Everything the College Football Playoff committee said about Ohio State after 1st rankings

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After appearing at No. 1 in both major polls so far in the 2025 college football season following the Texas win, Ohio State doubled down and was also ranked at the No. 1 team in the first College Football Playoff rankings of 2025.

There’s always debate and controversy with the CFP rankings every week, but you have to give credit to the CFP committee for doing its best to be transparent about the process and what went into the rankings each week. In fact, the group makes itself available to the media shortly after the rankings are revealed each week to field questions and where teams were ranked and why.

We’ve been a part of these press conferences from the get-go and like to bring to you everything that is asked and said about Ohio State each week, so why stop now? Here’s the conversation that centered around the Buckeyes and what the CFP committee had to say about them after the first reveal of the College Football Playoff rankings.

Opening Remarks from the CFP Committee

BRETT DANIELS: I’d like to welcome everyone to the first College Football Playoff Selection Committee teleconference for the 2025 season. Joining us here tonight is Rich Clark, the executive director of the College Football Playoff, along with Mack Rhoades, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee chair.

At this time I’d like to turn it over to Mack for an opening comment. Mack?

MACK RHOADES: Thank you, Brett. Good evening, everyone. Certainly a pleasure to be with all of you, and I look forward to answering your questions.

Because this is the first meeting, I have a statement that I’m going to literally go ahead and read to you. It’s lengthy, so I apologize in advance, and I promise that I won’t need to read it the next time we get together a week from now.

My name is Mack Rhoades, and it’s my honor to be the new chairman of the Selection Committee. As you’ve seen, we’ve wrapped up our first ranking of the 2025-26 season.

I’d like to remind everyone on how it works. The rules for the committee are set by the 10 commissioners and the athletic director of Notre Dame, who all serve on the management committee that runs the Playoff.

Their instructions to us are select the best, with emphasis on best, 25 teams in college football and rank them for inclusion in the playoff. Preseason polls do not matter to us. No other organization’s polls matter to us.

What happened last year does not matter. Conference affiliations do not matter. We focus solely on the individual teams. We consider teams’ performance on the field, their strength of schedule, their head-to-head match-ups, and results against common opponents.

This year, we have 12 members on the committee, and we discuss all of the above factors, and we do so in depth. It’s a lively conversation. It’s an informed conversation. I think it’s a debate that fans would be proud to hear because we take this seriously.

Our committee members come prepared each and every meeting. We’re comprised of sitting and retired athletic directors, retired head coaches, a former student-athlete who’s in the College Hall of Fame, and one retired journalist.

We have lots of data statistics that are studied, but the committee is subjective by design. Each person on the committee has a lot of work to do. We’ve watched the games. Let me repeat that: we watch the games. We study the stats, debate the merits of each team, and then we vote.

One thing will be different this year. Last year, the top four conference champions received a bye. This year, regardless of conference, the top four-ranked teams will automatically earn a first-round bye.

You’ve already seen our ranking. Each one is important, whether it’s the No. 1-ranked team or the 25th-ranked team, and all of the teams in between. That’s why we work hard to get it right, to get it right for the institutions, for the head coaches, and most importantly for student-athletes.

Thanks for listening, and I’m ready to take your questions. Let’s go forward.

On why Ohio State was favored as the No. 1 team in the CFP rankings

Q. Just wondering what the debate was like as far as No. 1, and what tilted things in Ohio State’s favor over Indiana and A&M?

MACK RHOADES: Good evening. I certainly appreciate the question. There was robust conversation, discussion about 1 through 3, all three of them undefeated.

Certainly great conversation and discussion about Ohio State and Indiana, two really, really quality, quality teams, two teams with really, really good wins. Ohio State versus No. 11 Texas, and a win over 23 Washington. Indiana, No. 9 Oregon, No. 20 Iowa. Both defenses, both offenses ranked in the top 5.

So it was certainly close, but when we looked at film, and we’re blessed to have committee members and coaches that do a lot of film work, we just felt like Ohio State had a slight edge when we think about offensive line play and then a slight edge defensively. That was really the outcome.

Ohio State has some, I’m going to call them, explosive players that probably stood out as well.

On Texas A&M’s defense compared to Ohio State and Indiana

Q. Just wanted to ask, what did y’all see in A&M, and can you elaborate on any particulars about A&M’s defense that separated them behind Ohio State and Indiana right now?

MACK RHOADES: Yeah, so what we saw in A&M is a really, really good football team. They went into Death Valley, I thought dominated a good LSU team. You have a dynamic playmaker at quarterback, Marcel Reed. He can beat you with his arm. He can beat you with his feet. Impressive win, certainly going on the road, South Bend.

I think you’re talking about really small margins when you think about the difference between Ohio State, Indiana, and A&M, and then I think statistically, when we looked at A&M defensively, they’re just lower than both Ohio State and Indiana. We had to make a hard decision, and you’re trying to find separators, and that was a separator for us.

On strength of schedule for the CFP teams and the rankings

Q. I wanted to follow up on the schedule strength. I know there’s an enhanced schedule strength metric this year. I don’t know if you can go into a little bit more detail about it. And then I guess I would ask you about the two teams, Georgia and Miami with its schedule strength a little low apparently.

MACK RHOADES: Yeah, so we introduced the new metric, which is record strength, which measures how well a team performs against its schedule, and that’s a cumulative sum of scores as we progressed through the year.

Then we took schedule strength and we tweaked it. Schedule strength measures difficulty of schedule up to that point, but we put more weight on the stronger teams, and so that was the adjustment for schedule strength.

Again, it’s one of a handful of metrics at our disposal.

We looked at Georgia, and again, really good football team. I think Gunner Stockton at quarterback has really progressed. It certainly feels like they have more confidence in him, doing a lot more with him. Again, he’s another, maybe similar to Marcel Reed, where he can beat you with his arm, he can beat you with his feet. The head-to-head against Ole Miss, obviously, we took that into account. We absolutely took into account the loss at home versus Alabama. But Georgia is a really, really good football team.

Georgia Tech, again, quality team. I think Haynes King is everything to that team. To this point in time, and I think you can say this about the ACC, not at least at this point, a lot of non-conference signature wins. We looked at Georgia Tech at North Carolina State, and it just felt like North Carolina State dominated Georgia Tech on both sides of the ball. A bad night for Georgia Tech. But again, a lot of ball still to be played.

I’m sorry, you asked about Georgia, and I’ll go to Miami.

Miami probably early on, I think, like everybody else in the country, held them in high, high regard. Certainly, the win against Notre Dame. But with recent loss that Friday night game to a Louisville team that came into Miami, and then watched obviously the game at SMU, I think offensively right now, Miami is struggling a bit. The committee felt strongly in terms of where we ranked Miami.

On nonconference scheduling when comparing the teams at the top of the CFP rankings

Q. As you guys are discussing these teams, as you mentioned the discussion at the top of the poll, when you talked about those three teams, did you talk about non-league scheduling and the fact that two of those teams challenged themselves and of course Indiana didn’t?

MACK RHOADES: Yeah, the schedule is the schedule. We don’t talk about scheduling philosophy and how any team schedules. We just looked at hey, this is who they have on the schedule. This is the outcome of those games. Then, looking at all of the metrics at our disposal.

On leaning on former coaches and their opinions when watching film

Q. You mentioned earlier about watching the film. I’m curious when you guys are doing that how much you rely on the former head coaches or people that have had more experience than maybe some others to really break down what you see on film for each game you guys watch.

MACK RHOADES: Appreciate the question. It’s a great question. But man, know your strengths. Know your strengths within the committee room, and those are experts. Those are pros. Those are people that have done it for years and years and years. We’ve got great respect for Coach Dantonio, Coach Ault, Coach Riley.

But I do want to say this: There are others in the room that are skilled at looking at the tape, looking at the film, so it is a collective effort, and it’s great discussion, and we certainly count on our three coaches and their opinions.

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This article originally appeared on Buckeyes Wire: CFP rankings: What the committee said about Ohio State after Week 10

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