Georgia football has played their way back into the College Football Playoff picture after their 31-17 win against Tennessee on Saturday.
Last week the CFP committee shockingly ranked Georgia as their No. 12 team in the country, which had them as the first team out of the 12-team bracket. But now, after defeating the No. 7 team in the country by two touchdowns, that should no longer be the case.
Now while the committee should no longer have to decide if Georgia is in the playoff picture or not, they do have a new dilemma on their hands. A log jam of 8-2 SEC teams.
How does the committee handle these four SEC teams?
The SEC currently has five teams that likley should be in the CFP field on Tuesday. Texas, who sits at 9-1, is a lock to be the highest ranked SEC team even with their insanely easy schedule. That then leaves four teams (Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss and Tennessee) who are all 8-2 who should all currently be in the field as well.
So how does the committee go about ranking these four teams? Usually they would look at head-to-head matchups to determine who gets the higher ranking, but that is where the dilemma for the committee exists.
Georgia just beat Tennessee. Alabama and Ole Miss have both beat Georgia. Tennessee on the other hand has beat Alabama. So the dilemma is quite clear. How does the committee determine who is ranked higher and who is ranked lower between these four teams?
Each team has a good argument as to why they should be higher than others, but they all seem to cancel each other out. So the committee is going to have to look at the rest of their resumes to see who gets ranked higher.
This is where Kirby Smart and Georgia could get some good news as they have wins over Texas and a ranked Clemson team as well. The resumes of the three other teams do not stack up against that. But still, Ole Miss and Alabama can both say they beat Georgia, so they likely feel they should be ranked higher than UGA.
It is impossible to predict with confidence what the committee is going to do with these four teams. But let's predict what order these teams will be ranked anyways.
Predicting the order of these four teams
1. Alabama Crimson Tide
2. Georgia Bulldogs
3. Ole Miss Rebels
4. Tennessee Volunteers
This is the order that the AP Poll has these teams ranked in their updated ranking released on Sunday and the most likely order the committee will go with as well. But the AP Poll also believes these four teams are very close as they were all ranked in a row from 7-10.
The CFP committee will release their next rankings Tuesday night, and surely nobody will have any negative things to say about it.