The College Football Playoff committee has shown over the last two weeks that it’s willing to use any excuse it can find — no matter how flimsy it may be — to rank Alabama ahead of Tennessee in the College Football Playoff rankings.

Tennessee and Alabama have the same record, and the Vols beat the Crimson Tide 26-10 in October. Bama, though, was ranked eight spots above Tennessee in Week 1 of the rankings. This week, the Tide are ranked five spots ahead of the Vols (Bama at No. 3 and UT at No. 8).

One excuse the committee is using to justify this is that Alabama beat Mississippi State before Bulldogs quarterback Kamario Taylor was lost for the season. They essentially see that as a ‘ranked win’ for the Tide.

That argument, though, doesn’t really hold up because Taylor was already injured when Mississippi State played Alabama.

Another excuse being used is that Alabama played a physical game against Georgia the week before playing Tennessee.

“Maybe that’s why Bama is getting the benefit of the doubt with how they came off the Georgia game and lost to Tennessee,” said ESPN’s Greg McElroy during the rankings reveal show two weeks ago. “Maybe that’s what’s factoring in here. These coaches in the room are saying, ‘Hey, these teams are beat up after a tough game.’”

ESPN’s Joey Galloway hinted at the same argument.

“I wasn’t surprised that Georgia lost the week after (beating Bama),” said ESPN’s Joey Galloway on Kirk Herbstreit’s YouTube channel. “I thought that was the hardest hitting football game I’d seen all season with Georgia and Alabama. I didn’t know if either team could recover from that. And as you can see with how it played out, neither team did.”

“That’s fair,” added Herbstreit.

I get the argument to some extent — though I don’t think it should factor into the rankings.

But here’s the more important thing: the same argument can apply to Tennessee.

The Vols played a very, very physical game against Texas on September 26 in which their starting quarterback (Faizon Brandon at the time) suffered a shoulder injury (and the Vols didn’t have standout safety Qua Moss against Auburn).

And yet Tennessee, which had to switch quarterbacks in the middle of the game, still managed to beat Auburn (the same Auburn team that beat Georgia a few weeks later following the Bulldogs’ win over Alabama).

The Vols aren’t even getting credit from the committee for a “quality win” over Auburn (because their “metrics” don’t see it that way), but if you use their logic about playing in physical games, it absolutely should be.

You could even say the same about Tennessee’s three-point loss on the road to South Carolina after beating Alabama (but to be fair, the Vols were the more physically dominant team in that game against Bama).

If the committee is going to give Alabama a pass for losing to Tennessee because they were beat up, then they should give the Vols some credit for beating Auburn despite being beat up.

It’s only fair.

Then again, I’m not sure this committee is concerned with what’s “fair.”