This is what happens when you let conjecture rule the day, and refuse to simply look at head-to-head results.
You get the very definition of College Football Playoff contradiction.
What more does No.16 Tennessee (No. 13 in CFP) have to do for the men and women of the CFP selection committee? If curb-stomping No. 9 Alabama (No. 5 in CFP) wasn’t convincing enough to rank the two-loss Vols over the two-loss Tide, maybe punishing No. 7 Kentucky will do it.
Or maybe it won’t.
“We saw the rankings, we saw Kentucky ranked ahead of us,” said Tennessee quarterback George MacIntyre. “If anything, we use it as motivation.”
Translation: we how the CFP used Kentucky to prop Alabama
eight spots higher than Tennessee, so we went and punished Kentucky worse than Alabama did.
Which, of course, moves us one step closer to the nightmare scenario.
There’s a world where Texas, Tennessee and Alabama all win out and finish 10-2. Texas goes to the SEC championship game to play Georgia because it beat Tennessee (there's that pesky head-to-head result thing), and Tennessee never jumps Alabama in the CFP poll.
Then Georgia beats Texas, and the Longhorns fall below Alabama and Tennessee, and Alabama — wait for it — moves into the Top 4 and earns a first-round bye.
With the same record as Tennessee, with the same important wins (Kentucky, LSU) — and with a three-possession loss to the Vols.
That, everyone, is the true insanity of CFP conjecture and contradiction.
So before we reach the point where no one trusts the selection committee no matter the moves, maybe the hardworking men and women can take a long, hard look at head-to-head results when the teams involved have the same records, play in the same conference and have near identical schedules.
Whaddya think, everyone? Sound like a plan?
We’d all like to think they’ll try again Tuesday night to get it right, but invariably we’ll hear about Alabama’s big win over LSU as another reason the Tide is ranked higher than Tennessee. Now that Kentucky no longer works, the bar is moved.
You see how this nonsensical double-talk works? Tennessee plays LSU in two weeks, and even after the Vols beat the Tigers, they’ll still be ranked behind Alabama. The only thing that pushes Tennessee above Alabama before the end of November is another Texas loss.
Texas? Stay with me, everyone.
If you’re going to play in land of conjecture and contradiction, you’re going to get a little dirty. Or in this case, a little confused.
If Texas loses and Tennessee wins out, the Vols have the tiebreaker over Alabama and will play Georgia in the SEC championship game. At that point, heading into the biggest game of the regular season, the CFP selection committee will have to move the Vols ahead of the Tide.
A move that, no doubt, will come with the same controversy as finally using Miami’s head-to-head win over Notre Dame in the last poll of the 2025 season.
So if you’re looking for the moment when the CFP selection committee goes from trying to prove they know football and you don’t, to making an informed opinion based on what happened on the field, it’s more than likely going to take another Texas loss.
They don’t care if everyone watched Tennessee blister Alabama, holding the Tide to 141 total yards before allowing 62 meaningless yards on the last series of the game. Don’t care about the head-to-head result until it decides a spot in the CFP, or it makes them look absolutely foolish.
Even though it already has.
So they’ll move the bar again, and talk about a big Alabama win over LSU — which, in case anyone on that committee needs reminding, has not beaten a single team in their exclusive poll. Meanwhile, the Vols have wins over two Top 10 teams in the poll: Kentucky, and who’s that other team again?
Right, Alabama.
But wait, the Alabama losses are terrific. They lost to Georgia when the Bulldogs got some fortunate officiating breaks, and lost to — wait a second — Tennessee.
Tennessee lost to Top 10 Texas, and blew a 10-point lead late in the fourth quarter to South Carolina. And there’s your rub, everyone.
The committee has decided that blowing a lead on the road in the toughest conference in college football, is more damning than, you know, actually losing a game head-to-head. It’s so stupid, it’s not remotely defensible.
It’s just a load of conjecture and contradiction.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CFP committee ignores reality to keep Alabama ahead of Tennessee
