1st CFP Poll

[MDUte]

1- Georgia
2- Alabama
3- Michigan St
4- Oregon
5- Ohio St
6- Cincinnati
Nice to see the committee gets it right vs the AP Poll. Oklahoma came in at 8 and seeing how they have squeaked by some terrible teams, I think they are properly ranked. I know there’s a lot of debate about Oregon vs Ohio St but I like the fact that the Committee errored on the side of head-to-head matchup as the deciding factor. Lastly, I’m so glad to see Cincinnati not in the top 4. A G5 schedule is simply not worthy of placing a team that high and they’ve shown it recently with struggling to beat teams like Navy. IMO, the Committee got this initial ranking right.

[2008 National Champ]

Alabama at 2 is a joke. There is no reason an undefeated P5 team should be behind a team with a loss, let alone multiple one loss teams. Michigan State should absolutely be #2 and Cincinatti 3.

Oregon lost to 3-5 Stanford. Alabama has a loss and another near loss to 4-4 Florida. Just shows to go that any system without auto bids which relies on a committee will inevitably buy in to brand bias. What is Alabama’s signature win to this point, an overrated Mississippi? Cincinatti’s win over Notre Dame is better and Michigan State beating Michigan is also.

I get so tired of the mentality that losing a game is a better indicator of a team than winning every game. Not to mention a system that allows a select few to lose multiple games before finally moving teams below others who had already accomplished more.

[MDUte]

Plenty of arguments can always be made at the early stages of the CFP rankings. But these will all get worked out as the weeks go on and some of these teams square off against each other. And especially when CCGs are played.

For these reasons, I’m fine with Alabama being ranked where they are. Even though they lost to A&M, I’m not sure there is a team in the country that has enough talent besides Alabama to give Georgia a game. But again, we’ll likely find out the answer to that in the SEC CCG.

Oklahoma is undefeated and I definitely don’t believe they should be ranked any higher than #8. They’ve been on the ropes in most of their games…even Kansas almost beat them. I give them credit for being undefeated and playing a P5 schedule. But they don’t look like a top 4 team to me.

And it’s neat to see Cincinnati ranked as high as they are being G5 and all, but beating Notre Dame and a low level P5 team (Indiana) isn’t enough to be ranked 1 of the Top 4 teams in the country. There’s no way Cinci is better than Georgia, Alabama, Michigan St, Oregon, or Ohio St. And they had the chance to show how dominant they were the past 2 weeks and almost lost to Navy and struggled to finally defeat Tulane.

The committee’s job is to rank the “best teams” in CFB not the “best resumes”. And so again I recognize there are many arguments that can be made in these early weeks of the CFP rankings but I think this 1st ranking looks about right to me. And as the weeks go on, the teams in the mix will ultimately determine who belongs and who doesn’t.

[2008 National Champ]

The committee spokesman goes to great lengths every year to point out that they only evaluate on resume to that point. Your “best team” v “best resume” is a red herring designed to continually keep the desired few in positions they may not have earned yet. Same with the “eye test”.

I’m fine with you or any individual claiming that team A is better than team B because it is those arguments that keep CFB interesting. But the committee has to do better. They ranked Notre Dame at 10 and Texas A&M at 14. Beating #10 should provide more value than losing to #14 in my opinion. The same with Michigan State beating Michigan.

The committee tries to pretend that they tear everything up and start fresh every week but I don’t believe that. How teams are positioned matters because each week is supposed to be “if the season ended today” not “everything will work itself out over the next few weeks”. And it is supposed to be “what have you done” not “what we think you should have done”.

So if last Saturday was the end of the season, I absolutely believe that Michigan State, Cincinatti, Oklahoma and Wake Forest have better resumes by virtue of never losing than Alabama, Ohio State, etc have. That statement may no longer be true next Tuesday but that is not what was supposed to be evaluated in this week’s rankings.