Rece Davis presses Warde Manuel on comments ahead of final College Football Playoff rankings

ESPN’s Rece Davis pressed CFP chair Warde Manuel about the final College Football Playoff rankings following Championship Saturday.

With teams not playing this weekend, there’s cause for concern they could move up and down while being inactive. There’s also the notion of SMU leaving the playoff bracket entirely if the Mustangs lose to Clemson in the ACC Championship Game.

Davis asked Manuel if conference championship losers would be evaluated among the other teams vying for an at-large spot.

“Probably fair to say that, yeah,” Manuel said on College GameDay. “We don’t look at it as an at-large pool, but we will evaluate the teams and how they play. And again, Rece, this is something that has been done every year. In the final week we’ve evaluated teams. Teams can move up and down, but what we won’t see is teams who are not playing move above or be or below other teams who are not playing. But we have these movements because of the championship game annually, every year.”

Warde Manuel bracing for College Football Playoff rankings discussion

Manuel previously said, for example, Alabama would not move below Miami nor a team like South Carolina or Ole Miss jump Alabama without playing, based on last week’s rankings. Davis asked Manuel if that changed in the College Football Playoff committee’s minds.

“No, it hasn’t Rece,” Manuel said. “For example, Notre Dame and Ohio State. Ohio State will not move above Notre Dame, and Notre Dame won’t move below Ohio State, but they can fluctuate and move in terms of where they’re seeded. They’re set in the rankings, in the top 25 and so and that’s based on the championship games, and that’s how we’re what we’ve been tasked to do, and what we’re planning on doing as we look at these games and rank the teams for tomorrow.”

Perhaps a pressing question is what happens to SMU if they lose to Clemson. Essentially, based on the rankings anyway, the last spot in the playoff could very well come down to an 11-2 SMU team that lost the ACC title and Alabama which is 9-3 and did not play for the SEC crown.

“I’m not going to get into projections, so I can’t tell you exactly how the committee will evaluate it, but we will take a good, hard look at each team, as we’ve done every year since I’ve been on this committee,” Manuel said. “And evaluate the teams that are playing in the championship game. The commissioners have asked us to do that, and that’s what we’re here to do in Grapevine today.”