The first College Football Playoff rankings don’t always look like the final ones. Any ranking before Thanksgiving weekend is simply a snapshot of a moment in time. Take the first-ever CFP rankings in 2014, for instance, which featured Mississippi State as the committee’s first No. 1 team. The Bulldogs did not go on to make the Playoff.
This past Tuesday, the first rankings came out for the 2022 season. Tennessee was No. 1, undefeated TCU ranked behind one-loss (at the time) Alabama, and Georgia sat at No. 3. And then all hell broke loose in college football.
Georgia stepped on Tennessee with a hobnail boot, No. 4 Clemson got smoked by Notre Dame, and Alabama—yes, Alabama—lost its second game of the regular season. There has never been a two-loss team in the CFP. It’s not a committee policy, and that may change by the time the field expands to 12, but for now it’s never happened and it’s not likely to this year, either. Not with the logjam at the top featuring still-undefeated and one-loss teams, and the fact that Bama is unlikely to win the SEC West. There’s no telling what the committee is going to do on Tuesday, but there is a blueprint that sets a clear stage for the rest of the season. It looks a little like ….
