Why College Football Playoff projections don't amount to a hill of beans

Everyone's scrapping for content, but this is the least meaningful content of all.

On Sunday and Monday every website in the college football world cranked out a projected playoff bracket and all of the experts and pundits from Nicole Auerbach to Andy Staples did one too. How would the College Football Playoff Committee rank the teams Tuesday night?

It's the worst kind of stale cracker barrel content there is, for a couple of reasons. First of all, and this is most important, none of the committee's rankings mean a thing until the last one. It's all a hype show. In previous seasons they've shown a propensity to contradict themselves at the end, shoehorning an extra SEC school into the bracket on the last Sunday.

There's nothing about their initial bracket that's informative or binding, so trying to predict whether Ohio State or Indiana or Texas A&M is ranked No. 1 now is a fool's errand. Add to that, the committee reveals their initial bracket Tuesday night at 5 p.m. PT on ESPN.

There's little real value in anyone making a subjective guess about something that's going to be revealed in hours, and doesn't have any significance until the actual selection show, Sunday December 7 at 3 p.m. PT on the same network. That's the day that will live in infamy. The others are strictly window dressing.

Lastly, the warmup reveals are virtually useless. Whether Oregon, Texas or Louisville are in or out, whether a team is No. 6 or No. 10 or No. 18 at this stage is only mildly interesting. There's a month of the season to be played, and games like Oregon at Iowa and BYU at Texas Tech will determine who makes the cut. Conjectures and make-work assignments won't put any team in the final 12.

The Ducks have to go at least 3-1 to gain a spot in the field, and a 4-0 finish would guarantee them a home game in the first round. Until they achieve that, anyone's prediction of the seeding is 200 monkeys trying to type Shakespeare.

This monkey would rather focus on the Oregon offense and how they handle the blitz.

The Committee's first ranking is likely to follow pretty closely to the Coaches Poll:

1. Ohio State
2. Indiana
3. Texas A&M
4. Alabama
5. Georgia
6. Oregon
7. Ole Miss
8. BYU
9. Texas Tech
10. Notre Dame
11. Virginia
12. Oklahoma

Texas is the first team out at this point. Of the 12, Oregon is among the most likely to be downgraded a seed or three based on strength of schedule. The Duck's best win so far is 5-3 Northwestern, but a pair of November Top 25 matchups and four games against teams with winning records will either strengthen the resume or send it to the shredder.