Everyone is struggling to understand why Tennessee is ranked eight spots behind Alabama in the first College Football Playoff rankings of the season.

Tennessee beat Alabama 26-10 a couple of weeks ago, and the two teams have the same record (6-2), yet the Vols are ranked No. 13 and the Crimson Tide are at No. 5.

College Football Playoff committee chairman Hunter Yurachek pointed to Alabama’s win over Mississippi State earlier this season as the top reason for the gap between the two programs.

“I think many forget that [Alabama] went on the road and beat Mississippi State when Mississippi State was undefeated and at full strength,” said committee chairman Hunter Yurachek on ESPN after the rankings were revealed. “And we really valued that as a strong win for Alabama back there in the early part of the season when Mississippi State had that quarterback, Kamario Taylor, that was very good, and Mississippi State was on a roll at that time.”

“Tennessee doesn’t have the same level of quality wins. They do have the win against Alabama, but you have to go a little bit deeper to see Tennessee with another quality win on their schedule.”

That is a load of nonsense, and it shows why Yurachek has no business being on the committee. He should do everyone a favor and step down because those comments clearly show he has no clue what he’s doing.

First off, any win in the SEC is a quality win. What Yurachek said is an insult to the rest of the SEC (including Arkansas, where he’s currently the athletic director, which lost to the Vols at home in October).

But specifically, he’s missing how important and impressive Tennessee’s win over Auburn was last month.

Auburn is 4-4. They haven’t been consistent in recent weeks, but they’ve played really good football at times this season.

I mean, the Tigers beat Georgia in Athens a few weeks ago. That shows you what they’re capable of when they’re at their best.

Tennessee’s win over Auburn in October was one of the most impressive coaching jobs I’ve seen from Josh Heupel. His true freshman quarterback (Faizon Brandon) wasn’t playing well to start that game, and Auburn led 7-3 at halftime.

Heupel made the switch to sophomore quarterback George MacIntyre, a player with zero SEC starts at the time, and grinded out a tough 24-14 win in the second half.

A lot of good teams find a way to lose a game like that, but Tennessee found a way to win. If you actually watched that game, you understand that Auburn competed hard and didn’t make it easy on the Vols.

It was undoubtedly a “quality win,” despite the nonsense that Yurachek wants to spew.

And it shows a major problem with the committee. All they’re interested in doing is looking at “data points” and “metrics,” as if any of that can tell the full story of any one team. Anyone who has ever competed — Yurachek is a former college basketball player at Guilford, so he should know this — understands that every single game has its own identity. Every game in the SEC is its own story and unfolds in a unique way that the box score can’t explain. Those games cannot and should not be defined by what a spreadsheet says (this applies to far more than just Tennessee’s win against Auburn). By placing such an importance on the data, the committee is being lazy — and they’re also missing the essence of college football (which is the actual competition on the field!).

I don’t know what the answer to College Football Playoff seeding is, but I know this isn’t the way. The committee is far too subjective and biased. There are 100 “right answers” when it comes to how these rankings could be compiled, and the committee somehow managed to land on one of the wrong answers.