ATHENS — A new batch of College Football Playoff rankings dropped on Tuesday night.
Yet Kirby Smart’s opinion on the College Football Playoff committee remains unchanged.
“I think they value wins and losses,” Smart said. “And so they place people based on a column, a column of wins and a column of losses, not on the eye test of going to watch them play and see them and see who they played. I just don’t think they, I think they base it on wins and losses. I don’t think they say, well, this is better than that. They just say this record’s better than that. That’s the most simple way to do it. It’s not necessarily the 12 best. So we’ll see what happens. I’m not worried about it much. I’ve got to worry about our team and what we got going on.”
The newest rankings did see Georgia move up, going from No. 12 to No. 10 in the rankings. Based on seeding, the Bulldogs moved from last team out to first team in. Were the playoffs to start this weekend, Georgia would travel to play at No. 6 seed Penn State.
Still, Georgia has a tough road to climb if it is to play one of the first-round games at home. The Bulldogs sit directly behind Alabama and Ole Miss, two teams they have lost to.
Georgia is also behind four Big Ten teams in No. 1 Oregon, No. 2 Ohio State, No. 4 Penn State and No. 5 Indiana. It marks the second straight week that the Big Ten occupies four of the top five spots in the committee’s rankings.
Oregon is in line to be the Big Ten champion, having already clinched a spot in the conference title game. But Ohio State, Penn State and Indiana have a combined two wins against teams ranked in the College Football Playoff rankings.
Georgia alone has three, sporting wins over No. 3 Texas, No. 11 Tennessee and No. 17 Clemson. All of those wins have come by double-digits so far this season.
Yet those wins don’t seem to outweigh the two defeats Georgia has suffered. Even the out-of-conference game against the Tigers does little in Smart’s eyes.
“The happiness of our fans. That’s the incentive, right? Because fans want you to be in the playoffs, but they sure don’t want you to play cupcakes,” Smart said. “They want you to go play quality opponents. I like the whole – I mean, going to schedule a great team and going to play somebody in a neutral site game, a kickoff classic. I love all that stuff. So I want to do as much of that as I can. But I don’t know. We’ll see where all this stuff goes, guys.”
Smart recognizes that the full picture has not yet been told when it comes to this season, as there are still a few twists and turns to be taken. Georgia closes out its regular season schedule against UMass and Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets recently handed Miami its first loss of the season and would love nothing more than to spoil Georgia’s season.
Elsewhere, Ohio State takes on Indiana this week. And while Georgia might be done with SEC play, there is still plenty at stake with two weeks to play. There is still a path for Georgia to play in the SEC championship game, if things break the right way.
But Georgia does not control its own destiny to get to Atlanta and thus its playoff fate is in the hands of the College Football Playoff committee.
And the seemingly changing nature of what matters has frustrated the Georgia coach.
“They need to really decide what they want, though, and that’s the frustrating thing because it’s record-based or it’s, you know, quality of opponents,” Smart said. “It’s hard to say that you shouldn’t have a strength of schedule factor in there.”
