12-team College Football Playoff rankings prediction: Good luck sorting the SEC
We've made it through 11 weeks of the 2024 college football season, and one thing is very clear: the playoff race is completely off the rails.
The races within some of these conferences, particularly the SEC, makes sorting which teams should or shouldn't be in almost impossible. For much of the year, I've felt good about my own projections.
Now, I'm not sure how this is going to go.
2024 College Football Playoff projections after Week 11
Interestingly, only one new team enters my Top-12, but there was lot of shuffling to the rankings.
Rank | Team | Why They Are Here | Previous Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
1. | Oregon | Big Ten Champion | 1. |
2. | Texas | SEC Champion | 8. |
3. | BYU | Big 12 Champion | 4. |
4. | Miami | ACC Champion | 3. |
5. | Ohio State | At-Large | 5. |
6. | Indiana | At-Large | 6. |
7. | Tennessee | At-Large | 7. |
8. | Penn State | At-Large | 9. |
9. | SMU | At-Large | 10. |
10. | Notre Dame | At-Large | 11. |
11. | Alabama | At-Large | NR |
12. | Boise State | At-Large | 12. |
Dropped Out - Georgia (previously 2)
Sorting the SEC will be a headache for the Playoff Committee
After Georgia's 28-10 loss in Oxford, good luck figuring how which SEC teams are making the playoff. The conference is a convoluted mess with seven teams with two or fewer losses and six of those with playoff arguments (no matter what Eli Drinkwitz says for Mizzou).
Texas and Tennessee both have just one loss, so they're in. I've moved Texas back up to the auto-berth, as they've looked to be the better of those two despite Tennessee owning a better win. But after that, things become messy.
Georgia, Alabama, Texas A&M, and Ole Miss all have cases to be made. And of that group, I ultimately have only Alabama in. The Tide beat Georgia head-to-head, so I cannot justify having the Bulldogs but not Alabama when they have the same record.
By that same notion, the Bulldogs lost to Ole Miss. But having Ole Miss in the field is hard to justify when they own a loss to Kentucky, their LSU loss is looking worse, and so many teams without those flaws exist nationally. Texas A&M hasn't played any of this group and won't this season. But while their losses to Notre Dame and South Carolina have aged well, their best wins being Missouri and LSU carries less weight.
So Georgia goes from being my #2 last week to entirely out of the field, and both the Rebels and Aggies stay on the outside looking in for now. I only see a place for one 2-loss team at the moment, and Bama is the most justifiable.
I'm sure SEC fans will look at the likes of Penn State, SMU, Notre Dame, and even undefeated Indiana and say that another 2-loss SEC team deserves an at-large spot more than those squads, and truthfully the Selection Committee may agree. But I do not, not at this point in the year.
We'll see if any of this gets reasonably sorted out in these final weeks of the season, but I've got a feeling it won't.
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