The argument that the College Football Playoff Selection Committee tilts toward the SEC isn’t limited to Alabama’s controversial #3 ranking. A look further down the rankings shows the same pattern playing out with teams most fans aren’t watching as closely.
Missouri, with three losses, sits at #22 in the latest committee rankings. On its own, that might not raise eyebrows. But look at who isn’t ranked at all: SMU, an ACC team sitting at 7-2 with no out-of-conference losses and a better overall record than Missouri, can’t crack the top 25.
Missouri’s best win of the season came in Week 5, a blowout of a then-8th-ranked Florida team. Its best out-of-conference win is a 17-point victory over rival Kansas, currently at the bottom of the Big 12.
Compare that to Louisville, 6-3, which lost to Ole Miss by just three points. Missouri lost to that same Ole Miss team by 28. LSU, ranked #14, lost to Ole Miss by eight. By any reasonable measure of a common opponent, Louisville’s performance against Ole Miss was stronger than Missouri’s and nearly as strong as LSU’s — yet Louisville can’t get ranked while Missouri sits at 22 and LSU at 14.
CFP Selection Committee Chairman Hunter Yurachek hasn’t addressed Missouri’s ranking directly. But based on comments he made Tuesday night explaining Alabama’s high ranking — crediting it largely to an early-season win over Mississippi State — it’s reasonable to expect he’d point to Missouri’s early win over Florida as justification for its spot.
There’s a problem with that reasoning. Florida is no longer ranked 8th. Florida isn’t ranked at all. Yet the committee continues to lean on that early-season result to prop up Missouri’s ranking, the same way it once leaned on early-season framing to excuse Alabama’s loss to a bad Florida State team by calling it too early in the year to matter much.
The double standard doesn’t stop there. This year’s #1 team, Georgia, lost at home to an unranked, underwhelming Auburn squad — a result that has barely been discussed by anyone evaluating the Bulldogs’ playoff case.
Teams in the ACC and Big Ten keep turning in results that measure up to, or beat, their SEC counterparts against common opponents, and keep getting passed over anyway. The question is how much longer those conferences are willing to tolerate it.
