With the advent of the College Football Playoff in 2014, we — the Elvii of college football — have joined together to present our weekly playoff nominations to keep the selection committee honest. We call it the T.C.B. Poll.

Image courtesy @AuburnElvis
Playoff Rankings: Week 1
Each week, the T.C.B. Poll is an aggregate of all our inputs. Scroll down to see individual selections and opinions — this is how we’d like to see the College Football Playoff if we had to narrow the field *right now* to determine a national champion. Images courtesy The Helmet Project.
Rank |
Team |
Record |
Weekly Change |
|
1 | ![]() |
Ohio State | 1-0 | — |
2 | ![]() |
Alabama | 1-0 | +3 |
3 | ![]() |
Texas Christian | 1-0 | +1 |
4 | ![]() |
Oregon | 1-0 | -2 |
Also receiving votes: Auburn, Georgia, Michigan State, Oklahoma.
TCB Committee Member Comments
@TheLSUElvis
- The Ohio State – Until you lose your crown – you remain number 1
- Auburn – Can they get past LSU in Death Valley in two weeks?
- Alabama – Can’t wait for the Iron Bowl
- TCU – Impressive but not impressed.
@AuburnElvis
- SEC Champion – (Uh… let’s say, “Alabama”)
- Ohio State – Sure their schedule sucks, but think about this: even if the New England Patriots played 12 junior high school teams, they’d still be a great team. Good competition doesn’t MAKE you a good team (see Vanderbilt), it just gives you a better opportunity to show how good you are. With Ohio State, we won’t have any valuable proof of how good they are until the last few weeks. The only way to correct this is to force schools to play better teams earlier in the season.
- Oregon – To anyone who thinks UCLA will win the Pac-12: You’re smoking something… which is understandable if you’re in LA.
- Oklahoma – I’m predicting a big win in Knoxville this week, and then everyone’s going to be on the Sooner’s bandwagon. Just wait… you’ll see.
@HawkeyeElvis
The top spots remain the same for Hawkeye Elvis in this week’s TCB, but the bottom half is All Shook Up…
- Ohio State – Against VT: 1st Quarter – Whoo! They are unstoppable! 2nd Quarter – Wow, they are overrated. 3rd Quarter – Yeah, forget about what I said in the 2nd Quarter. Buckeyes have one tough game left all year.
- Alabama – So Darth Saban got off to a little bit of a slow start. Big Deal.
- Michigan State – A workmanlike win against a better-than-advertised Western Michigan team. This week they get the spotlight against the Ducks. Big Life. Big State. Big Ten!
- TCU – Okay, fine, I will put a Big 12 team in here. Were they a step slow against Minnesota last week or were the Gophers that good?
@IrishElvis
- Ohio State – One quarter of looking shaky doesn’t shake their top billing this week.
- TCU – Ugly win in week one, but at least they played a quality opponent to open the season (looks disdainfully at most of the rest of week 1 scheduling)
- UGA – As with the rest of the SEC, we probably won’t know precisely *how* good Georgia is until the calendar flips to October.
- Oregon – They get this courtesy ranking for now, but I don’t anticipate they’ll emerge from this weekend’s trip to East Lansing unscathed.
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