The only rankings that actually matter debut on Tuesday. And even these don’t truly matter. Remember, the first time the College Football Playoff selection committee released a ranking in 2014, these were the top four:

• Mississippi State
• Florida State
• Auburn
• Ole Miss

How many of those teams actually made the inaugural CFP? One. The Seminoles went 13-0, entered the bracket as a No. 3 seed and got crushed by Oregon in the Rose Bowl. So don’t despair if your team isn’t in the top four on Tuesday when the committee reveals its first ranking of the 2022 season.

As long as your team is one of the Lucky 13, of course.

On the postgame edition of The Andy Staples Show, Ari and I determined which teams remain eligible for the CFP. We might be wrong, but eight seasons worth of selections have established a fairly reliable pattern. The committee has yet to place a two-loss team* into the top four. You don’t have to be a conference champion to make the top four, but you’d better not have a blowout loss. (Unless you avenged said loss in the conference title game or beat the team that blew you out earlier in the season.) At the end of the show, Ari gave all of us a homework assignment: Rank these 13 teams.

*You’ll notice two-loss LSU is omitted from the Lucky 13. This is based on committee precedent. Should LSU beat Alabama and then beat Georgia or Tennessee in the SEC title game, perhaps that changes this year. A two-loss Auburn probably would have made the bracket in 2017, but the Tigers lost their rematch against Georgia in the SEC title game.

Entering this week’s games, these are the 13 teams that can still make the CFP, listed by conference.

ACC

Clemson

North Carolina

Big 12

TCU

Big Ten

Illinois

Michigan

Ohio State

Pac-12

Oregon

UCLA

USC

SEC

Alabama

Georgia

Ole Miss

Tennessee

That this many teams remain in the hunt means we’ve had a pretty fun season so far. Also, it doesn’t feel as if there are one or two teams that would absolutely smash everyone else still in the hunt. When the CFP expands to 12 in a few years, we’ll be able to measure the teams still in the hunt at this point by the dozen. But for now, let’s be happy the number is this high.

To complete Ari’s assignment, I tried to imagine how I’d vote as a committee member. I collected some stats I know are important to the committee. I also used some that I find important. I used the SP+ predictive ranking created by ESPN’s Bill Connelly. This is my favorite of the predictive ranking formulas, but I won’t quibble if you want to use ESPN’s Football Power Index or Jeff Sagarin’s rankings. (Bill’s formula can’t seem to accept that Texas isn’t back this year, but I’m willing to forgive that.)

I do like the FPI’s strength of schedule measurement, though. So I also used that. The FPI also has a handy measurement of remaining schedule strength, but that isn’t necessary for this exercise since we can only go by the games that have already been played. I also used the FPI’s strength of record, which measures how difficult a team’s record is to achieve based on the strength of its opponents, travel time, rest time and other factors.