Alabama is No. 1 in the College Football Playoff selection committee’s first rankings of the season, unveiled Tuesday night.
The committee ranked Notre Dame No. 2, Clemson No. 3 and Ohio State No. 4, putting those teams and Alabama in the early lead for spots in the four-team playoff.
Georgia was ranked No. 9 by the playoff committee, making the Bulldogs the highest-rated two-loss team. The No. 9 ranking is higher than Georgia’s standing in the Associated Press and coaches polls, which this week have the Bulldogs 13th and 10th, respectively.
Committee chairman Gary Barta, the athletic director at Iowa, said Georgia’s relatively high CFP ranking stemmed from the quality of the teams that have beaten the Bulldogs: No. 1 Alabama and No. 6 Florida.
Georgia “clearly had come up against a very tough schedule, and so we took that in mind,” Barta said on a conference call. “We did note ... some of (Georgia’s) inconsistencies on both sides of the ball, including the quarterback position. But (because of) the quality win over Auburn, the fact they are 5-2 and their only two losses were Alabama and Florida, they landed in that ninth spot based on those things and watching the games.”
Both Alabama and Florida defeated the Bulldogs by double digits.
Just outside the top four in the CFP’s initial rankings is No. 5 Texas A&M, ranked one spot ahead of Florida because of the Aggies’ win over the Gators. Four SEC teams are in the top nine.
Also in the playoff committee’s top 10 are Cincinnati at No. 7, Northwestern at No. 8 and Miami at No. 10. BYU was ranked 14th despite a 9-0 record and a No. 8 spot in both the AP and coaches polls. Barta attributed the committee’s lower ranking of BYU to the Cougars’ schedule.
Three of the top four teams in the CFP’s initial rankings – Alabama, Notre Dame and Ohio State -- are unbeaten, although Ohio State has played half as many games (four) as Notre Dame (eight). Clemson’s only loss was in double overtime at Notre Dame without starting quarterback Trevor Lawrence.
Alabama (7-0) was a clear-cut choice atop the rankings, at least for this week.
“There were just so many things about Alabama that led the committee to put them in that No. 1 spot,” Barta said.
Tuesday’s rankings are a starting point in the CFP’s selection process and were complicated by the uneven number of games teams have played amid the coronavirus pandemic. The 13-member committee will re-rank the teams each of the next four weeks, culminating Dec. 20 with the rankings that will set the field and bracket for the four-team playoff.
The playoff, now in its seventh season, is scheduled to begin Jan. 1 with the semifinals in the Rose and Sugar bowls. The Nos. 1 and 4 teams in the Dec. 20 rankings will meet in one of the semis and the Nos. 2 and 3 teams in the other.
The winners will play in the national championship game, set for Jan. 11 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla.
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