The latest College Football Playoff rankings kept Alabama comfortably ahead of Tennessee, and committee chair Hunter Yurachek had a clear explanation for why the Crimson Tide stayed at No. 3 while the Vols landed at No. 8.
Tennessee moved up five spots after beating Kentucky at home, but the committee still slotted Alabama higher despite both teams carrying two losses and Tennessee owning the head-to-head win. On ESPN’s reveal show, Rece Davis pressed Yurachek on why Alabama is ranked so much higher than the other two-loss SEC teams.
“They are No. 1 in their record strength, No. 1 in their schedule strength,” Yurachek said. “They have four what we call quality wins, because we continue to call that win against Mississippi State earlier in the year when they had Kamario Taylor on their team, they were 4-0, Alabama went there and won that game. So Alabama, we believe, deserves to be the No. 3 team in the country.”
Yurachek also addressed Tennessee directly when Davis asked why the Vols’ win over Alabama wasn’t enough to swing the comparison.
“Alabama was in that first pool, Tennessee was not in that first pool,” Yurachek said. “Tennessee has a couple of quality wins in their win they just had at Kentucky and then obviously the win they have against Alabama.
They have three wins against teams that their schedule strength is 110 and above. So when you look at their schedule compared to Alabama’s schedule, the committee feels like, and so do the metrics, that Alabama has a stronger schedule.
And that’s why Alabama was in that first pool of teams and Tennessee was not.”
The rankings leave Alabama at No. 3 in the country, behind only Georgia and Utah, while Tennessee sits at No. 8.
Tennessee’s path from here includes a road trip to unranked Texas A&M, with kickoff set for 3 p.m. ET on ESPN.
The Vols then return home to face No. 21 LSU in the afternoon window before closing the regular season on the road against unranked Vanderbilt.
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Memphis Showed Something Bigger Than The Final Score At USF
Memphis came out with the kind of early burst that can change the tone of a conference road game, piling up multiple first-quarter touchdowns behind quarterback Marcus Stokes and immediately putting USF on its heels. For a team trying to establish itself in the American, that opening stretch mattered beyond the scoreboard, because it showed Memphis could travel, strike quickly and force an opponent to play from behind.
USF answered with a second-half push that made the final minutes far more uncomfortable than the Tigers would have preferred, and the back-and-forth underscored how much both offenses and defenses had to work in this one. Even with the comeback pressure, Memphis left with something worth holding onto, since the game offered a glimpse of a team capable of dictating tempo early and responding when the test gets tougher. [Read more 🡒]