Other folks have been ranking college football teams since August. The people whose rankings ultimately matter will do so for the first time Tuesday night.
The College Football Playoff selection committee is scheduled to release its initial Top 25 rankings of the season shortly after 9 p.m., during a live show between games of a college basketball doubleheader on ESPN.
The 13-member committee, which includes Georgia Tech athletic director Todd Stansbury and Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin, convened Monday in Grapevine, Texas, for the start of two days of deliberations.
The group will regather to re-rank the teams each of the next five weeks, culminating Dec. 8 with the rankings that will set the field for the four-team playoff. One of the playoff semifinals will be played in Atlanta in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.
The selection committee’s protocol calls for it to disregard the Associated Press and coaches’ polls and any other polls that began ranking teams before the season started. Even so, it won’t be a surprise if the top four teams in the committee’s initial rankings are the same as in the other major polls this week — in one order or another.
This week's AP poll has LSU No. 1, Alabama No. 2, Ohio State No. 3 and Clemson No. 4. The coaches' poll has the same top four teams, all of which are undefeated, but puts them in a different order: No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 LSU, No. 3 Clemson and No. 4 Ohio State. Unbeaten Penn State is No. 5 and once-beaten Georgia No. 6 in both the AP and coaches' polls.
AP poll
Because the playoff committee’s protocol calls for an emphasis on strength of schedule, LSU’s victories over Florida, Auburn and Texas figure to give it an edge over Alabama in the group’s first rankings of the season. The order in which the committee places those two teams this week doesn’t really matter, though, because they play one another in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Saturday.
Justin Fields-quarterbacked Ohio State also likely will get serious consideration for the committee's No. 1 spot Tuesday because of the Buckeyes' dominant performances. Penn State likely will get a serious look for a top-four berth.
Georgia will be outside the top four of the committee’s initial rankings. It will be interesting, though, to see the order in which the committee places one-loss teams Georgia, Oregon, Oklahoma and Utah.
Georgia has the worst loss among those teams, falling at home to South Carolina, while Oregon’s loss was to Auburn in a season opener on a neutral field, Oklahoma’s loss was at Kansas State and Utah’s was at USC. On the other hand, Georgia has the best wins among those one-loss teams, with victories over Florida and Notre Dame.
Wherever Georgia stands in the committee’s initial rankings, the Bulldogs will have a path to reach the top four by Dec. 8. That presumably would require winning their four remaining regular-season games and then beating Alabama or LSU in the SEC Championship game.
The playoff, now in its sixth season, will begin Dec. 28 with the semifinals in the Peach and Fiesta bowls. The Nos. 1 and 4 teams in the Dec. 8 rankings will meet in one of the semis, with the Nos. 2 and 3 teams meeting in the other. The national championship game will be played Jan. 13 in New Orleans.
The selection committee includes six current athletic directors, three retired coaches and four others. It is chaired by Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens.
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