CBS Sports projects Clemson outside Top 10 of first Playoff rankings

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The first College Football Playoff rankings come next week, and the Tigers have one more opportunity to impress this Saturday, versus Louisville (7:30 p.m./ESPN), to start it strong.

CBS Sports' Jerry Palm projected how that initial ranking could look, and he believes the committee would have the Tigers lower than their spots in the traditional polls this week (No. 11 in AP/No. 8 in Coaches).

Palm says the committee would have Clemson at No. 14 going into the weekend.

"The Tigers are similar to Indiana except they have played Georgia and got their doors blown off. They have not had to break a sweat to win since, however. Perhaps Louisville will give them a test," Palm said.

Around Clemson, Palm projects Indiana at No. 13 and the highest-ranked Group of Five leader Boise State afterward (15).

By those rankings, the 12-team field would be Oregon (conference automatic bid), Georgia (conference auto bid), Miami (conference auto bid), BYU (conference auto bid), Penn State (at-large), Ohio State (at-large), Alabama (at-large), Texas (at-large), Iowa State (at-large), Notre Dame (at-large), Texas A&M (at-large) and Boise State (fifth conference auto bid).

As Palm lists, CFP rankings criteria include head-to-head meetings, strength of schedule, games against common opponents, results versus ranked opponents and conference championships. The difference when it comes to seeding the 12-team group is the Top 4 conference champs occupying the Top 4 seeds and one more conference champ being seeded according to their ranking after that.

Palm's assessment of where they are now does differ from his projection, however, which has Georgia on top, then Ohio State, Miami and Iowa State getting byes, followed by the at-large/G5 auto bid spots of 5. Oregon hosting 12. Boise State, 6. Texas hosting 11. Clemson, 7. BYU hosting 10. Alabama and 8. Penn State hosting 9. Texas A&M. If they advanced out of Texas, the Tigers would face Miami in the Peach Bowl in that scenario.

The first CFP rankings show is 7 p.m. next Tuesday on ESPN. It will run each Tuesday up to a final CFP rankings to determine the 12-team field after the conference championship games on December 8.

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