Kirby Smart is not happy with how the College Football Playoff rankings have been handling his Georgia Bulldogs.
Last week, Georgia was ranked No. 12 by the CFP committee and would have been out of the 12-team field had the playoff began last weekend. Thanks to a victory over SEC East squad Tennessee, the Bulldogs moved up to No. 10 in this week’s poll.
Still, Smart doesn’t understand why his 8-2 Bulldogs are not ranked higher — and what goes into the rankings.
“It’s a hard one because I don’t know what they’re looking for,” Smart said on Wednesday, via On3. “They can’t define that. It’s not simple, either. I mean, anybody can be on that committee and say, ‘This is what we’re looking for. This is our criteria,’ and there’s so much that it overlaps things and everybody debates it and I don’t have time to really waste energy on it.”
Smart also feels like Georgia’s strength of schedule is being overlooked. The Bulldogs have the third-strongest schedule out of 134 teams, according to College Football Reference. Smart believes that playing such a difficult schedule impacts Georgia’s record, point differential and offensive and defensive stats. He’s right.
“It just seems unjust to me when you evaluate somebody’s got a third-ranked defense or somebody’s got a fifth-ranked defense,” Smart said. “Well, don’t you think that third- or fifth-ranked defense (ranking) is dictated by who they’ve played on offense and how many top offenses they’ve played?
“Because last time I checked, our offense and our defense have played the top offenses and defenses across the country. Well, you’re not going to be ranked as high if you play top ones than if you play lower-ranked ones, and that’s what gets me is they talk about the eye test.”
Georgia has lost to Alabama and Ole Miss this season and is ranked behind both teams in the CFP poll. The Bulldogs have two games left on their schedule — home games against UMass and Georgia Tech. Not only can they finish 10-2, but Georgia also has completed its conference schedule and went 6-2. The Bulldogs are unlikely to make it to the conference championship game, which could help prevent them from incurring a detrimental third loss.
While Smart is not happy with his team’s current ranking, if Georgia takes care of business the next two games, it should make the playoff.
