The College Football Playoff committee is swinging for the fences in 2026, making at least three moves they have never tried before. The wildest one has to be Alabama, sitting pretty at No. 3 in the second CFP Rankings released Tuesday night, despite sporting two losses on their record. That is flat out nuts. We are talking about the earliest a two-loss team has ever cracked the committee’s top four.
The Tide’s Baffling Boost and Tennessee’s Snub
You read that right: two losses, and Alabama is still No. 3. And get this: Tennessee, who straight up dominated Alabama head-to-head with a 26-10 victory in Neyland Stadium, is all the way down at No. 8. Both teams are 7-2, yet there is a five-spot gap. Last week it was eight spots, so at least they closed it a little? Not nearly enough if you ask any sane fan who watched those games. The Volunteers even beat top-10 Kentucky by four touchdowns recently, and still, the committee is not moved. Selection committee chairman Hunter Yurachek tried to explain it Tuesday, citing Alabama’s No. 1 record strength and No. 1 schedule strength. He even threw out an old win against Mississippi State, when Kamario Taylor was on their team and they were 4-0, as a “quality win” that factors in. Seriously? A win against a 4-0 Mississippi State team early in the year is the “motivating factor” for ranking them this high? It is wild.
The Committee’s Strange Swings and SEC Obsession
It was not just Alabama stirring the pot, either. Notre Dame pulled off a historic move, jumping from No. 11 to No. 5 after beating previous No. 1 Miami in Week 10. No team in CFP Rankings history has ever made that kind of leap from outside the top 10 into the top five in a single week. But honestly, should Notre Dame have even been outside the top 10 in the first place? And then there is the “stunning drop for idle Indiana.” Yeah, the Hoosiers lost ground during a bye week. How does that even happen? It seems like the committee is clinging tight to this new strength-of-conference data introduced this season, and it is all about the SEC. Nine SEC teams are in the top 25, with seven ranked higher than in this week’s AP poll, and not a single one was ranked lower. Four SEC teams even moved at least three spots higher than their AP ranking. They are already talking about next season’s 24-team CFP, with nine SEC teams in the field and four of the eight first-round byes. The SEC is the undisputed “rankings king,” and it looks like a lot of other teams are paying the price. Boise State, USC, and Miami are among the 10 teams the committee ranked lower than the AP, and guess what? None of them are from the SEC.
Heading into Week 11, the big question remains: Is Alabama really the No. 3 team in the country? Or is the committee giving them way too much love, as the “overrated” tag suggests? We are going to find out what these rankings truly mean on the field.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by CBS Sports.
Leave a Reply