CFP Chair believes Clemson's body of work reason for top 12 ranking

Clemson is working its way up the CFP rankings.

by Grayson Mann - Correspondent - Nov 26, 2024, 9:53 PM

In early November, Clemson’s loss to Louisville appeared to be an active shovel that dug its grave.

Three games later, the Tigers have found new life.

In this week’s college football playoff rankings, chaos has slotted Clemson at 12, making it the first team out of the CFP bracket as things stand currently.

The path to the playoffs seemed incredibly murky, but now the road to their first Playoff appearance in a while has become much more straightforward.

What stands in Clemson’s way?

South Carolina.

The Gamecocks are slotted right at No. 15, giving the Tigers an opportunity to cement a much-needed boost to their resume in the regular season finale.

Clemson is ranked above two more SEC squads with three losses in Alabama and Ole Miss, but what have the Tigers done to put themselves in this position?

If you ask CFP Chair Warde Manuel, he believes the Tigers’ recent body of work has been the catalyst for such a position.

“Yeah, well, Clemson split up with some losses ahead of them by Alabama and Mississippi, and they had a win against Citadel, obviously, but that wasn't the big reason,” Manuel said. “Obviously, they're at 9-2 with only two losses. The teams right behind them have three losses, and we just felt as a committee as we looked at their body of work with three straight wins after they lost to Louisville, including back-to-back wins against Virginia Tech and Pitt, that they deserve to move up into that 12th position.”

As Tiger fans look around the country for extra insurance, Tennessee may come to mind with a matchup against an up-and-down Vanderbilt.

That noon kick will go at the same time as the Palmetto Bowl, certainly becoming an easy candidate for a score to watch throughout the day. Manuel, however, was posed with another possibility: Indiana.

The Hoosiers have been riding high for months as Curt Cignetti’s team rose to the fifth-best team in the country.

Then came Ohio State.

The Buckeyes trounced Indiana, with the Hoosiers now slotted at the tenth spot. Is there a sizeable gap between Clemson and Indiana, or is there an opportunity to take an at-large bid out from under it? Manuel believes these two teams are incredibly close in their evaluation.

“They're pretty close,” Manuel said. “They're two away. You could see that we think they're close to each other. Indiana's only loss was to the No. 2 Ohio State team at Ohio State. But they have wins over Michigan, Nebraska, and Washington. Indiana is a very good team. Clemson has bounced back from their Louisville loss and they lost to Georgia at the beginning of the year with back-to-back road winds at Virginia Tech and Pitt. And so they've come on and again, as expected, and they set some of their starters against Citadel and still dominated them as we expected. So we think highly of both teams and they're very close in the rankings together.”

A signature win over South Carolina could be the late boost Clemson needs over a team like Indiana, that lacks a quality win.

As Dabo Swinney has put it, all of the hypotheticals won’t matter unless the Tigers take care of business.

The Tigers’ playoff destiny has seen a resurgence, with the Gamecocks standing in the way of their first potential CFP berth since 2020.