The Col­lege Foot­ball Play­off put out a news release to get fans ready for the season’s first selec­tion com­mit­tee rank­ings Tues­day night.

The take­away: It’s busi­ness as usu­al for the CFP, even if this col­lege foot­ball sea­son has been any­thing but.

The first rank­ings often get a lot of atten­tion but there is a lot of foot­ball left. In six sea­sons of the play­off, the first top four has nev­er includ­ed all the even­tu­al play­off teams. In fact, only twice (2017 and ’18) has it includ­ed three of the four even­tu­al semifinalists.

There is one odd pat­tern: The team ranked third in the committee’s first rank­ings of the sea­son has nev­er made the play­off, includ­ing Alaba­ma last year. It was the first time the Crim­son Tide missed the playoff.

The first rank­ings are not, how­ev­er, irrel­e­vant. What to watch for when they are unveiled:

Q: Where will the com­mit­tee rank Cincin­nati and BYU?

A: AP vot­ers have the Bearcats sev­enth and the Cougars eighth. A non-Pow­er Five team has nev­er been ranked bet­ter than 12th (UCF in 2018) in the first CFP rank­ings. If either of these unbeat­ens want to enter­tain real­is­tic hopes of break­ing into the final four and get­ting a chance to play for the nation­al cham­pi­onship, a top-10 rank­ing to start seems essential.

BYU’s rank­ing is espe­cial­ly impor­tant because the Cougars only have one game left on the sched­ule, against San Diego State (3–2).

There has been a lot of chat­ter about BYU and Cincin­nati putting togeth­er a game on Dec. 5, when both are cur­rent­ly off. If that is going to hap­pen, both schools will have to make the deter­mi­na­tion that their rank­ings make the risk worth the reward.

That reward is not just glo­ry and a bid to a mar­quee bowl game. Just get­ting into a New Year’s Six bowl is worth $4 mil­lion that Cincin­nati would share with the rest of the Amer­i­can Ath­let­ic Con­fer­ence and BYU would get to keep all to itself.

Nei­ther school is rush­ing to risk that pay­day for a long-shot chance to get into the semifinals.

Q: How much empha­sis is put on data points?

A: Teams in the cur­rent AP Top 25 have played as many as nine games (BYU) and a few as three (Ore­gon). Will the com­mit­tee dock the Ducks or maybe even Ohio State (4–0) a few places because they don’t have the body of work like Alaba­ma (7–0), Notre Dame (8–0) and Clem­son (7–1)? And if it does, how much of a dis­ad­van­tage is that for the Pac-12, which is set to play the short­est sched­ule among in the Pow­er Five conferences?

“To me the only way that you can do it is you maybe have to put more stock in the eye test,” said Okla­homa coach Lin­coln Riley, whose team is 6–2. “That’s the only answer I have. I don’t know how else you com­pare, say, a team that’s … 5–0 or 6–0 ver­sus a team that’s 10–1 or 9–2, or what­ev­er you want to call it.”

Q: Where is Clemson?

A: The assump­tion has been that not hav­ing quar­ter­back Trevor Lawrence (who was out with COVID-19) and three injured defen­sive starters in a loss at Notre Dame would make the selec­tion com­mit­tee go easy on the Tigers. Where Clem­son sits in the first rank­ings could give a hint about the Atlantic Coast Conference’s chances of get­ting two teams into the playoff.

Q: How much does head-to-head matter?

A: Texas A&M beat Flori­da on a last-sec­ond field goal in Col­lege Sta­tion in Octo­ber, but since then the Gators have been rolling. Not that the Aggies haven’t, but a two-week COVID-19 pause has kept them off the field. Will the com­mit­tee place the Aggies ahead of the Gators based on one close result or give the nod to hot team?

This is also applic­a­ble in the Big 12, where Iowa State beat Okla­homa, but the Soon­ers have got­ten key play­ers back from sus­pen­sion and seem to be play­ing bet­ter every week.

Q: Yes, what about the Big 12?

A: A two-loss team has nev­er made the play­off and this is prob­a­bly not a sea­son where that will change. But where the high­est-ranked Big 12 team lands is worth keep­ing an eye on to deter­mine just how much chaos would be need­ed to make that a possibility.

“I don’t know that, espe­cial­ly in 2020, that real­ly the first cou­ple of weeks should play in near­ly as much as, you know, the last month of the sea­son,” said Texas coach Tom Her­man, whose Long­horns are 5–2. “And I do know that, we kind of beat each oth­er up in this con­fer­ence and that’s the beau­ty of hav­ing parity.”

The lob­by­ing and pos­tur­ing has already begun.

AP Sports Writer Stephen Hawkins con­tributed to this report