If 2017’s College Football Playoff rankings debuted on Oct. 23, they’d look something like this

2017’s first College Football Playoff rankings will be released on Halloween. We’ll have a starting point for how the committee sees the postseason picture.

Below, let’s guess how the committee would have the race if it were to publish a top 25 a week early. These are not our personal resume rankings or the order we’d put these teams in if asked to make national title predictions; these are our estimations of how the committee would rank the season so far, explained below.

UGA is No. 1 in the straightforward CPI formula and ESPN’s more opaque Strength of Record ranking, both of which have tracked well with the committee’s rankings of Power 5 teams over the last three years. The Dawgs also might have the best win by any undefeated team, a road win against Notre Dame (TCU’s win at Oklahoma State is the other candidate), and a blowout of a likely ranked Mississippi State.

The rest of their work — a bunch of beatdowns of lesser teams — holds up fine with the middle parts of the other unbeaten teams’ resumes.

The Badgers haven’t played anybody better than Northwestern or FAU, though they’ve taken care of business. All of those higher-ranked one-loss teams have much better wins. And advanced stats such as S&P+ like Ohio State much more than Wisconsin, despite the Buckeyes having a loss to an opponent much better than anybody Wisconsin has faced.

In 2015’s first rankings, the committee ranked eight undefeated teams behind one-loss Alabama and Notre Dame teams, so there’s plenty of precedent for going out of loss order.

The Tigers’ two best wins, over Auburn and Virginia Tech, stand up with anybody’s, and they’ve beaten three other potential bowl teams. That loss to Syracuse is unlikely to be as awful in the committee’s eyes as it might seem because:

UCF’s beaten the AAC West’s two best teams by multiple scores each and won big at Maryland, back when the Terps weren’t as hurt as they are now. USF’s best win is Tulane?

This doesn’t matter much since they play each other, and then the winner gets another good team in the AAC title game. It’s likely the winner of that game is the New Year’s Six mid-major rep.

Jason and I have almost identical picks, despite using different methodology. But there are four teams on whom I am higher by more than two spots: NC State, Mississippi State, Oklahoma State, and Auburn.

The Wolfpack have three wins over teams likely considered in the 25-40 range in the advanced metrics, plus a 6-1 Marshall. Both NC State and Oklahoma State had losses that were primarily the result of turnovers, which are not as repeatable indicators of skill as moving the ball and preventing it from being moved.

The Bulldogs of Mississippi State beat LSU by 30, Kentucky by 38, and Louisiana Tech by 26. They do have some blowout losses, but both were on the road at Georgia and Auburn in a brutal stretch.

I also had Fresno State instead of Memphis, based on win quality.

Despite Ohio State probably being better than Wisconsin, I think UW has to be higher until UW loses or Ohio State actually beats a good team. Penn State-Ohio State will solve this, one way or the other.

I could see USF being No. 25 or even unranked, based on how low the committee had 2014 Marshall and 2015 Houston (which actually had wins).

I’m low on NC State right now because of a lack of noteworthy wins. The Wolfpack have played a constant stream of decent teams and won respectably, though. Week 9 will straighten this one out, too; the Pack head to South Bend.

Based on three years, here are the schedule benchmarks for Playoff contention:

Going above and beyond is advisable, though your schedule might not cooperate.

What do a bunch of athletic directors know about quality football that the rest of us don’t? Who knows!

This is the stuff committee rep Kirby Hocutt (used to be Jeff Long) will get made fun of for trying to explain in 90 seconds on ESPN during the rankings show. Game control! Body clocks!

The committee does use stats during its deliberations. To try and grade team strength beyond just our own opinions, we often turn to Bill Connelly’s S&P+. Committee metrics are a bit cruder, such as an offense’s performance compared to what its opponents usually allow, but probably suggest similar trends.

After Halloween’s rankings release, we’ll still have four full weekends and Conference Championship Week. If you’re a Power 5 team with only one loss, you’re not out yet.