It's November 5th, 2024, which means all the eyeballs in the United States of American will be glued to the TV tonight to watch a couple of pretty important events play out.
One of those events is the US election -- but this isn't a political blog, so we won't be talking about that.
The other event, however, is pretty important to a college sports blog like HailWV, as the first edition of the 2024 College Football Playoff (CFP) rankings will be released at 7 pm EST, and fans can follow along on ESPN.
Let’s take one final look before the official rankings are released tonight at how we expect the College Football Playoff bracket to shake out after the 10 weeks of college football action so far. To see where we were during our last projection, here are our projections entering last week.
How are these rankings determined?
Each week this season, HailWV will be releasing a prediction for what we expect the CFP field to based on the committee rankings after previous week's action -- it will not necessarily reflect what we expect the rankings themselves to look like each week, but how the field would be seeded. As a reminder, the official process for selecting the College Football Playoff (CFP) field is as follows:
"The CFP Selection Committee ranks the top 25 teams at the end of the season, and the 12 playoff participants consist of the five highest-ranked conference champions, plus the next seven highest-ranked teams. The four highest-ranked conference champions will be seeded one through four and receive a first-round bye. The schools seeded five through eight will host those seeded nine through 12 in first-round games. The quarterfinals and semifinals rotate annually among six bowl games – the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, Vrbo Fiesta Bowl, Capital One Orange Bowl, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl Game presented by Prudential and the Allstate Sugar Bowl."From the CFP website
PROJECTED 12-TEAM CFP FIELD ENTERING WEEK 11
Ranking | Team | Bid Type | Previous Ranking |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | Oregon | Big 10 Champion | 1 |
2 | Georgia | SEC Champion | 2 |
3 | Miami | Big 12 Champion | 3 |
4 | Miami | ACC Champion | 4 |
5 | Ohio State | At-Large | NR |
6 | Texas | At-Large | 5 |
7 | Indiana | At-Large | 7 |
8 | Penn State | At-Large | 6 |
9 | Tennessee | At-Large | NR |
10 | Boise State | Mountain West Champion (G5 Representative) | 9 |
11 | Notre Dame | At-Large | 8 |
12 | SMU | At-Large | NR |
DROPPED OUT: Iowa State, Texas A&M, Pitt
Things shift dramatically headed into the initial CFP poll from our last projection -- partially due to on-field results, and also partially due to lining up projections to stray away from our internal rankings and more with what we expect from the committee.
It's hard not to predict an undefeated Oregon projected as the No. 1 seed as they are currently running the Big 10 with a win over AP Top 5 opponent Ohio State, and to project one-loss Georgia team with the lone blemish to an Alabama that makes nearly everyone's Top 15 as the No. 2 seed.
BYU is still our projected No. 3 and Big 12 Champion, in part ahead of projected No. 4 seed and ACC Champ Miami by virtue of an early-season win against an SMU team that is also in our projected bracket.
We have Ohio State in at No. 5 with their sole loss to No. 1 Oregon, and Texas in at No. 6 with their sole loss to No. 2 Georgia. We also have undefeated Indiana and a one-loss Penn State earning home games as the No. 7 and No. 8 seeds respectively.
Tennessee sits at No. 9, the first one-loss team who's defeat at the hands of a not-so-quality opponent prevents them from earning home-field advantage in the first-round of play. This would see them travel to State College to face one of the toughest environments in the nation.
Boise State slides in as our No. 10 seed, bolstered by the sole loss coming to No. 1 seed Oregon but harmed by their conference's G5 status which contributes to the lack of strong wins otherwise, outside Washington State. This would send them to Indiana for a first-round game between scrappy underdogs in a field amongst numerous blue bloods.
Notre Dame also suffers from the not-so-quality loss after dropping a September battle with Northern Illinois. They earn our No. 11 seed, which would send them to Texas for a high-profile first-round game between large national brands that would certainly have TV executives drooling.
Our last team in is SMU, who we narrowly awarded the No. 12 seed over Alabama -- it was hard to justify giving a two-loss team a spot while numerous one-loss power conference programs still remain, and SMU earned the big by virtue of the ever-debated quality loss. Their sole blemish came against project No. 4 seed BYU. Also contributing is a comparison of the teams against AP Top 25 opponents -- the Crimson Tide are 1-2 in such games, with SMU 2-1.