By EDDIE PELLS AP National Writer
Ohio State received top billing in the first College Football Playoff rankings of the season on Tuesday, followed by Indiana, Texas A&M and Alabama.
The top three head into the final four weeks of the regular season undefeated. Another team with no losses, BYU of the Big 12, was ranked seventh.
At No. 5 was Georgia, followed by Mississippi. All of the top six came from either the Big Ten or the Southeastern Conference – a dose of business as usual despite a season that has been anything but predictable.
This marked the first of six weekly rankings the 12-person playoff committee will release this season, ending Dec. 7, when the final list will set the bracket for college football’s 12-team playoff.
Texas Tech was ranked eighth and Oregon came in at No. 9. Rounding out the top 12 were Notre Dame, Texas and Oklahoma.
But if the bracket were set based on these rankings, the Longhorns and Sooners would miss out – bumped by No. 14 Virginia of the Atlantic Coast Conference and Memphis of the American Athletic Conference thanks to a rule that places the five best-ranked conference champions into the bracket even if they’re not in the top 12.
Every team in the Top 25 came from the Power 4 conferences, so the committee designated Memphis as the top team from the Group of 5.
There is a tweak to the format this year as the committee is using a straight seeding model. The top four teams in the final ranking, regardless of conference championships, will receive a first-round bye.
If the playoff was today, the first-round games would be: No. 12 Memphis at No. 5 Georgia; No. 11 Virginia at No. 6 Mississippi; No. 10 Notre Dame at No. 7 BYU; and No. 9 Oregon at No. 8 Texas Tech.
The ranking of the top three undefeateds was among the most anticipated decisions coming from the committee. They ended up placing them in the same order as voters in this week’s AP Top 25.
It left questions as to how much weight the committee will give to strength of schedule: A&M’s was 18 notches higher than Ohio State’s and 24 higher than Indiana’s.
“We had robust discussion about the three of them,” CFP committee chair Mack Rhoades, the athletic director at Baylor, said on ESPN’s rankings release show Tuesday night regarding the Buckeyes, Hoosiers and Aggies at the top of the board. “Obviously, all three are undefeated. … We really felt like that Ohio State and Indiana were close. When you look at the statistical data, both offensively and defensively, these are two teams that are both in the top five offensively, and in the top five defensively. Both with really good wins.
“… But again, when we looked at tape, and we looked at metrics, we felt that Ohio State was a little bit better up front, on the offensive line. And we thought they were better defensively.”
“We felt like a separator there (having both ahead of A&M) was defensively, and Ohio State and Indiana were better defensively.”
The SEC led the way with nine teams ranked in the Top 25, while the Big Ten had seven, including Oregon, which elicited discussion about their top 10 ranking. The ACC had five and the Big 12 had three.
Oregon was ranked sixth in the latest AP poll, but the Ducks’ best win was a 20-point victory over Northwestern.
“It came up when we talked about Oregon,” Rhoades said in reference to the new straight-seeding model. “When you look at them in the top 10, our lowest ranked in terms of record strength. And so the committee had a lot of conversations – rigorous debate and conversations – about Oregon as a team.
“We’re blessed to have three coaches in the room and looking at the tape. And when you looked at Oregon, they have great players at the skill positions. We felt that they were really good up front, both sides of the ball. Their one loss is to our No. 2 ranked team, in Indiana, and so, again, when we looked and evaluated Oregon, we really looked in terms of quality of team and how they looked on film.”
Despite having two losses, Notre Dame finds itself in position to make the CFP as an at-large team for the second straight season. While the only notable win the Irish have is over No. 19 USC, both their losses came in the closing minute to No. 3 Texas A&M and No. 18 Miami in the first two weeks of the season.
Despite having the same number of losses and the head-to-head win over the Irish, Miami is ranked No. 18 – eight spots lower than Notre Dame after losing to SMU, 26-20 in overtime, last weekend. While the Hurricanes have more notable victories, their losses have put them on the outside of the 12-team field, in what could be a repeat of last year.
“We’re sitting here looking at head to head, we’re looking at common opponents, we’re looking at schedule strength, we’re looking at record strength, we’re looking at all of the analytics,” Rhoades said of the evaluation process. “So, we truly try to look at each team on its own, and its body of work.”
Though Texas and quarterback Arch Manning have looked shaky at times over the course of the season, the Longhorns are ranked No. 11 after a big win against No. 16 Vanderbilt. They also beat Oklahoma, 23-6, last month. Unlike Miami and Notre Dame, that head-to-head win is what is separating Texas and the No. 12 Sooners, both with the same 7-2 record.
Utah is ranked No. 13, with Virginia at No. 14 and Louisville at No. 15. The Cards have a win over Miami but lost to the Cavaliers earlier this season.
Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, Miami, USC, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Washington, Pittsburgh and Tennessee round out the Top 25. The Vols are the only three-loss team in the rankings.
The final CFP rankings will be announced on Dec. 7, the day after conference championship games will be played.
The four first-round games will be played at the home campus of the higher-seeded teams on Dec. 19 and 20. The four quarterfinal games will be played on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 at the Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Texas, the Orange Bowl outside Miami, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.
The two semifinal games will take place at the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona, and the Peach Bowl in Atlanta on Jan. 8 and 9.
The CFP national championship game is scheduled for Jan. 19 at Hard Rock Stadium outside Miami.