Heather Dinich, Paul Finebaum explain how Tennessee represents CFP committee's toughest test case 

The latest College Football Playoff polls have been released, opening up the flood gets to discussion on who will be the top four teams heading into the playoffs when the season is all said and done. Tennessee is just outside of the top four ranked No. 5, and their resume makes them potentially one of the toughest hardest teams for the committee to evaluate moving forward according to college football insiders Paul Finebaum and Heather Dinich.

“Tennessee is the wildcard though, as much as we want to push USC, Greeny, don’t forget Tennessee won by 27 as Heather pointed out at Baton Rouge, so LSU is really an interesting card right there,” Finebaum said to Get Up host Mike Greenberg. “They still need to win at A&M, that’s important because if they’ve don’t win there in a week and a half, and I don’t know why they wont A&M has lost seven games in row after being the preseason No. 6 team, that they change the direction of everything. But I think it could come down to Tennessee and USC, because Michigan should they lose to Ohio State is gonna go bye bye.”

Tennessee’s win over LSU is one of the best in the country as they currently rank No. 6 in the nation and have punched a ticket to the SEC Championship game. But they also have one of the best losses, with their lone loss to No. 1 ranked Georgia being the only blemish on their resume, as Dinich outlined how the Vols will be evaluated going forward.

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“To take a deeper dive onto what Paul’s saying about Tennessee, I’ll take you inside the selection committee meeting room, because their protocol states that team that doesn’t win a conference title has to be unequivocally one of the four best teams in the country, so what does that mean? It means that there’s no doubt around that table that Tennessee is one of the four best teams,” Dinich explained.

Dinich elaborated on the different factors that Tennessee will be judged on when it will be time for the committee to make their biggest decision of the season, which will be a tough one given the many things to consider regarding the Vols.

“But if they think they’re comparable with a one loss USC they’ve got to use tiebreakers including conference championship games, strength of schedule, head to head results, etcetera,” Dinich said. “Tennessee can’t check the box on the conference title tiebreaker obviously, but it goes under the microscope without even winning their division, Tennessee’s defense is 42nd in the country, the top six teams currently are in the top 20 in both offense and defense, all of those things will be scrutinized.”