Since Tuesday night, many complaints about the first Playoff rankings have focused on the Crimson Tide's No. 5 slot. Many of the loudest complaints are about Big Ten teams being treated unfairly. ESPN has been challenged with influencing the rankings in favor of the SEC.
Indiana coach Curt Cignetti was especially outspoken: "SEC gets a lot of love from ESPN and all their writers ... And that's why you see all these SEC teams up there and some good two-loss teams from the Big Ten not quite as high."
So if ESPN is carrying water for the SEC, as Cignetti claims, wouldn't the same be expected of CBS Sports favoring Big Ten teams? Instead, CBS Sports' David Cobb provides a ranking of the top 15 CFB Playoff resumes, with four of the top five resumes held by SEC teams. The Kentucky Wildcats were ranked No. 1 in the Playoff resumes. Miami ranked No. 2. Alabama and Ole Miss tied at No. 3, and Texas was ranked No. 5.
The other resume rankings included Georgia at No. 9 and Florida at No. 12. Defining the Gators as a Playoff contender is a stretch, but Florida was ranked No. 24 by the Selection Committee on Tuesday night.
Why Cobb ranked Alabama so high
Cobb used the data source CFB Metrics Consensus.
A cleaner way to look at college football resumes. No predictive metrics.
— David Cobb (@DavidWCobb) November 5, 2026
Borrowing from college basketball's WAB and Quad systems.
Quads determined by where your opponents rank in the CFB Metrics Consensus. pic.twitter.com/5j04i9oSuG
The CFB Metrics Consensus is a compilation of 10 data sources, including ESPN's FPI, Bill Connelly's SP+, and ratings by Jeff Sagarin, Brian Fremeau, and Kenneth Massey.
Cobb provides some compelling narrative to explain his rankings. His "resume scores assign a value for each win/loss based on the likelihood that the average top-25 team would win or lose the game." He says the Selection Committee should include the metric that can be simply defined as " Wins. Losses. Locations."
Clearly, Alabama's biggest resume booster was the one-sided road win over Kentucky. The wins over South Carolina and Texas A&M were also resume boosters. Like the basketball NET rankings, good losses add value, and the Crimson Tide has one in the close loss to Georgia.
Cobb's rankings are not intended to be definitive. But his different perspective on Playoff rankings is worth considering.
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