I can hear it already.
“Georgia is No. 1 in the first College Football Playoff rankings of the season.”
Or maybe it’ll be Ohio State. But one thing is clear: Tennessee should be ranked No. 1 in the College Football Playoff rankings.
The first CFP rankings come out tomorrow, and this first set of rankings is more important than it may seem. The AP poll is tossed to the side and now there will be a new order to these teams.
A team isn’t going to jump another team if both teams win. A team isn’t going to fall below another team if both teams lose. The first week of CFP rankings determines how the rest of the season’s rankings are set up.
Tennessee should be at the very top. This is what the AP voters got wrong. After Tennessee’s 52-49 victory over then-No. 3 Alabama, the Volunteers jumped three spots to No. 3.
Why didn’t Tennessee move up to No. 1? Did the teams ahead of the Vols have a better win at the time?
That depends if you consider Georgia’s Week 1 win over Oregon — a team with a new quarterback and a completely new coaching staff — or Ohio State’s win over then-3-3 Notre Dame to be better wins than Tennessee’s win over No. 3 Alabama.
To this day, the Vols have the best win in all of college football. You might think that Georgia or Ohio State could beat Tennessee on a neutral field, but that’s not how the rankings work. That should be a metric used to split hairs, but there’s no need for that when one of the team’s resumes is far superior to the rest.
If the games matter, Tennessee will be No. 1 tomorrow. Plain and simple.
If you need more convincing that this Tennessee team is deserving, let me give you some more evidence. According to ESPN, Tennessee’s strength of schedule is 19th in the country and its strength of record is No. 1. Georgia and Ohio State are both in the top five for strength of record but neither is in the top 50 for strength of schedule.
Tennessee has, arguably, one of the best offenses we’ve ever seen. The Vols are averaging 49.4 points per game and that’s against the likes of Alabama, LSU and Kentucky. Heading into this week, Kentucky had college football’s longest streak of allowing 24 points or less. Tennessee snapped that 11-game streak by scoring 27 points in the first half alone.
This week, Ohio State struggled to beat Penn State, a team Michigan crushed by 24 points just two weeks ago.
That seems like a good reason to put Tennessee ahead of the Buckeyes. Yet the teams are tied at No. 2 in the AP poll. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense!
It might not factor too much into the rankings but Tennessee has two of the best players in the country in junior wide receiver Jalin Hyatt and redshirt senior quarterback Hendon Hooker. Hyatt is probably the greatest receiver Knoxville has ever seen since he has already broken Tennessee’s record for most receiving touchdowns in a single season and the school’s record for most receiving touchdowns in a single game.
Hyatt broke that second record against Alabama when he hauled in five touchdown passes. Hyatt only had six total receptions in that game and recorded 207 receiving yards.
Hyatt’s signal caller, Hooker, has also had a phenomenal year and should be the frontrunner for the Heisman Trophy. But that’s a discussion for another day.
What more does Tennessee have to prove? It feels like the Vols are being punished for starting the season unranked, but ol’ Rocky Top has proved its worth. If we’re still using preseason rankings to justify keeping Georgia and Ohio State in front, we’re doing it all wrong.
I trust the CFP committee to get this right. Even if the committee doesn’t, this week’s bout between Tennessee and Georgia will settle things once and for all.
But it would be nice to see the games matter. Tennessee’s win over Alabama should be enough justification to put the Vols at No. 1 until they’re beaten or someone else emerges with an even more impressive victory or string of wins.
Up to this point, that just hasn’t happened. So, put Tennessee in its rightful place.
“College Football Roundup” runs every Monday.