Ohio State gets top billing in opening College Football Playoff rankings; Indiana, Texas A&M next

The closest thing resembling drama for the first big reveal of this season s College Football Playoff rankings hinged on which undefeated club would receive top billing Answer The defending champions at Ohio State The Buckeyes took the top spot in the first set of rankings Tuesday night followed by Indiana and Texas A M In choosing the two Big Ten teams ahead of Texas A M the -person committee appeared to give less weight to A M s tougher schedule and its - win over tenth-ranked Notre Dame and more to the way the Buckeyes and Hoosiers have mowed down opponents this year with only two games between the two of them decided by less than points I think statistically when we looked at A M defensively they re just lower than both Ohio State and Indiana committee chair Mack Rhoades announced We had to make a hard decision and you re trying to find separators and that was a separator for us Another crew with no losses BYU of the Big was ranked seventh Nos and went to Southeastern Conference teams with one loss each Alabama Georgia and Mississippi All of the top six came from either the Big Ten or SEC a dose of business as usual despite a season that has been anything but predictable This marked the first of six weekly rankings the committee will release this season ending Dec when the final list will set the bracket for the second -team playoff in major college football history That tournament begins Dec - with four games on the campus of seeds No - The top four seeds play winners of those games over the New Year holiday and the title contest is set for Jan at Hard Rock Stadium outside Miami Texas Tech was ranked eighth and Oregon came in at No Rounding out the top were Notre Dame the only club in the Top not from a power conference then Texas and Oklahoma But if the bracket were set in contemporary times the Longhorns and Sooners would miss out - bumped by No Virginia of the ACC and Memphis of the American That s thanks to a rule that places the five best-ranked conference champions into the bracket even if they re not in the top Memphis wasn t among the committee s top but was still the highest ranked leader in a Group of Five conference There is of syllabus plenty of time for teams to make their cases with four more weeks of the regular season then a slate of conference title games set for the first weekend in December If we go back to last year Arizona State wasn t even in the rankings for our first two rankings Rhoades declared of the Sun Devils who won the Big and made the field Again to everybody out there this is the first ranking and still a lot of ball left to be played The final tally in the top The SEC has six teams the Big Ten three the Big two and the ACC none with one independent Among those still holding out hope are teams such as th-ranked Vanderbilt and th-ranked Georgia Tech each of whom spent time in the AP top this season thanks to upsets that turned college football upside down in September and October The first-round matchups based on CFP rankings No Memphis at No Georgia winner vs No Alabama You can almost hear SEC commissioner Greg Sankey current his TV wondering how an unranked group is in here over one of his No Virginia at No Ole Miss winner vs No Texas A M Virginia s only Top meeting this season was against Florida State which does not resemble a Top organization now No Notre Dame at No BYU winner vs No Indiana The Fighting Irish have to hope various of the teams promptly below them like Texas and Oklahoma do not put up impressive wins since they close with Navy Pitt Syracuse and Stanford No Oregon at No Texas Tech winner vs No Ohio State A Booster Bowl pitting teams backed by billionaires Phil Knight Ducks and Cody Campbell Red Raiders Tweaks in this year s bracket The biggest change in the setup of this year s bracket was eliminating the first-round bye for the four best conference champions It would mean that Virginia instead of jumping from a No ranking to a No seed would be seeded th with a road match against Mississippi Rhoades also spent time discussing Oregon which is ranked sixth in the AP poll but ninth in the playoff rankings The Ducks best win this year was a -point accomplishment over Northwestern while its double-overtime win at Penn State early in the season has become less impressive as last year s semifinalist fell apart When we looked at and evaluated Oregon we really looked at the quality of the crew and how they looked on film Rhoades mentioned Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top throughout the season Sign up here and here AP News mobile app AP college football https apnews com hub ap-top- -college-football-poll and https apnews com hub college-football Source