What to know before the first College Football Playoff rankings are released Tuesday night

Members of the College Football Playoff selection committee already have descended on Grapevine, Texas, and after deliberating into Monday evening will reconvene Tuesday to complete the debut rankings for the 2020 season.

Even as Zoom calls and remote interviews have become the standard in college football, the committee is scheduled to meet in person each week through Dec. 20, when the group will reveal the makeup of the national semifinals and New Year's Six bowls.

If the routine feels normal, the deliberations will be anything but. Never in the history of the postseason format has the committee needed to take so many factors into account, including the widespread elimination of non-conference play and the variety in games played across every Power Five league.

It's lent the proceedings an air of uncertainty and unpredictability. (It is 2020, after all.) Several questions loom as the committee sets the tone for the rest of the regular season.

How will the committee compare teams?

Here's a scenario for the committee:

One team is unbeaten but has played five games. Another has one loss but has played eight games. Each has three wins against opponents currently holding a winning record, though the first team has one more win against Power Five competition. That would be Northwestern, the only 5-0 team in the Big Ten. The other is Miami (Fla.), which is 7-1 with the lone loss coming against Clemson.

Of the teams in this week's Amway Coaches Poll, one, Brigham Young, has played nine games and another nine have played eight. Seven have played seven games. Two have played six and five games. One, Ohio State, has played four and three teams have played three.

In comparison, every team in last season's debut playoff rankings had played eight or nine games.

How this plays out with the committee is anyone's guess. The only analog may be in 2014, when the committee met for the first time and essentially created a blueprint for assessing and evaluating the entirety of the Bowl Subdivision.

How can you rate the conferences?

The lack of a traditional non-conference season will make it difficult to determine the pecking order among the Power Five leagues. Typically, the perception of a conference is informed in large part by how it fares against other leagues in September; this year's schedule did not include games between teams from two separate Power Five conferences.

"You don’t really know the strengths of each conference, or you try to determine or ascertain what it might be," said former Central Michigan coach Herb Deromedi, who sat on the committee from 2016-19. "But it’s not as easy as all of a sudden having a game being played between two conferences and looking at comparative scores and things like that."

Will absences due to COVID-19 be taken into account?

Games missed due to COVID-19 will be considered in the same way the committee has historically viewed injuries. According to the selection protocols, the committee will analyze "relevant factors such as key injuries that may have affected a team’s performance during the season or likely will affect its postseason performance."

The most notable example in 2020 is that of Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who tested positive for COVID-19 and missed this month's overtime loss at Notre Dame. How the committee places that loss into context may be impacted by the play of Lawrence's replacement, freshman D.J. Uiagalelei, who threw for 439 yards and two touchdowns in his first career road start.

Where will the best of the Group of Five land?

Look for the committee to be conservative in how it ranks Cincinnati, Brigham Young and Coastal Carolina, the three unbeaten teams at the front of the pack in the Group of Five. For Cincinnati, No. 7 in the Amway Coaches Poll, that could mean falling behind another handful of Power Five teams if the committee questions the Bearcats' strength of schedule. (Cincinnati has five wins against opponents with non-losing records.)

Cincinnati still figures to have the highest debut placement of any Group of Five team in playoff history, a mark currently held by Central Florida, which opened at No. 12 in 2018. The highest ranking by a Group of Five team at any point in the playoff rankings is No. 8, also by UCF in 2018.

Will there be an eight-team playoff?

Not in 2020, at least. Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott asked the playoff management committee in September to consider expanding this year's playoff field to eight teams but the proposal was declined after "thorough, respectful and civil discussion," Bill Hancock said. 

An annual topic of conversation, the eight-team field is the likeliest evolution for the format, though six teams is also an option. That proposed system, which has been promoted by Wisconsin athletics director Barry Alvarez, would include a guaranteed spot for the best team from the Group of Five and give the top two seeds opening-round byes.

Just don't hold your breath: The playoff's current contract with ESPN, worth about $5.6 billion over 12 years, doesn't expire until after the 2025-26 postseason.

And which teams will make up the debut top four?

Alabama is an easy pick for No. 1. All seven of the Crimson Tide's wins have come by 15 or more points, with the last three by a combined score of 152-20. Notre Dame will slot in at No. 2 as the only other Power Five team still unbeaten after six or more games. There is no debate over which teams will come in third and fourth — it'll be Ohio State and Clemson.

But while the Buckeyes are No. 3 in the Amway Coaches Poll, the Tigers could leapfrog in the playoff rankings by virtue of four wins against Power Five opponents with a non-losing record. While Ohio State can tout Saturday's 42-35 victory against Indiana, the Buckeyes' three remaining wins have come against teams (Nebraska, Penn State and Rutgers) with a combined record of 2-12.

Follow Paul Myerberg on Twitter @PaulMyerberg