Warde Manuel explains why College Football Playoff selection committee ranked Clemson ahead of Alabama, Ole Miss

At 9-2, Clemson slotted in at No. 12 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, ahead of the likes of Alabama and Ole Miss. It’s a decision that plenty were skeptical of, despite the Tigers having a slightly better win-loss record.

Both the Crimson Tide and Rebels are 8-3, but have arguably better resumes than Clemson, which lacks many big wins. Nevertheless, the selection committee found the Tigers resume to be just enough to put them ahead, according to committee chair Warde Manuel.

“Well, Clemson slid up with some losses ahead of them by Alabama and Mississippi, and they had a win against Citadel, obviously, but that wasn’t the big reason,” Manuel said. “Obviously they’re at 9-2, with only two losses. The teams right behind them have three losses. We just felt as a committee as we looked at their body of work, with three straight wins after their loss to Louisville, including back-to-back wins against Virginia Tech and Pitt, that they deserved to move up into that 12th position.”

Manuel also discussed how the committee came to the decision to delineate Alabama and Ole Miss as the No. 13 and No. 14 teams, respectively.

Three SEC teams – Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina – have three losses, and all eyes were on where they’d come in during the fourth rankings reveal.

Ultimately, Alabama came in as the highest-ranked of the group at No. 13, followed by Ole Miss at No. 14 and South Carolina at No. 15. According to Manuel, that decision was largely due to head-to-head matchups.

Manuel said the Crimson Tide’s resume – which includes wins over Georgia, Missouri and LSU – was a separator in the committee’s decision. But since Alabama and Ole Miss both have wins over South Carolina, that led them to come in at 13, 14 and 15, respectively.

“Because of their win over Georgia,” Manuel said of Alabama. “They won against Missouri, they’ve beat South Carolina and they won at LSU in dominant fashion. When you put those four wins against Mississippi and what they did, they had the win against Georgia and the win at South Carolina, but they had a tough loss to Florida. Lost to LSU in overtime. So when we compared resumes, that’s how we saw it, in terms of the difference between Alabama and Mississippi.”

On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this report.