The first College Football Playoff rankings have already stirred up a mess, and Tennessee’s placement is right at the center of it. Alabama landed at No. 5 while Tennessee checked in at No. 13, an eight-spot gap that has drawn plenty of heat because the Vols beat the Crimson Tide head-to-head and both teams own identical records.
That frustration isn’t just coming from Tennessee fans. The reaction has spilled well beyond Rocky Top, with media voices jumping in too. Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt and On3’s Andy Staples have both been loud about the discrepancy, and former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy added his own criticism after appearing on the CFP rankings reveal show Tuesday night.
On his Always College Football show, McElroy said the Tennessee-Alabama comparison was especially hard to accept.
“One of the first real difficult ones for me to kind of stomach,” McElroy said about the Tennessee-Alabama rankings. “Because here’s my problem with Tennessee.
Like, Tennessee beat Alabama head-to-head. Alabama did not look good in that game.
Alabama did not move the ball with consistency in that game. Tennessee controlled the line of scrimmage in that game.
I also look at Tennessee, and it’s almost like the committee is putting more of a premium on offensive efficiency numbers. Teams that play great offense have been rewarded in many cases, whereas Tennessee, they sit at 41st in offensive efficiency.
It’s like, yeah, never mind the 4th-ranked defensive efficiency, can you score? And that hasn’t really been the case for Tennessee.
It’s not how they’ve tried to win games.
McElroy also said he could understand why Tennessee fans are upset with where the Vols landed.
“Now, they have a couple losses: at South Carolina, you lost to Texas at home. No shame in that,” McElroy continued on to say.
“And yet you lose two games by a combined six points, you sit at (No.) 13.
Eight spots behind a team that you beat head-to-head. That’s a hard one for me to wrap my head around.
Now, I think you can make a very strong argument on behalf of Tennessee to be a Top 10 team, and you can easily make a case they should be ahead of Alabama. So I can understand why Tennessee fans are very frustrated right now.
I would be frustrated if I were them as well.”
The larger gripe around the rankings has been the committee’s uneven use of head-to-head results. Alabama sits one spot ahead of Kentucky at No. 5 after beating the Wildcats in Week 2, even though Kentucky is ranked No.
- That has only made the Tennessee situation look more inconsistent, since the committee leaned on the direct result in one case but not the other.
That back-and-forth between head-to-head and overall resume is exactly what keeps fans annoyed with the process. In the Kentucky-Alabama comparison, the head-to-head win mattered.
In the Tennessee-Alabama comparison, the committee appeared to favor Alabama’s resume, which includes a win over Kamario Taylor’s Mississippi State Bulldogs, over the loss to Tennessee. For fans trying to make sense of it, the logic feels hard to pin down.
Still, the rankings are only the starting point. Tennessee has four games left to reshape its standing, including two ranked home matchups.
If the Vols win out, they’re in the 12-team field. But the debut rankings matter because they establish the committee’s first baseline, and that baseline has already put Tennessee’s place under a bright spotlight.
No. 13 Tennessee (6-2) returns to action Saturday against No.
6 Kentucky (7-1) at 6:15 p.m. ET at Neyland Stadium.
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