Washington outside the college football playoff in the first committee rankings|Washington Hot Topics|Team BattleGround|College BattleGround

1-loss Texas A&M is 4th ahead of the undefeated Huskies

The first College Football Playoff Committee rankings of 2016 have been released and two SEC teams found their way into the top 4. Number one of course was Alabama, Clemson was second and Michigan comes in at 3rd. Most thought the undefeated Washington Huskies would round out the inaugural top 4 but to the surprise of many Texas A&M jumped to the 4 slot. It would seem that the Committee is either very high on the SEC west, very low on the Pac-12 generally or some combination of the two.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. The Playoff committee has in the past shown a preference for teams that win their conference. As it stands now Texas A&M will need Alabama to lose two conference games in the next month for the Aggies to even have the opportunity to advance to the SEC conference championship game. Undefeated Washington of course controls their own destiny in the Pac-12 championship race. While there is only about month left of the college football regular season there is a ton of football left to be played.

Colorado is 21st in the AP poll, and 20th in the Coaches poll, the playoff committee, however, has them at 15th, quite the jump. Perhaps the Buffaloes strong showing in the Big House against number 3 Michigan helped them out. Right behind the Buffs at number 16 is Utah. The Utes are also 16th in the AP and Coaches Polls. Rounding out the top 25 is Washington State. Much like Utah, the Cougars are ranked the same in all 3 of the polls.

3-loss USC is starting to receive attention from the voters effectively being ranked 27th in the Associated Press poll and 30th in the Coaches Poll. The Trojans did not crack the committee’s first top 25 with 3 losses though despite all three of them coming in the early part of the season, 2 of them against top 16 teams, all of them on the road, and 2 of them with a different quarterback. The only team with 3 losses to make the CFP rankings is Florida State at number 22. If USC continues their winning streak they will almost certainly enter the top 25.

You can see the full rankings below:

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