The polls are open and the votes are being counted across the nation, but college football fans have something more interesting to look forward to Tuesday night.
Most will press pause on the midterm elections and turn their attention to the first College Football Playoff rankings that’ll be announced at 6 p.m. on ESPN.
Well, everyone except Ole Miss coach Pete Golding.
“I’m not going to be paying attention,” he said at Monday’s weekly press conference when asked if he’ll be watching Tuesday night.
That’s an understandable approach for a coach preparing for a game that’ll drastically impact the very rankings the rest of us will be watching with undivided attention.
No. 12 Ole Miss is set to host No. 2 Georgia this Saturday in a game that could determine if the Rebels earn a spot in the 12-team playoff field.
A win against the Bulldogs keeps Ole Miss at two losses with a realistic chance of winning the remainder of its games.
A loss possibly puts Ole Miss on the wrong side of the playoff bubble, like in 2024.
So, Ole Miss fans should be glad Golding isn’t watching the rankings reveal and instead will focus on what he control.
Also while explaining his decision, Golding laid out a good argument for why most of regular folks shouldn’t put too much weight into the rankings.
“I don’t know what the exact numbers are, but I think when that first poll came out last year, there were several teams that were in it that didn’t make it,” Golding said. “And I think there were several teams that made it that weren’t in it.”
Basically, a lot can change and looking at how the current season has played out, the CFP rankings will are almost certainly going to look a lot different in six weeks.
Last season three teams were included in the initial CFP rankings who ended up not making the field. Those three were BYU (No. 7), Notre Dame (No. 10) and Texas (No. 11). Those three teams were replaced by Miami, Tulane and James Madison.
(For those curious, Ole Miss debuted at No. 6 in last season’s initial rankings and were the No. 6 seed in the playoff field.)
A bunch of things happened that led to those teams missing out on the playoffs, which brings us back to what Golding talked about Monday.
“To the point of controlling what we can control, you’re damn sure not going to be worried about that if you don’t go out and play really well on Saturday,” he said. “We’re going to take this thing one game at a time, one day at a time, and go out and look up in December and see where that thing is.”
Ole Miss doesn’t need to worry about where it lands in the initial CFP rankings. If the Rebels win the rest of their games, they’ll be in the playoff field.
Everything else is just noise.
