CFP projections: What College Football Playoff rankings will look like ahead of Week 10

We have seen nine weeks of the 2022 season, and now it's time for the 13 members of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee to make their first announcements as to how they've seen the season so far. The first Top 25 from the CFP this season will be released Tuesday night at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.

That committee is made up of eight current athletic directors (one from Division II), one former coach (Jim Grobe), three former players, and a professor from Montclair State University to remind us that this is theoretically about academics.

They'll rank teams from 1-25 as they see them so far this season, but this will have no effect on the final rankings that will be used to determine spots in both the College Football Playoff as well as the rest of the New Year's Six Bowls.

Here's our best guess as to how they'll slot the top of the board:

1. Georgia
2. Tennessee
3. Ohio State
4. Michigan
5. Clemson
6. TCU

We're going to give the committee the benefit of the doubt here and say they'll find a way to leave Alabama out of the top six for now. More than the loss at Tennessee, the squeaker at Texas is a bigger blemish on the resume.

An unimpressive Clemson team so far will be the beneficiary of The Game serving as an eliminator, while the committee can also acknowledge TCU's undefeated season where they just keep beating every team in the third-best conference. You can question the “game control” of the Horned Frogs, but they might have had their best performance of the season on Saturday so they should get the bump.

If Bama rolls through the rest of the season undefeated, they're fine. What becomes interesting is what do you do with the loser of the Tennessee-Georgia game this weekend: That team could finish 11-1, with their only loss to the literally best-possible opponent. Is it them, a 13-0 Clemson, or a 13-0 TCU that gets left home?

If the chalk holds, the cries for immediate expansion of the Playoff will grow only stronger. And that's a good thing.

  
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