Clemson Football: Will CFB Playoff 2019 rankings show major SEC bias?

The Clemson football team is expected to be ranked inside the top-five of the first CFB Playoff poll, but will there be SEC bias in the rankings?

The first 2019 CFB Playoff poll will be released Tuesday evening and the Clemson football program is set up to be on the right side of things when it’s all said and done.

The Tigers currently hold a 9-0 record and are a couple of wins away from clinching the ACC Atlantic and getting back to the ACC Championship game, where they can advance to the CFB Playoff.

As we’ve seen in the past, the CFB Playoff rankings model the AP Poll in many ways. The members of the committee listen to what media members have to say and they take into account narratives that have been built all season long.

If that’s the case this season, Clemson football fans should expect a major amount of SEC bias to be prevalent in this first set of rankings.

Here’s a look at the current AP top-10 heading into Week 11:

1. LSU
2. Alabama
3. Ohio State
4. Clemson
5. Penn State
6. Georgia
7. Oregon
8. Utah
9. Oklahoma
10. Florida

What can we glean from looking at this top-10? Georgia came away with a nice win over Florida this past weekend, but why should the one-loss Bulldogs team be ahead of Oregon (whose only loss came to Auburn at the beginning of the season) or even Utah? You could certainly make the argument that Oklahoma- even with a bad loss to Kansas State- should be considered over Georgia, who lost at home to South Carolina. Yes, that’s the same Gamecock team that got beat by Tennessee.

Most likely, though, I can see why they’d have Georgia ahead of Oklahoma. I can’t really understand why the Bulldogs should be considered over the two Pac-12 teams, except because of the fact that the AP is wanting to go ahead and set up the opportunity for Georgia to vault back into the CFB Playoff top-four without a Pac-12 team even being considered.

In addition, we now have two-loss Florida still at No. 10. It’s not like the Gators lost two close ones to LSU and Georgia. They were beaten by double-digits by the Tigers. Anyone that watched the UGA game knows that the Bulldogs were in control even if the score was a little closer. Let’s not pretend that this Florida team is top-10 worthy.

It will be interesting to see what the CFB Playoff committee thinks about these teams as we head into the month of November. Will they vault SEC teams up the rankings because they played other SEC teams who were ranked in the preseason? It’s my hunch that we’ll be seeing something similar to the AP Poll.