Six SEC teams including Georgia football and their fanbases will be interested observers when the College Football playoff rankings come out Tuesday night.
They are in the thick of the race to land a spot in the 12-team CFP bracket and all are ranked in the top 15 of the US LBM Coaches Poll poll and the Associated Press poll.
Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas A&M aren’t all getting in the field, so the third rankings tonight will give a snapshot of how the committee sees things with two weeks of regular season games and championship weekend still to come.
The Bulldogs were No. 12 last week in the CFP and just out of the bracket behind an automatic conference champion qualifier, but the 31-17 win over Tennessee sets Georgia up well to get in the playoff.
The Bulldogs have just UMass on Saturday and then Georgia Tech still to go in the regular season.
Georgia will go from outside the 12-team bracket to playing a first-round game. Let’s go with Georgia with the No. 8 ranking and hosting a game in Athens.
The third College Football Playoff rankings will be released on Tuesday, Nov. 19, on ESPN’s reveal show. It is the third of five rankings that will be released each Tuesday before the final list comes out on Dec. 8.
The rankings will be revealed on a show that starts at 7 p.m. Each weekly ranking will come out on Tuesday nights, but the time of the show varies depending on the day.
The 12-team field will be released on a top 25 rankings show that will air on ESPN. It can also be streamed on ESPN+.
The field has been expanded from four teams to 12. That just so happens to come after a controversial 2023, when unbeaten Florida State was left out of the field and 12-1 Georgia was also outside the top four.
The 12-team field includes five conference champions ranked highest by the committee and seven at-large selections. The four highest-ranked conference champions will be the top four seeds and receive a bye into the quarterfinals. The fifth highest-ranked conference champion will be seeded where it was ranked or No. 12 if not in the top 12.
Teams ranked in the top 4 that don’t win their conference will be seeded starting at No. 5. Teams seeded 5 through 12 will play in the first round Dec. 20 or 21 with higher seeds hosting on campus. Playoff quarterfinals and semifinals will at bowl sites and the championship game is in Atlanta on Jan. 20.
