Playoff Rankings Reaction: Alabama at #5? Ohio State & Notre Dame get dropped + Why it Matters

College football is a race. It's a race to those 12 spots. The top 25 that they gave us is the starting grid. Of course, it's going to change. The teams are going to play. But the starting grid matters. Um, what? Even Alabama fans are texting me, LOL. When the number one team in the nation comes up to South Bend and they play in your stadium, you have to win. Hey, welcome into the program. It is the Joel Clashaw. I'm Joel Clat. This show is brought to you by Hilton. Hilton for the stay. And we thank them for their support, as always. Huge episode. Here we go. We finally got playoff rankings. The committee gave us whatever they give us. And we get to now break it all down and react to it. I mean, we kind of wait all year for this, right? I mean, this is the month that we finally get to see like, "Whoa, what do we get? What is going to happen in this last month of the season?" And on Tuesday night, the college football playoff rankings committee gave us that. So we'll get into that. And let me start with this. There's obviously things that a lot of people are going to disagree with. Some of them are going to agree with them. You know, it's going to be all over the map. So what I first want to do is just kind of show you the top 25 as the committee gave it to us. And then I'm going to get into a lot of my thoughts of what we got. Okay, so what we got was Boise at 25. You see SC in there at 20. Florida's in there. Obviously, South Carolina dipped in 21. I was down at 19. Wake is at 16. I thought that was interesting. LSU, I thought they'd be a little bit higher there at 14. Tennessee at 13. Ohio State at 12. Obviously a lot of conversation about them. Noter Dame. That was a big one at 11. And then you can kind of see the top five. Bama, Indiana, Utah, three, Georgia, and Miami. So there's the top 25. Okay, so now what do we think of that? And what do we think of the way that this committee is valuing and observing college football here this year in 2026? Let me start with this. I think that the committee has an impossible task. So let me first by start by defending the committee. This is impossible to actually put together a top 25 that everyone can agree with and get behind. It's just not going to happen. There's way too many opinions and biases out there. Like we understand that. I think that we all understand that. So I don't envy the committee. I would never want to be in that committee room. I have gone through the mock process down there in Texas. I don't love their process. There's a lot of things that I don't love about it. But I don't envy the individuals in that room. And I do believe that they're trying their best to follow protocol and rank teams the way that they see them. No one's down there. I don't believe with a giant agenda. I don't believe that that's the case. I really don't. The problem is is that they have been giving an impossible task. So it's not the folks in that room that are the problem. It's the entire exercise. Their tasks with just building a house with no blueprint. Because we refuse as college football, and the powers that be to give them set criteria or even the criteria that we want them to value over other criteria. So what you have then is these respected folks in the room. And all of them are respected. I know a lot of them. Really good folks in that room. And smart football, people, and so on. But they're left to their own accord to rank teams based on any criteria they want. So what you see generally, and we've seen this all the way back to 2014 when we started this exercise in the Playoff era, is that you see certain criteria used at certain points and other criteria used at others. So you can see record has an influence, obviously, who you beat has an influence, sometimes who you lost to, your strength of schedule. That's been more of a common theme. In particular, this year, we heard a lot about strength of schedule. Your personnel, who's injured? Who's not injured? That obviously played a factor in this top 25. And sometimes we just say, the film, you know, you turn it on and we just thought as, you know, the football people in the room thought that this team was better than that team. So there's all these different criteria and none of them are valued over any other criteria. Well, that's impossible. So good people in that room. Trustworthy people in that room. But that doesn't make up for the fact that the process is broken. I think that we all can kind of agree on that. We all can agree on that. Well, what's one of the things that is broken in the process? Well, the fact that there's only 13 inputs, that there's only 13 individuals that have an opinion on something that is so important in college football. In fact, the most important thing in college football. That's wild. That's wild. I know not everybody has like a math background or a statistics background. You know, some of us, some of you went to college, some of you didn't go to college. But we all kind of understand numbers, right? I mean, we have to balance our budgets. We've got to pay bills. We've got to do all those things at home. So you kind of understand numbers. And you understand when something is an outlier. You know, you're going through your personal budget. And you know the month that you take a vacation. And you're like, well, our expenditures that month, that's an outlier because we went on vacation. And you understand that. So you don't base your entire yearly budget based on the amount of money you spent in the month that you went on vacation. Why? It's an outlier. Okay, well, I would argue that what they gave us on Tuesday night is about as big of an outlier as you can possibly get in a top 25. I don't think that you could put 50 committees together. And they would produce something that is this wild. And I know that there's just a few things that I have like the majority of my issues with. But this is an outlier, which begs the question, where's the statistical variance? Where are the extra outputs? Because what do we do in stats? Any of us took stats? What do we do? When we get a body of data and we're supposed to evaluate it and try to create some a bigger value of data that represents all this underlying data, what do we do with that data? Just in statistics, we throw out the edges and then evaluate the middle. It's like a bell curve. Everyone kind of understands this. As much as you thought back in high school, you're like, "Hey, Mr. Smith, I will never use this in my life." Well, guess what? You're about to right here on the Joel Clutch show. You understand bell curves because you've got low edges on one side. You've got low edges on the other and then the bulk of the data in the middle. It's a bell curve. Well, this top 25 is on the edge. It's on the edge. 50 committees could put together a top 25. And this one would be one of the top 25s on the edge. The very outskirts. And yet, it's the one that we're going to use to represent all of college football and crown a champion and move forward in the season. That's wild. We have to increase the number of inputs into this data set. That's, so again, process. That's not their fault. They're doing the best they can with the criteria that they're given. And do I agree with this committee on what they gave us? No, probably not. But is it impossible for them? Yes. Yes, they're building a house with no blueprints. And then this is the part that is hard for me to say because again, I don't think it's any of their intent in the room, but it's true. This is true. The process of ranking teams this way and having that process be the most meaningful thing in college football, being these rankings is actively hurting the sport. And that's the tough part. And none of them are intending that, but that's the truth. Based on the top 25 that they gave us, and candidly, they have gave us over the last two, three years, maybe even all the way back to 2014 in the playoff era. There is zero. And I mean zero. Reason to schedule a tough non-conference game. And that's all any of us talk about, about like, well, how can we maintain these games? They're good for the sport. And they are seeing Texas and Ohio State play week two, Michigan and Oklahoma and so on and so forth. These are great for the sport. And yet these games are dying. They are going extinct. All right. Like it's just the way it is. And why are they going extinct? Because the committee is actively hunting them and shooting them out in the wild. That's what they're doing. There's no other way to explain it. Because they're not valuing non-conference opponents and in particular, the idea of the willingness to schedule that game. It makes no difference in the top 25 that they gave us. So as well, meaning as these people are, and as good as these individuals are. And again, I know a lot of them and respect a lot of them in that room. They are actively hurting the sport. And that's a shame. That's a shame because there's no reason to schedule a quality non-conference game at this point. None. You heard a lot during the ranking show. Couldn't disagree with this more, by the way, that like, hey, slow down, don't worry. This is only the beginning. This will change. Don't overreact. So on and so forth. No, these do matter. And they matter a great deal, a great deal. In fact, the only ranking that is more important than the first ranking is the last one where we actually get to the play. off. But the way you get to that last ranking is how, by how it's made. The first ranking is the most important ranking of the ones that don't give us an actual playoff. And that's obvious for anybody to see. This is a race. It's a race to those 12 spots to get into the, to the playoffs and play meaningful games at the top end of our sport. It is a race. And guess what? All right. So this is a NASCAR race. We have NASCAR here on Fox. We have IndyCar here on Fox and everybody qualifies. And then the best cars get to start up front. Right. And guess what? They, they don't have the burden of proof like the cars behind them. The cars behind them. They've got to pass them. They've got more to do to win the race than the cars ahead of them. Well, that's exactly what we have here is a starting grid. How you can say this doesn't matter is beyond me. It's a, of course, it's going to change. That's obvious. Just like in a race, the spots are going to change. If you're to ask any race car driver and IndyCar anything f, well, whatever it is, where would you rather start 12th or first? What do you think the answer is going to be? I'm losing my mind. What do you mean this doesn't matter? Of course, it matters. It matters a great deal. In fact, it's going to matter in every single game because now every single game has a value. Every game, every game that we see from this point forward has a value. And that value is attached to what they just gave us on Tuesday night. So spare me the absolute crap that this doesn't matter. And it will change. And let's not get upset. And Kumbaya, aren't those people good people? Yes, they're good people. But they just gave us a starting grid for the most important thing in the sport. So if I care that it's not right, forgive me, forgive me. All right. So that's just kind of like the starting point of all this. What are the strangest things that we saw in this ranking? I haven't even gotten to the things I disagree with. I just literally went on. Did I just spend 20 minutes? I hope you enjoyed that. I enjoyed it. All right. Three teams that I thought were like most egregiously misranked in this. And I think they're obvious. Everybody knows. And I'll walk through them one at a time. But the three are Ohio State Notre Dame and Alabama. Obviously, obviously. Let's start with Ohio State. This is very apparent that this is about Luke Feige and Julian Saiyan's injury and nothing else. Because even some of the explanations that they gave didn't make much sense at all. One of the explanations. And by the way, you know, I know they shouldn't trot somebody out there to explain it. Can we stop? Can we stop doing that? I don't think we should have a show. We shouldn't unveil these rankings until the end anyways. But it's sponsored, you know, like, so how the world works. And then they've got to explain it. It's unexplainable. And yet, you know, you know, your kitchen is in his suit. Poor guy. Poor guy. Good dude. Like he's a good dude. But he's in there. Well, you know, we thought about we saw that Ohio State. We value Ohio State. They always start with a value, even though they clearly don't. We value Ohio State. And you know, we just felt like it wasn't just about the freshman quarterback. Yes, it was. Yes, it was. And then he says, you know, the defense gave up some explosives and their defensive line. You know, just wasn't playing. Did you? I'm sorry. You guys have football people in the room. Tell me you watched the film. Tell me you turned it on. And it wasn't the television copy. Because I did watch the film. And let me tell you what was not the biggest problem for Ohio State was their defensive line. In fact, if you have watched Ohio State at all on film, you would know that their defense largely has been playing better because of their defensive line. I hope that he just misspoke in that moment. Because that was like red flags going all over there. My hope is that he misspoke. And what he meant was offensive line. Because if you're telling me that the interior of the offensive line struggled against USC, then I can get behind that. And you know what? I'd probably agree with you. And I would probably not along. If you told me that the offensive line and their penalty issues and their lack of of of physicality and short yardage inside of the one yard line, I'd not along with you. But when you tell me it's the defensive lines fault of why they're ranked number 12, then you didn't watch. Sorry, but that's the case. This is clearly about the injury. And you know what? Like I can't all right, like someone in the room can argue that way. I think others would argue in a different way because their body of work is is is actually much better than just looking at last weekend and saying, well, they had a freshman at quarterback and we didn't think their defensive line played well. I mean, I'm sorry. I can't. Oh my goodness. Football people in the room, like turn on the film, watch Andrew Custon play. I know he got injured at the end, but he's a dominant player. Like Jason Moore is getting off blocks. Like, come on, come on. Goodness gracious. So this is a six and two team right now. Best wins on the road against Indiana in the top five at Iowa in the top 25. Their strength of schedule is 10th. Their win loss versus the CFP top 25 is two and two with road losses at USC and a one point road loss at wait for it. Non conference Texas. So obviously they're not being valued. And this is about the freshman quarterback. Then we move on to Notre Dame. Notre Dame. I think I'd rather just kind of talk to Notre Dame right to them. If I was standing in front of Notre Dame right now and Marcus Freeman was standing in right in front of me and their entire team was standing right in front of me, here's what I would tell Notre Dame right now. You are playing for your life on Saturday period because this committee is not going to give you the benefit of the doubt at all. You are in the exact exact same position that you were in a year ago, where if you lose to Miami, you will not go to the college football playoff. You just won't. There might be a small chance based on absolute chaos, but do you really want to leave it in that committee's hands after seeing what they did do you a year ago and what they're doing to you now? No, you don't want to leave it in your hands. So Saturday, when the number one team in the nation comes up to South Bend and they play in your stadium, you have to win. And if you don't, I can't guarantee you a spot. I can't even tell you you've got a small chance for a spot in the CFP. That's what's going on with Notre Dame right now. That's what's going on. Now you can tell me that their strength of schedule is not great and it's not. It's 55th. And their best wins are just okay. Wisconsin and North Carolina. Their loss happens to be against a top 10 team on the road in a game in which did no one want to mention this. The officials botched the clock and you should have gotten another snap. I mean, we heard them talk about the way that Ohio State won the game at Indiana as if it was like, well, Indiana kind of won that one, except for more stepped out. No one wanted to mention the clock and the horrendous officiating in the big 12 when Notre Dame went down to BYU and CJ Clark did not get an extra snap. No one wanted to mention that. So you're seven and one Notre Dame and you're up against it. You are up against it. You are playing a must win against the Miami Hurricanes. You've got number one Miami roll into the town and you've got a win or else I can't even tell you there's a small chance that you've got a postseason in front of you. That's what's going on with Notre Dame. Hey, college football season is in full swing. And this is the time of year when you start looking ahead at the games that you really want to go see in person. Once you pick the match up, the next step is finding the best deal on tickets. 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I'm sorry. What are we doing? I'm sorry sir. This is a Wendy's. What? There's no explanation for Alabama at five. Not one. There's no criteria. Not one. The only possible avenue to explain Alabama at five is that the committee [BLANK_AUDIO] was so religiously following the pod system, which they kind of explained there with Reese and Yurchich. And they had to put them above Kentucky and Kentucky was already kind of firmly in their spot. That's the only way. So let me explain the pod system really quickly. Here's what happens. I did this mock thing and this is how they rank teams. You walk in with a top 25. You rank your top 25 teams before you come into the room. Then you come into the room and you give them your top 25. They tabulate. Here we go, bang, and here it comes out and they don't give you a top 25 as it looks based on everyone's top 25. They just give you four teams. Here's the top four teams based on all the top 25s that we got from the committee members coming in. And then you have those four teams and you talk about them in that pod and all the criteria goes up and you argue and you debate and you go back and forth and back and forth. And then you rank and you vote and you rank and you vote and you argue and then you settle on a ranking one to four. And then you let the top two teams go and you add two more and you have another group of five or four. And at times that pod can kind of grow to five at times, maybe to six, but then it just starts sliding down that way and you leave teams where you left them as the sliding scale starts to move down. So then that's where you're getting this explanation of like, well, we never compared to Alabama to Tennessee. Well, why not? Let me tell you what else happens in that room. Once you get a list and you can get to 10, you can get to 15, you can get to 25. And the person running the meeting should, should and did during the mock and should say, is everyone okay with this? Is there anything that looks off? Does anyone basically want to throw a challenge flag at this moment, okay? Nobody threw a challenge flag that Alabama is five and Tennessee is what, what is Tennessee? A million? Did we not see Tennessee drill Alabama head to head? Tennessee's 13 might as well be a million you're outside of the playoff. What does it matter if you're 13? You can be 13, you can be 36. Same thing, dead. Did no one want to throw a challenge flag? Okay, so then two spots ahead of Texas, eight ahead of Tennessee. And then we get, we get the explanation. Well, they weren't compared to Tennessee, but they weren't compared to Kentucky. So head to head is honored when they're compared in their pod to Kentucky. Okay, only reason you can put them at five. They're six and two, their best win is at Kentucky. Then I guess South Carolina, that was a South Carolina team that was by the way dead at the time. Their best player was trying to quit on the sideline. And now they've won a couple of games and they're snuck back into the top 25, fine. Okay, best wins, Kentucky and South Carolina. Their strength of schedule is seventh, that's great. Two and two versus a CFP top 25. All right, all of that is well and good. Close loss to Georgia, that's all well and good. But it doesn't even compare to some of the other resumes. Texas has far better wins than Alabama and they're a two loss team. How is Texas not ranked ahead of Alabama? That makes no sense. Texas scheduled a real non-conference game. Don't tell me Florida states a real non-conference game. They just fired their coach. Stop it, stop it. Don't they have Chattanooga coming up in their cupcake week? Like, what are we doing, right? Like, stop it with that. Texas has beaten Ohio State in a game that they did not have to play and did two years in a row, by the way. They beat Ole Miss, they beat Tennessee, who Bama lost to in the same venue and their two spots behind Alabama make it make sense. It can't, it doesn't, it just doesn't, it doesn't. And by the way, this is how I know, I know that the Ohio State ranking at 12 is all about the freshman quarterback and not about the defensive line. Give me a break about your defensive line comment. Again, I can get on board with old line, but not defensive line. This is how I know it's about the freshman quarterback Luke Fahey and the injury to Julian saying is because Ohio State has far better, far better resume than even Alabama. Obviously, they scheduled a non-conference game and lost it by a point on the road to Texas. Their other loss is a top 20 team in USC on the road in which they did start their freshman quarterback. By the way, Alabama doesn't have that excuse. They went out there and got drilled by Tennessee with their starter, but don't worry, we're gonna penalize Ohio State because they had their backup out there. And, and there was a team brought up for Alabama. I couldn't believe my ears. He said, well, you know, the Kentucky win is obviously good. Yeah, obviously, they're ranked in the top 10. The one lost team and they weren't really Kentucky before that game, but lo and behold, here they are and that's a great win on the road at Kentucky. Then he brought up South Carolina, I'm like, no, okay. And then he goes, and you know, Mississippi State was undefeated when they beat him. What? Mississippi State is being valued right now. Like, I'm sorry, come on. I know Camario Taylor is, is, is now not on the field and, and he was on the field. Then, but guess who was also undefeated? Win Ohio State beat them on the road, Iowa. But I don't hear anyone talking about Iowa being a valuable win. I don't hear anybody talking about the fact that Ohio State beat Indiana on the road. Like, guys, Mississippi State. I can't, I can't. It's, there's so many teams up there that have a gripe. Texas has a gripe, Notre Dame has a gripe. Ohio State has a gripe, Tennessee has a gripe, Iowa has a gripe. You're telling me like, Iowa's ranked behind Missouri. Missouri got their doors blown completely off, completely off. All the hinges, every hinge obliterated on the road against Ole Miss. Iowa hasn't done that. Okay. I would say, and this is going to give me in trouble and everyone's going to roll your right. Like, the overvaluing of the SEC is pretty wild. Every team outside of Georgia who stayed flat, every other SEC team was bumped up from the AP poll, mainly Alabama, but every single team was bumped up. And I'm even giving, like, listen, like Texas has a gripe over Bama. Tennessee has a gripe. There's SEC teams. Look, I think LSU has a gripe. Certainly. Ohio State clearly, Notre Dame clearly, you know, like Bama, what are we doing? Oh my goodness. What are we doing? Every SEC team except for Georgia who stayed flat was bumped up from the AP poll. How does the team like Wake Forest and Iowa have a path now, right? So this is, I'm just going to close with this. I started with that this matters and I'm closing with this matters because where's the path? Now we have a starting grid. Now Iowa and Missouri and Houston and Wake Forest, now they know where they're starting from. What is their path? What is Notre Dame's path if they lose to Miami? Well we know Bama has a path because they've got a free pass. It's just a free pass. Yeah, you go to LSU, like, I don't know, play hard at LSU, you probably still in. Why? Because that Mississippi State team was undefeated when you beat him. It's crazy. It's crazy. The committee can do one of two things at this point. They can change course and give us something that is much better and more towards the center of the bell curve and not an outlier. Which would signal to everybody like, hey, maybe we were wrong in this first one and they can adjust. They could absolutely do that. I think that would present some chaos because in teams would be like, well, hey, you start us into position. We played the game as if the game was, was associated that value based on what you gave us. So why are you changing things on us in the middle of the race here in November? So that presents problems or you can stay the course, which is a problem because now we have an outlier top 25 that we're just going to have to eat until we get the actual playoff. But don't worry. Everybody on TV is going to tell you like, hey, nothing to see here, jazz hands, nothing to see here because it'll change and it doesn't matter. It does matter. It matters where these teams start. It matters how this race is going to be driven, raced, won, lost. And every game now is going to have a value associated to it and with it. And that value is directly tied to that top 25. I hope you enjoyed the program, picks and previews tomorrow, may start flipping coins. Don't even know I'm on an absolute ice cold freezing cold takes. But we're going to keep shooting picks and previews are up tomorrow. Make sure to subscribe to the show. If you liked any of this, if you laughed at all, that would be great. If it made you angry, that's great too. And if it made you incensed as in like angry with me, that would be cool too. Leave a comment down below. What did you think of the top 25? What do you think of any of these points? Who got job, who do you think is in the proper spot, subscribe, do all the likeings, please tweet. Come back tomorrow. We got picks and previews. Have a good night.