HOUSTON — College football is now officially in chaos.
With No. 8 Alabama’s win over No. 1 Georgia, No. 7’s Texas domination of No. 18 Oklahoma State, No. 5 Oregon’s loss to No. 3 Washington and No. 4 Florida State's win over No. 14 Louisville, there’s plenty of drama surrounding Sunday’s announcement of the four teams that will make up the College Football Playoff.
No. 2 Michigan, which routed No. 16 Iowa Saturday is a lock to make it, as is No. 3 Washington. The rest of the spots are up for grabs, with Florida State, Texas, Georgia and Alabama all making strong cases to be in.
When will the College Football Rankings be announced?
The announcement of the four teams that make the College Football Playoff and the other New Year's Six bowls will be Sunday, December 3 at 11 a.m. Houston time.
How are the rankings by the College Football Playoff determined?
It starts with the selection committee, which is made up of 13 members. This year, they are:
- Chris Ault – former head football coach and athletic director at the University of Nevada
- Mitch Barnhart – Athletic director at Kentucky
- Boo Corrigan – Athletic director at North Carolina State
- Chet Gladchuk – Athletic director at the Naval Academy
- Jim Grobe – former head football coach at Baylor, Wake Forest and Ohio University
- Mark Harlan - Athletic director at Utah
- Warde Manuel – Athletic director at Michigan
- David Sayler – Athletic director at Miami
- Will Shields – Pro Football Hall of Famer
- Gene Taylor – Athletic director at Kansas State
- Joe Taylor – VP for intercollegiate athletics and community wellness at Virginia Union
- Rod West – Former tight end at Notre Dame
- Kelly Whiteside – Professor at Montclair State University
Here's a link to the College Football Playoff selection committee to learn more about the members.
The committee takes several things into consideration when picking the rankings. They include conference championships, strength of schedule, head-to-head results against common opponents, head-to-head matchups if they happened and more. You can read more specifics about the rankings on the College Football Playoff website.
The process
The committee goes through steps to come up with their rankings.
The first step – each committee member comes up with 30 teams that they think are the best in the country. If three or more committee members pick a team, they stay under consideration.
Next, each members picks who they think are the best six teams in no particular order. The six teams that get the most votes make up the pool for the first ranking step.
Third, each member ranks those teams from one to six, with one being the best. Based on those rankings, teams will get points. Teams ranked No. 1 will get one point. Teams ranked No. 2 will get two points, and so on. The three teams that get the fewest points become the top three seeds.
The fourth step – The committee members will each list the best six remaining teams in no particular order. The three teams that get the most votes will be added to the three top seeds.
Then steps three and four will be repeated until all 25 teams have been seeded.
You can read more about the process for the rankings here.
The top four teams on the final rankings will compete for the national championship. The No. 1 team will meet the No. 4 team and the No. 2 and No. 3 teams face off. Those will be in the Rose Bowl presented by Prudential and the Allstate Sugar Bowl. Both of those games will be January 1.
The winners move on to title game, which will be played Jan. 8 at NRG Stadium in Houston.
