College Football Playoff committee explains Tennessee’s No. 11 ranking

What went into the decision.

As expected, Tennessee fell out of the projected College Football Playoff bracket on Tuesday night. The Volunteers dropped to No. 11 in the rankings, which would be the first at-large team out with the Big 12 and group of five champions receiving auto-bids despite being ranked behind Tennessee.

Tennessee fell to Georgia on Saturday night, which allowed the Bulldogs to push forward and receive the final projected at-large bid as the 10th ranked team. Following the reveal, College Football Playoff Chair Warde Manuel spoke to the media a bit about Tennessee’s drop.

“Well, one, they just had a loss to Georgia, and they had the loss at Arkansas,” Manuel said. “It’s really splitting hairs. They have great offense, great defense. They play hard. The committee just had a hard time. You’re talking about four really good teams, when you look at Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee.”

Alabama beat Georgia. Tennessee beat Alabama. Georgia beat Tennessee. Ole Miss beat Georgia. Georgia beat Texas. Texas has played none of the four, but also hasn’t lost.

Just looking at the at-large picture, it feels like only four of these five SEC schools can get it without some help.

“I think the committee, we debated it, as I said earlier, quite a bit as it came down to how we saw those teams,” Manuel continued. “But they have beaten each other at different times. So we have to look at Alabama the last three games, particularly the two before they played Mercer, they won in dominant fashion, and we were really impressed with their win at LSU two weeks ago.

“It is close. There’s a lot of conversations. We’ll continue to monitor the performance of all these teams as the season progresses towards the end.”

Reading between the lines there, the eye test will be the tiebreaker if needed. Alabama is certainly leading in that category over the last few weeks. Ole Miss will have to back up their big win over Georgia this weekend in Gainesville.

Tennessee is left with UTEP and a road game at Vanderbilt. The formula for the Volunteers is clear now if help doesn’t arrive — win and win convincingly. 2-8 UTEP doesn’t provide much of an opportunity, but a convincing win against a good Vanderbilt team does.

“It’s stating the obvious, we have to win out,” Tennessee receiver Bru McCoy said this week. “We have to win convincingly. We have to maybe show some things that we haven’t. But the way my mind is, I’m not even thinking about next week. I’m thinking about my next film session in an hour.”

Can Tennessee win the committee over with the eye test alone over the next two weeks? That remains to be seen. The more likely path is getting one of the listed results below. Despite having a cupcake here this weekend, we’ll have plenty to root for elsewhere on Saturday.