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Warde Manuel reveals whether SMU can fall below Alabama in final College Football Playoff rankings

ns_headshot_2024-clearby:Nick Schultz•12/03/24•

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Warde Manuel
CFP selection committee chairman Warde Manuel -- © Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK

With Championship Week approaching, the penultimate College Football Playoff rankings came out Tuesday night. There’s still room for movement, but committee chairman Warde Manuel said teams that aren’t playing this week aren’t expected to shift.

However, there could still be some surprises in store this weekend. That includes in the ACC, where SMU and Clemson face off in the title game. A win would give the Mustangs a first-round bye, but a loss would make them a lower seed in the bracket. If Boise State wins the Mountain West and becomes the highest-ranked Group of 5 team, it’s worth wondering if SMU could end up falling behind No. 11 Alabama.

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Manuel addressed that on Tuesday, saying it could “potentially” happen. But it goes both ways. SMU could feasibly move up the rankings, as well.

“Potentially, yes,” Manuel said. “And they can move above teams, as well. Again, it just depends on the outcome of the game.”

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Manuel was making a point about teams that aren’t playing this weekend. On the ESPN broadcast after the College Football Playoff rankings reveal, he said the committee will not “adjust” the rankings of those programs. He broke down what he meant during the teleconference, explaining teams that don’t play won’t move behind other idle teams.

“If you take, for example, Tennessee is ahead of SMU, Indiana is behind SMU. Tennessee will not drop below Indiana at any point,” Manuel said. “Neither team is playing. But SMU could move up, depending on how we evaluate the game. They could stay where they are or they could move down depending on the outcome of the game.

“But Tennessee and Indiana in this example would never flip. Indiana would never move ahead of Tennessee and Tennessee would never drop below Indiana because we’ve already evaluated them. There’s not another data point because they’re not playing in the championship games. So we don’t have anything else to add to the evaluation of those teams, so we can’t move them above or below each other.”