Column: Mississippi State leads the first College Football Playoff rankings
College football’s new four-team playoff was supposed to give other schools a chance to compete with the Southeastern Conference, which won seven of the last eight titles in the Bowl Championship Series.
It didn’t look that way Tuesday when the SEC West division placed three teams in the top four of the inaugural College Football Playoff rankings.
Mississippi State and Atlantic Coast Conference leader Florida State were first and second, followed by Auburn and Mississippi.
If the playoff started today, Mississippi State and Mississippi would play in a semifinal game at the Sugar Bowl and Florida State and Auburn would meet at the Rose Bowl.
Mississippi is the clear winner in the first ranking. The Rebels dropped six positions, to ninth, in the USA Today coaches’ poll after last weekend’s loss at Louisiana State. Early loser: No. 10 Notre Dame, which is sixth in the Associated Press media poll and seventh in the coaches’ poll.
But there will be changes before the final ranking of Dec. 7. For starters, Auburn and Mississippi play each other Saturday.
Oregon is the odd team out for now at No. 5, but is likely to be playoff-bound if it wins out to become a one-loss Pac-12 Conference champion.
Alabama, which suffered its only loss at Mississippi, is No. 6 in the first standings, followed by Texas Christian, Michigan State, Kansas State and Notre Dame.
UCLA checks in at No. 22, the same position Michigan State held last year at this time in the Associated Press standings. The Spartans finished fourth in the final BCS standings en route to winning the Rose Bowl.
The 12-person selection committee will use its final top 25 to select at-large schools for the six major bowl games. It will also grant a major-bowl bid to the highest-ranked champion of the so-called “Group of Five” conferences — Mountain West, Sun Belt, Mid-American, American Athletic and Conference USA.
The school currently in position for that spot is one-loss East Carolina, which debuted at No. 23. Marshall, one of three undefeated major college teams — Mississippi State and Florida State are the others — did not crack the inaugural 25. The Thundering Herd (8-0) is probably being penalized for not playing a single team from a Power 5 conference.
The Pac-12 placed five schools in the top 25: Oregon, No. 12 Arizona, No. 14 Arizona State, No. 17 Utah and UCLA. Each of those Pac-12 teams is ranked higher in the selection committee’s top 25 than it is in the USA Today coaches’ poll.
The selection committee seems to have placed a premium on conference strength and head-to-head matchups. Every team in the top five has defeated a team in the top 10. Mississippi and Oregon, which trail Alabama and Michigan State in the coaches’ poll , have the advantage in the CFP rankings based on head-to-head victories.
The glaring discrepancy is the gap separating one-loss Oregon and one-loss Arizona. The Wildcats defeated the Ducks in Eugene, Ore.
The committee appears to be rewarding Oregon for a stronger nonconference schedule that included a win over Michigan State.
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