering that the committee has already shown it likes Oregon despite its lack of a signature win and that it believes Notre Dame has improved from the start of the season (especially on the defensive side of the ball, coupled with an offense that gets rave reviews from the committee). But I wouldn’t be shocked to see Oklahoma and Alabama both behind Oregon and Notre Dame — or both SEC teams ahead of the pair.

I’ve moved Georgia up to No. 3 after its dominant win over Texas. I know the Longhorns will drop in the rankings since they picked up a third loss, but I still expect that to be a high-quality win for the Bulldogs, likely a top-20 win if not a top-15 one. I would also penalize the Aggies a bit after their disastrous first half against South Carolina (and that they needed a 27-point comeback to beat a three-win team). But I’m not sure the committee will do the same, so I could see them keeping Texas A&M in the No. 3 spot and sliding Georgia up to No. 4.