AP No. 1 Miami is undefeated and hard to deny as a team that deserves top seeding when the College Football Playoff selection committee releases its first set of rankings for the season Tuesday night.
After that, who knows?
Will the 13 people on the panel take a harder look at the other two undefeated teams in — AP No. 3 Utah and No. 5 UCLA — and reward them for somehow avoiding a loss in a season that has produced nothing but upheaval in the upper
reaches of the Associated Press Top 25?
Or will the committee follow the AP voters and place Georgia at No. 2 despite its loss last month to an unranked Auburn team that fell by 30 to Ole Miss just last weekend?
About the only guarantee for this reveal, which doubles as programming for ESPN — the network that's paying roughly $1.3 billion this year to televise the playoff, starting in December — is that somebody will end up unhappy.
This is the first of six weekly rankings for the playoff, culminating on Dec. 6, at which time the 12-team bracket will be announced. If college football fans learned anything from last season, it was that one week's decisions don't necessarily bleed into the next.
For weeks last year, the panel refused to elevate Miami ahead of Notre Dame even though they both had two losses and one of the Irish losses came against the Hurricanes on opening week in August. Then, when the bracket came out, the 'Canes were in and the Irish were out.
This season, those two programs don't face off until November — specifically, this upcoming Saturday, where the result will almost certainly dictate the first big shakeup in the rankings.
Notre Dame is ranked fourth in the AP poll — getting leapfrogged by Utah after a less-than-overwhelming 35-13 win over Navy. The rest of the Irish schedule is ranked 37th (only five spots below Miami's), meaning a second loss on the season could put them behind in some of the metrics the panel says it uses beyond wins and losses.
Another point of interest will be what the panel makes of the Southeastern Conferecen, which comes into Week 10 without a single undefeated team but with 10 teams ranked in the Top 25.
Alabama has lost to Tennessee, Tennessee has lost to Kentucky, Kentucky has lost (badly) to Alabama. Texas has lost to Florida and Oklahoma, but has beaten Ohio State and Ole Miss. Ole Miss beat LSU but also lost to Florida.
The list goes on, but someone in that league might be questioning whether the strength-of-schedule boost the SEC got from booking a ninth conference game starting this season is worth all these losses piling up. At least until the CFP doubles in size to make room.
No. 11 Ohio State has two losses and lost quarterback Julian Sayin, too. The loss last weekend to USC tumbled the Buckeyes out of the AP top 10 for the first time since 2021. They now look like the quintessential definition of a bubble team, with some of this depending on the weight the committee gives to Sayin's absence.
Meanwhile, defending national champion Indiana dropped two spots to AP No. 6 after an overtime win against Minnesota, its third less-than-dominating win in four weeks, sandwiched around a loss to Ohio State.
No. 20 Boise State and No. 22 New Mexico are the two Group of Six teams in the AP Top 25. The CFP's highest-ranked team among the G6 will earn one of 12 playoff spots. Will the committee size up the G6 the same way?
A couple new things for this, the second year of the 12-team bracket:
—Unlike last season, if Notre Dame is anywhere in the top 12 on Dec. 6, the Irish are guaranteed a spot and cannot be ousted by a conference champ ranked ahead of them, the way it happened last year.
—All four Power Four conference champions are guaranteed spots. Last year, automatic bids went to the four highest-ranked conference champions and James Madison of the Sun Belt beat out Duke of the ACC for the last spot.
—The G6 spot goes to the highest ranked team from that group, even if the team didn't win its conference.
—Don't get too comfortable with any of it. ESPN and the CFP apparently have a handshake agreement to expand the playoff to 24 teams beginning next year.
—The playoff starts on campus on Dec. 18-19, then winds through traditional bowl games over New Year's and Jan. 14-15. The title game will be in Las Vegas on Jan. 25.
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