The Ohio State Buckeyes have been ranked No. 1 in the first edition of this season’s College Football Playoff rankings.
Ranking just behind the Buckeyes are the No. 2 Georgia Bulldogs, No. 3 Michigan Wolverines, and No. 4 Florida State Seminoles. With 8-0 undefeated records, all of the teams presently ranked in the top-4.
Michigan’s ranking comes amid the controversy of the ongoing investigation into sign-stealing allegations.
Ranking just outside the top-4 are the No. 5 Washington Huskies, who also sit at 8-0 and are slotted just ahead of the No. 6 Texas Longhorns.
“We took a look at it, the big victories over Penn State and Notre Dame, and they have offensive difference makers,” CFP chair Boo Corrigan said of the Buckeyes on ESPN’s rankings reveal program. ‘We looked at it, Ohio State deserved to be number one.’
The Ohio State Buckeyes are No. 1 in the first release of the College Football Playoff rankings
Following them with the No. 2 ranking are the reigning National Champion Georgia Bulldogs
This season, Ohio State has faced a more difficult schedule than Georgia and has already won two games that rank in the top 15. The Buckeyes defeated No. 11 Penn State and No. 15 Notre Dame.
Georgia has not played a top-25 yet this year and currently ranks 100th in strength of schedule. The Wolverines, at No. 111, are even lower on the list.
The first of six rankings sets the table for a month of scrutiny on the top teams and their performances.
Following the conference championship games on December 3, the final rankings will be made public. These results determine the four-team playoff field, with the national championship game taking place in Houston on January 8 after the semifinals at the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl.
This is the final season of the four-team format before the playoff expands to 12 teams next season.
Right now, four is the magic number, and in the nine playoff seasons past, it has rarely happened that all four of the teams ranked first placed made it to the postseason.
Last year, Tennessee was the committee´s first No. 1, followed by Ohio State, Georgia and Clemson. Just the Buckeyes and Bulldogs advanced to the postseason.
Florida State and Michigan round out the other two teams in the top-4 of the CFP rankings
Overall, 21 of the 36 teams (58 percent) that have appeared in the first CFP rankings of a season have made the playoff.
29 of the 36 teams that advanced to the postseason in the past nine years started in the top six.
The longest climb to the CFP was Ohio State in 2014, when the Buckeyes were 16th in the committee´s first ranking. Oklahoma was No. 15 in the first rankings in 2015 and made the playoff.
The final playoff field has only once been revealed by the CFP initial rankings. That was 2020, the pandemic season, which was far from normal in so many ways.
