Tennessee’s climb in the latest College Football Playoff rankings came with a catch.
The Vols moved up five spots to No. 8 after handling Kentucky at home, but they still found themselves behind Alabama, which checked in at No. 3 despite both teams carrying two losses. Tennessee also owns the head-to-head win over the Crimson Tide, yet the committee kept Alabama well ahead in the pecking order.
Hunter Yurachek, the CFP committee chair, laid out the reasoning on the ESPN reveal show when Rece Davis pressed him on why Alabama remains so high among the 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 the Tennessee comparison directly when Davis asked why the Vols’ win over Alabama did not settle the debate.
“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.”
Tennessee now turns to a stretch that includes three more games: a road trip to unranked Texas A&M at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN, a home matchup with No. 21 LSU in the afternoon window, and a season finale at unranked Vanderbilt.
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