What does Week 9 AP poll mean for College Football Playoff rankings?

The AP poll for Week 9 of the college football season was released on Sunday and there wasn't much change at the top. It was a sleepy weekend as far as marquee matchups were concerned and that was reflected with the top six spots staying the same as last week. But what does this mean for the larger College Football Playoff picture?

Going off the polls right now, the field would include No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Ohio State, No. 3 Tennessee, and No. 4 Michigan. All of these teams are about to enter their toughest stretches of the season with the SEC teams set to play each other in two weeks and the Big Ten teams facing off at the end of November. All four are in a position where one loss wouldn't completely kill their playoff hopes.

The rest of the top 10 can be categorized into the next tier of playoff hopefuls who could play their way in with a strong performance. Clemson will most likely get in if it can successfully run the table, but it can't afford close calls like it had against Syracuse on Saturday. Alabama is, of course, never out of the conversation and will inevitably find its way in if it handles business for the rest of the regular season and possibly the SEC Championship games. The Big 12 and Pac-12 teams in the top 10 will most likely need some of these aforementioned powers to start falling off to realistically jump into the mix.

Of course, we'll get the first actually College Football Playoff ranking next Tuesday and we'll see what the committee thinks of these programs. However, these AP polls do a pretty good job at setting up the conversation in the latter stages of the season.

  
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