College Football Playoff Rankings prediction: Oregon, Georgia, Ohio State atop first release of 12-team era

Decision day has finally arrived. No, not that decision. Well, that one too, but the one I’m talking about is the first College Football Playoff Rankings of the 2024 season. The process for the committee is the same as always, but more teams in the rankings will be relevant to the playoff discussion because this season marks the dawn of the 12-team era.

The team I am most curious about on Tuesday is Indiana. We are used to seeing the selection committee deal with non-Power Four teams with gaudy records and terrible schedules; Army fits that mold this season. By Power Four standards, the Hoosiers’ schedule is dreadful. I can’t remember the committee having to evaluate a Power Four team with a strength of schedule ranking near 100 this late in the season, which is a huge negative.

At the same time, however, Indiana has largely dominated its opponents with no wins by fewer than 14 points — and we know the committee does like dominance. The Hoosiers have the highest average scoring margin against FBS opposition this season.

So how the committee balances those things in comparison to the rest of the field will be the biggest thing we learn on Tuesday night.

The top five-ranked conference champions automatically earn a CFP berth with the top four receiving first-round byes. The top seven remaining teams in the rankings will be slotted accordingly as at-large teams.

Before we get going, here are some of the criteria considered by the CFP besides a team’s record:

Conference championships
Head-to-head
Strength of schedule
Games against common opponents
Results against ranked opponents

Thankfully, the committee’s definition of “ranked opponents” is different than the one you are used to hearing. The rankings used for that standard are the previous week’s CFP Rankings. They don’t use rankings at the time the game was played from their own rankings or any other poll.

In fact, the committee specifically forbids the use of any poll that has a preseason starting point, which excludes the AP Top 25 and Coaches Poll. Not only do they not try to mimic those polls, they do not even use them.

Trying to sort out strength of schedule is going to be more of a chore for the committee this season than in the past. Oh, sure, they will have a SOS metric to use, but getting into the details may cause some headaches. Now that the four major conferences each have 16 or more teams, you have teams playing widely diverse schedules within the conference.

For example, in the SEC, Ole Miss is playing Georgia at home and at LSU, a game which it has already lost. It is possible that none of the other conference teams on their schedule finish the season with more than seven total wins. Meanwhile, Georgia has a schedule that has trips to Ole Miss, Texas and Alabama and a home game with Tennessee.

Notice also that “game control” is not listed among the criteria. It never has been, but that term comes out of the mouth of the committee chairman pretty regularly when talking about why a team is ranked where it is. Even if the chairman is not using that term specifically, he finds other ways to describe it.

Also, while scoring margin is not specifically a factor, the committee likes dominance, which is also a result of game control.

In the end, this is a subjective process guided by some objective data. There are 13 committee members and each may value the data points differently than their colleagues.

With all that in mind, here is what I think the rankings will look like this week. It is top heavy with SEC and Big Ten teams, but that is just where the power is in college football. Get used to it because the gap will more likely get bigger over time.

References to “rankings” refer to this week’s AP Top 25, but that is just for curiosity; I am not using it to evaluate the teams. Once the CFP Rankings are released, I will be using those for reference going forward.

Note: This projection is based only on results to this point. It does not reflect the final forecast for the playoff. The complete bowl playoff and bowl projections through the end of the season can be found here.