Greg McElroy makes case for South Carolina, Vanderbilt to appear in College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings

The first College Football Playoff rankings of the season dropped on Tuesday, representing the initial roadmap of what an unprecedented postseason will look like with the first 12-team College Football Playoff field.

There are several teams across the country who likely feel like they deserved a spot in theCFP’s initial Top 25 that missed the cut. And following the release of the first College Football Playoff rankings, analyst Greg McElroy revealed two teams that he believes deserved to make the cut.

“I would have taken a really long, hard look at Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt lost to Georgia State, which is egregious, but they lost two other games against ranked teams by a combined six points. Vanderbilt’s 6-3, they have a really strong argument that you could make to be in the top 25,” McElroy said.

The Commodores have been one of the biggest surprises of the college football season, highlighted by their historic upset win over Alabama. But according to McElroy, they are not the only team in the SEC looking on the outside of the Top 25 that should have made the cut.

“Another one is South Carolina. South Carolina’s 5-3, but they’ve beaten Texas A&M, who’s in the top 15. They smoked Oklahoma, pretty good win, right? I’m not giving Texas credit for Oklahoma, so I probably shouldn’t give South Carolina credit whatsoever,” McElroy clarified. “But like we’ve said, the committee told us, it’s who you lost to and how you lost.

“They lost by two to Bama and they lost by three to LSU, and if you look at both games, they had a real chance of winning both. So South Carolina would have been another team in the Top 25 that I think deserved a little consideration.”

Louisville was the only three-loss team to crack the College Football Playoff rankings, with eight total SEC teams making the cut with a whopping four teams in the top 12. And with four weeks remaining in the regular season, there’s no question that Vanderbilt, South Carolina, and plenty of other teams can make a late surge and find themselves ranked when the season is all said and done.

“Other than that, I think it was pretty good. I really can’t sit there and have a ton of issues with some of the other teams that haven’t been ranked right now. … So I don’t think the committee did a terrible job,” McElroy said. “I think they did a pretty adequate job, but there are certainly a few things that I would have tweaked. And there are a few teams that if I were in their shoes, I’d be pretty frustrated with how things stacked up against me.”