For college football fans, the season has really just begun. The first ever college football playoff rankings were released on Tuesday and if you didn’t like the SEC before, you’re really not going to like it now.
Three teams from the SEC cracked the top four while four teams made the top six overall:
- Mississippi St.
- Florida St.
- Auburn
- Mississippi
- Oregon
- Alabama
- TCU
- Michigan St.
- Kansas St.
- Notre Dame
The selection committee consists of 12 members who will ultimately pick the top four teams that will compete in a college football playoff in January.
Jeff Long, the athletic director at Arkansas and committee chairman talked about how difficult the process was compared to previous mock selections.
Photo source: Twitter
“It was extremely difficult, more difficult than any of us had expected having gone through our mock selections before,” Arkansas athletic director and committee chairman Jeff Long said. “There are 18 one-loss teams in FBS at this point in time, and the difference between many of them is very slim.”
Perhaps the biggest surprise in the initial rankings was No. 4 Mississippi. After losing to LSU on Saturday, many thought that Ole Miss would have an uphill climb to make it to the national playoff. But now they appear to still control their own destiny considering that every team below them has at least one loss.
Only Mississippi St. and Florida St. remain undefeated in the top 10.
Don’t think for a second that the rankings won’t change tremendously between now and the end of the season. The SEC will take center stage on several blockbuster matchups that will help shape the playoff bracket in January starting with this weekend’s matchup between Auburn and Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi.
Long said that teams are analyzed on an individual basis regardless of conference.
“We don’t analyze it by conference,” Long said. “We look at those teams and evaluate the teams they played and the success they had, or the failures they had.”
This is the first of seven Top 25 rankings to be released by the committee until Dec. 7 — the day after which all major conference championships have been played.
“Everyone on the selection committee recognized that our rankings will change over the next six weeks,” Long said. “I think that’s important for us to emphasize. We expect our rankings to change over the next six weeks. One week’s rankings won’t influence the next week’s rankings.”
Mississippi State quarterback Dak Prescott is excited seeing his team at the top of the rankings.
It’s cool,” Mississippi State quarterback Dak Prescott said. “That’s something you can never take away from the university or this program. First-ever ranking, first team to be No. 1, so that’s pretty cool for the university.”
On an interesting note, Marshall, who is still undefeated, did not make the Top 25.
“We had a lot of consideration of Marshall,” Long said. “Obviously they are 8-0, but we looked at that, we compared their schedule, who they played to this point and compared against others and we did not think it was worthy of being placed in the top 25 at this time.”
The first college football playoff rankings have set up what will be an incredible finish to the 2014 season. Can’t wait to see how things change week to week.