ESPN college football analyst and podcast host Greg McElroy understands the frustration coming out of Knoxville on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
To be clear, there isn’t a mob with pitchforks marching down Kingston Pike or Cumberland Avenue. Plenty of Tennessee fans online believe that the Vols are still in a good position if they handle their own business, which is true. But there was certainly chatter on social media on Tuesday night debating Tennessee’s resume against their other two-loss counterparts in the SEC with Georgia, Alabama, and Ole Miss.
The Vols were slotted behind each of those three teams at No. 11 in the Tuesday rankings update. Alabama leads the quartet at No. 7 followed by Ole Miss at No. 9 and Georgia at No. 10.
Tennessee, with a win over Alabama, would be projected as the first team out if the season was over today based on Tuesday’s rankings. That frustrated many fans and analysts considering the comparison of wins and losses with other teams.
McElroy agreed with the frustration.
“So Tennessee fans that are really upset right now, I totally get it,” McElroy said on the post-reveal episode of the Always College Football podcast. “If I were Tennessee, I’d be looking at this, I’d say, man, we beat the seventh-ranked team and yet we’re four spots behind them? And if the playoffs started tomorrow we wouldn’t be in the field? If I’m Tennessee, I totally understand your frustration.”
But with or without frustration, Tennessee still sits behind the Tide, the Rebels, and the Bulldogs here on Wednesday morning.
While assessing the logjam of teams during the show, McElroy brought out a fascinating graphic that he used to theorize why the selection committee put Tennessee in the spot they did.
The graphic looked like this:
| Combined Record of Teams Beaten |
Strength of Schedule | |
| Alabama | 45-25 | 16th |
| Georgia | 40-30 | 1st |
| Ole Miss | 38-32 | 29th |
| Tennessee | 29-41 | 18th |
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McElroy used that table to explain why he feels the committee did what they did on Tuesday night:
“But here’s the problem (for Tennessee),” McElroy said. “Your strength of schedule right now in the SEC, the combined record of the teams you’ve beaten is 29-41. I just told you what it was: Alabama 45-25, Georgia 40-30, Ole Miss 38-32, and then Tennessee at 29-41. Tennessee has beaten one team with an above .500 record and that’s Alabama. So I think that’s what’s holding the committee back. And they also – with Ole Miss, Georgia, and Alabama – they have multiple top 25 wins. Tennessee has one. That’s why I think they are where they are.”
Here’s a look at the current top 25 teams that each of the four teams have beaten:
Alabama: No. 10 Georgia, No. 18 South Carolina, No. 23 Missouri
Ole Miss: No. 10 Georgia, No. 18 South Carolina
Georgia: No. 3 Texas, No. 11 Tennessee, No. 17 Clemson
Tennessee: No. 7 Alabama
Missouri has no business being in the Top 25, but even taking them out the Crimson Tide would still have two Top 25 wins. Combine that number with the combined record of teams beaten statistic and it could provide a look into why the committee made the decision they did regarding Tennessee.
And that ultimately highlights the big problem of the selection, which is that anyone can use one of the dozens of different metrics out there to justify the case for a particular team to be in the playoffs, ranked higher or lower, whatever it may be. We just don’t have a good understanding of which specific metrics the selection committee is using or valuing on a week-to-week basis.
Rocky Top Insider’s Ryan Schumpert laid out a good case for that very idea, that some metrics seem to be valued more than others but there’s also little to no consistency week-to-week.
Ole Miss beat Georgia but the Bulldogs have a vastly superior resume.
OM > UGA
Tennessee beat Alabama but Crimson Tide have better resume.
Bama > UT
There’s simply no consistency in what the committee values.
— Ryan Schumpert (@rschump00) November 20, 2024
Catch the full episode of the Always College Football podcast with Greg McElroy below:
One Response
I agree on the ranking and although I am a VFL (1965) I do think Tennessee just isn’t quite ready for prime time championships. I do firmly believe in the next 3 years there will be a huge uptick in their skill set and that correlates with largerr oppportunities to be in the chase. But Tennessee needs to stop this losing to a less talented team during the regular season. But either way I say, :GO VOLZ!”