{"id":295357,"date":"2025-11-16T15:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T15:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/295357\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T15:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T15:46:09","slug":"projecting-the-new-college-football-playoff-rankings-how-far-will-alabama-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/295357\/","title":{"rendered":"Projecting the new College Football Playoff rankings: How far will Alabama fall?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The College Football Playoff selection committee has its work cut out for it this week.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 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\u2019t 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).<\/p>\n

Now that Alabama has a second loss and will be compared to other two-loss teams, I\u2019m curious to see how significant the impact of a bad loss to Florida State will be. It\u2019s 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 \u2014 which has a less-impressive best win (USC) but better losses (to Texas A&M and Miami).<\/p>\n

Joshua Perry and Nicole Auerbach recap Oklahoma\u2019s fantastic defensive display against Alabama, breaking down how Brent Venables\u2019 unit was able to halt Ty Simpson and Co.<\/p>\n

And remember, Oklahoma is a two-loss team, too. So, the Sooners will need to be ranked ahead of Alabama. We\u2019ll 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\u2019s 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\u2019t be shocked to see Oklahoma and Alabama both behind Oregon and Notre Dame \u2014 or both SEC teams ahead of the pair.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve 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\u2019m 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. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A&M comes back to beat SC in wild showdown<\/p>\n

Nicole Auerbach and Joshua Perry discuss the chaotic game between Texas A&M and South Carolina, where the Aggies came back from 30-3 down to win and remain undefeated.<\/p>\n

College Football Playoff first-round byes<\/p>\n

1. Ohio State (projected Big Ten champion)\u2028
2. Indiana\u2028
3. Georgia (projected SEC champion)
4. Texas A&M<\/p>\n

CFP on-campus first-round hosts<\/p>\n

5. Texas Tech (projected Big 12 champion)\u2028
6. Ole Miss\u2028
7. Oklahoma\u2028
8. Oregon<\/p>\n

Final teams into the CFP field<\/p>\n

9. Notre Dame\u2028
10. Alabama\u2028
11. Miami (projected ACC champion)\u2028
12. Tulane (projected highest-ranked Group of 5 champion)<\/p>\n

First teams out of CFPBYU (with its win over Utah keeping it ahead of the Utes, who checked in at No. 13 last week)Utah (which stays ahead of Vanderbilt, Miami, etc. \u2014 and Texas, which could drop to No. 14 or lower)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4787.jpeg\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that I\u2019ve got Miami as my No. 11 seed as the ACC champion. This is a weird quirk of how we do in-season projections, because we always slot the highest-ranked team from a conference in as the designated league champion. In this case, it feels a little strange because the Hurricanes do not have the clearest path to reaching the ACC championship game. So, it\u2019s possible Virginia or even Georgia Tech might be more likely to reach the conference championship game and earn the league\u2019s automatic qualifier … even if Miami is ranked ahead of them right now. The \u2018Canes have an outside chance of playing in that game, but their best shot to make the CFP might be as an at-large team.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure which Group of 5 team the selection committee will rank highest, either. Last week, the committee had South Florida at No. 24, the only Group of 5 team in the rankings. We don\u2019t know how close JMU was to being ranked, or how far behind Tulane or North Texas or Navy was. So, the committee may surprise me here. I went with Tulane because it has five wins over FBS teams with .500 or better records, with two of those wins coming over Power 4 teams that the Green Wave scheduled in nonconference play. Tulane also has the strongest strength of schedule and strength of record metrics of the four G5 teams I considered, even better than Navy (after its massive win over USF). I think that those wins can make up for Tulane\u2019s lopsided loss to UTSA (and its lopsided loss to Ole Miss, a team that is all but assured a spot in the CFP). Especially when you consider JMU played just one P4 opponent all season \u2014 and lost to them (Louisville). Navy lost badly to the only P4 team it played (Notre Dame), and North Texas didn\u2019t play any P4 opponents. This seems like an opportunity for the committee to reward Tulane for scheduling \u2014 and winning \u2014 those types of games. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

ACC continues to be the conference of chaos<\/p>\n

Nicole Auerbach and Joshua Perry analyze the ACC results during Week 12, breaking down Virginia\u2019s strong path to the ACC Championship Game, Georgia Tech\u2019s form and Miami\u2019s chance to get an at-large bid to the playoff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The College Football Playoff selection committee has its work cut out for it this week. And that\u2019s not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-295357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}