ESPN College GameDay host Rece Davis isn’t fully buying Alabama at No. 3 in the second College Football Playoff rankings, a spot that made the 7-2 Crimson Tide the earliest two-loss team ever ranked in the committee’s top four.
“There is an argument for Alabama, maybe not three. Three seems high to me,” Davis said on Wednesday’s College GameDay podcast. He added that he doesn’t believe Alabama has set itself apart from the SEC’s other two-loss contenders “at this moment in time.”
Why is Alabama ranked No. 3?
The committee moved Alabama up from No. 5 after a 31-13 win at LSU, the Crimson Tide’s second straight victory since October losses to Georgia and Tennessee. The result in Baton Rouge led ESPN analyst Booger McFarland to declare Alabama a playoff lock.
Committee chair Hunter Yurachek, Arkansas’ athletic director, told Davis on ESPN’s rankings show that Alabama ranks No. 1 nationally in both record strength and schedule strength. He also credited four quality wins: at LSU, at Kentucky, against South Carolina and at Mississippi State, which was 4-0 when Alabama won 56-23.
“So Alabama, we believe, deserves to be the No. 3 team in the country,” Yurachek said.
That schedule strength also explains why Tennessee’s 26-10 win over Alabama hasn’t changed the order. “Alabama was in that first pool, Tennessee was not in that first pool,” Yurachek said. That means the committee hasn’t compared the two teams side by side yet.
Davis didn’t fault the chair. He said the weekly rankings are “not the final piece of work,” and three more releases are due before the final bracket on Dec. 6.
Rece Davis’ Texas, Tennessee, Alabama order
Davis’ own AP Top 25 ballot lists the SEC’s three two-loss contenders as Texas, Tennessee and Alabama, following the head-to-head chain. Texas beat Tennessee 20-17 in Knoxville on Sept. 26, and Tennessee beat Alabama in Knoxville three weeks later.
“It’s the determining factor that separates right now,” Davis said of head-to-head results, though he added it isn’t the only reason.
The committee has Texas at No. 6 and Tennessee at No. 8. The Vols climbed five spots after a 34-6 win over Kentucky that led Paul Finebaum to call the Wildcats overrated.
Davis still challenged fans who judge the race only by head-to-head results. “Why doesn’t South Carolina beating Tennessee matter for the people who are so upset at Tennessee?” he asked. The Gamecocks beat the Vols 27-24 on a walk-off field goal Oct. 24, nearly a month after Alabama beat South Carolina 49-18.
He applied the same logic to No. 1 Georgia, which lost 27-24 at home to Auburn on Oct. 17. “When you fixate on one thing, even if it’s head-to-head, I think you risk not seeing the entire picture,” Davis said.
What’s next for all three?
Alabama visits Vanderbilt, which upset the Crimson Tide in Nashville in 2024, then closes with Chattanooga and Auburn. Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer brushed off the ranking this week. “It doesn’t really matter because you got to keep playing,” DeBoer said on SiriusXM.
Tennessee travels to 4-5 Texas A&M for a blackout game at Kyle Field, and Texas visits LSU in a matchup Davis picked the Longhorns to win.
Alabama at Vanderbilt kicks off at 12:45 p.m. ET Saturday on SEC Network. Tennessee at Texas A&M follows at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN, and Texas at LSU closes the day in prime time on ABC.
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