Written by Lorenzo Arguello at SI.com
Halloween is a special day for college football fans this year. It’s the first day of the 2017 season that we get to freak out over the College Football Playoff rankings. We’ll freak out even though we know the rankings will most likely be drastically different by the time the playoff field is set in December. We’ll freak out because [INSERT MY TEAM] is too low. And we’ll freak out because [INSERT MY RIVAL] is too high.
Projecting what the selection committee’s entire Top 25 will look like would be too much fruitless guesswork. Let’s stick with fewer teams here. Based on how the previous three seasons of CFP rankings have gone and what we’ve seen on the field thus far, here’s our best guess for the top six:
1. Georgia
2. Alabama
3. Notre Dame
4. Ohio State
5. Oklahoma
6. Clemson
In order to explain our reasoning for the speculation above and to prepare you for an evening of yelling at your TV about stuff that doesn’t really matter that much—Mississippi State was No. 1 in the first-ever CFP rankings in 2014, remember—we’ve broken down three major themes to keep an eye on when the rankings are released Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.
GEORGIA OR ALABAMA AT NO. 1?
Bama was the preseason No. 1 in every poll. Bama is still No. 1 in every poll. Bama is the college football Death Star. Bama is the corporate behemoth out to destroy your college football ma-and-pa shops. But Bama may well be No. 2 this week.
Georgia has two wins against current AP Top 25 teams, Notre Dame and Mississippi State. Meanwhile, Alabama has zero wins in this category, with its top résumé-building victory coming against a so-so Texas A&M squad that has fallen out of the rankings after suffering its third loss of the season.
Alabama can still beef up its résumé with remaining games against LSU, Mississippi State and Auburn. And of course, barring weirdness of epic proportions, these two teams will meet in the SEC title game with at least one playoff spot on the line, if not merely the pecking order for two spots.
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