Tennessee is on the outside looking in after the Week 12 College Football Playoff rankings were released on Tuesday night. The Vols are ranked No. 11 in the country but would miss the 12-team CFP if it were to begin this week.
With the Playoff format, Tennessee is currently the first team out and the 13th seed, putting Tennessee out of the CFP after its 31-17 loss to Georgia this past Saturday in Athens.
The CFP committee’s biggest issue with keeping Tennessee in the playoffs is its loss to Arkansas. The Vols’ loss to the Razorbacks is a large blemish on their resume, preventing them from being a virtual lock in the first year of the expanded playoffs.
That argument would be understandable, but there are teams in the CFP with worse losses than Arkansas. Ole Miss’s loss to 4-6 Kentucky at home is a terrible loss, Notre Dame’s loss to Northern Illinois, and Alabama’s loss to Vanderbilt are all worse losses than Arkansas, but each of those teams has a spot in the top 12.
The committee also values Texas as the No. 2 seed in the CFP and the presumed SEC Champion because of key wins against Vanderbilt and Arkansas.
Tennessee could earn its third key win of the season by the committee’s standards with a win over Vanderbilt in a couple of weeks. That should set the Vols apart from other borderline teams.
The Vols also shouldn’t have a bad loss on its resume. As Garrett Carter mentioned on X, Arkansas can’t be a bad Tennessee loss and a key Texas win. It has to be one or the other. If Arkansas is a key win for a playoff team, it’s not a bad loss for the Vols.
That means Tennessee could have three key wins on its resume with “good” losses to Arkansas and Georgia. That’s one of the best resumes in the country paired with the No. 18 strength of schedule in all of college football.
Regardless, the Vols have to win out to prove their worth to the College Football Playoff committee. Right now, the committee doesn’t believe in Tennessee, but big wins over UTEP and Vanderbilt to end the year could give the Vols a chance to sneak into the first 12-team Playoff.
