Heather Dinich evaluates what initial College Football Playoff ranking reveals about Big Ten, SEC

The initial look at what the expanded first 12-team College Football Playoff field could potentially be was revealed on Tuesday night when the first CFP rankings of the season were released. Of course, that came with plenty of reactions across the landscape of the sport.

There was a lot to take away from the Playoff committee’s first rankings, but college football insider and College Football Playoff expert Heather Dinich revealed that her biggest takeaway had to do with the representation of the SEC and the Big Ten.

“The SEC and the Big Ten’s dominance is clear with four teams each accounting for eight of the 12 teams in that initial ranking,” Dinich said Wednesday morning on Get Up. “And what that does is it helps team’s strength of schedule who are going to play each other.”

Four teams apiece between the Big Ten and the SEC found themselves ranked within the top 12 of the initial College Football Playoff rankings. If these rankings hold steady — and they won’t — the Big Ten and SEC will undoubtedly have the best odds to bring home a national championship at the end of the season.

There’s still plenty that could change between now and the final rankings of the season in early December, most notably the fact that each of the Power Four conference champions will get an automatic bid and first round bye as the top four seeds in the 12-team playoff field.

But Dinich believes these initial rankings paired with several upcoming matchups within the SEC and Big Ten could keep both conferences firmly in the postseason with several teams in the playoff picture.

“Indiana and Ohio State have to play each other, now the loser of that game has a top 10 loss, right? Georgia and Tennessee have to play each other. If Georgia loses that game or Tennessee loses that game, they’re losing to one of the committee’s Top 10 teams,” Dinich explained. “And as we learned last night, who you lose to and how matters. That’s why Ohio State is number two ahead of Georgia, because they went on the road, lost by one point to the committee’s number one team (Oregon).”

It will be fascinating to see how upcoming head-to-head matchups between the top teams of the CFP rankings impact the postseason picture. Nevertheless, it’s an unprecedented moment in college football history that is bound to come with exciting matchups in the College Football Playoff field regardless of which 12 teams ultimately make the final cut.