The College Football Playoff rankings have officially taken over college football as the committee released their first rankings of the season on Tuesday. Georgia was comfortbaly in the field at No. 5 which is the spot everyone expected them to be. But even if there were no surprises there, it is still interesting to see what Georgia's path would look like if the 12-team playoff began today.
And Georgia may just have the most difficult path out of all the teams in the playoff field.
College Football Playoff committee give Georgia most difficult path possible
The CFP committee did reward Georgia by giving them the 5-seed. Even though this means Georgia would have to play in the first round, they would get to host this matchup in Athens. Their opponent as of now would be 12-seed Memphis who wasn't even ranked inside the committee's top 25. The highest ranked Group of Five Champion still gets in the playoff field automatically, so the committee deemed that Memphis is that team even though they are outside their top 25 rankings.
Assuming Georgia wins that game, their path to a National Championship would get very difficult. Waiting for them in the quarterfinals would be 4-seed Alabama. No Georgia fan needs to be told how dominant the Crimson Tide are, so this would be a scary matchup. But even if UGA wins, their jounrey wouldn't get any easier.
1-seed Ohio State would be Georgia's most likely opponent in the semifinals. The Buckeyes would have to win their quarterfinals matchup as well, but assuming they do Georgia would then have to play the defending National Champions.
So not only would Georgia not get a bye this season, but they would have to beat Alabama and Ohio State just to make it to the National Championship game. It's too hard to predict who could be waiting for them in the title game, but it would be another difficult opponent with Indiana, Texas A&M and Ole Miss as the top options.
There is no easy path to winning a National Championship in the 12-team playoff, but Georgia's path is the most difficult by far based on these rankings. Thankfully these rankings aren't final, so Georgia should hope this changest before the final rankings come out in December.