With the calendar nearing November, the College Football Playoff race is heating up. The committee will release its first rankings in exactly one week and Tennessee is in the middle of a large group of teams with very real playoff hopes.
Tennessee enters this week’s matchup against Kentucky with a 6-1 (3-1 SEC) record. The Vols are one of four SEC teams with just one loss while four more SEC foes are right behind with two losses. But CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm has a two-loss SEC team in the playoffs over the Vols at the moment.
Palm pegged Alabama as the No. 7 team in his rankings this week has them as a No. 10 seed facing off against No. 7 BYU in the first round of the College Football Playoffs.
“The Crimson Tide are the highest-ranked two-loss team because of the strength of their schedule and quality of their losses,” Palm wrote of Alabama. “Yes, I know Vanderbilt is on that list, but if you keep reading, you will see that they are on this one also. Alabama has only played one team that tis currently below .500 (South Florida 3-4).”
Meanwhile, Palm has Tennessee as his No. 12 team and predicts the Vols to face Southern Methodist in the Gator Bowl.
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“The Volunteers looked to be in trouble after losing at Arkansas and needing overtime to beat Florida, but then they got the big win over Alabama,” Palm wrote. “Tennessee’s schedule is pretty soft for an SEC team with their only other marquee game being at Georgia on Nov. 16. The Vols also finish with Vanderbilt and should hope that stands up as a quality game.”
Palm has two glaring lapses in his synopsis of each team. First, Tennessee owns the head-to-head against Alabama, knocking off the Crimson 24-17 in Knoxville earlier this month. Then even more significantly, Alabama has one more loss than Tennessee at the moment.
It would be one thing to rank Alabama ahead of Tennessee if the Crimson Tide beat LSU and Tennessee loses to Georgia later in November. But to have the rankings where they stand right now is very bizarre.
With four Big 10 teams having a strong chance to have one loss or fewer, Tennessee’s path to the College Football Playoffs at 10-2 isn’t as certain as it once seemed. The Vols need to be one of the top three SEC teams to truly feel safe about their chances to make the playoffs.
Tennessee will look to stay at one loss and potentially earn some style points this Saturday when they host a struggling Kentucky team at Neyland Stadium. Tom Hart, Jordan Rodgers and Cole Cubelic are on the call for the SEC Network.
