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FOX Sports college football analyst RJ Young released his weekly college football tiers on Wednesday in the aftermath of Week 9, and let’s just say the top tier is a very crowded place.
One day after Tennessee grabbed the No. 1 spot in the initial College Football Playoff rankings, the Volunteers shared Young’s top tier of college football powerhouses with Georgia, Ohio State and Michigan.
? @RJ_Young's Week 10 CFB tiers ?
Do you agree with this weeks' tiers? pic.twitter.com/Py3e73V0k2
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 2, 2022
The Volunteers and the Bulldogs will collide this Saturday afternoon in Athens, and not surprisingly Young had the Buckeyes and Wolverines up there on top. So Young’s top tier effectively had 2 SEC rivals and 2 Big Ten rivals.
Young’s 2nd tier consisted of 2 teams, Alabama and Clemson, who have played each other multiple times for the national championship in the past decade. The Crimson Tide are 7-1, so they have no margin for error as they try to navigate the last 4 games of their schedule. Meanwhile, the Tigers are still undefeated and have a much clearer path toward a potential CFP playoff spot.
TCU was all alone in Young’s 3rd tier. The Horned Frogs are still undefeated but were ranked 7th, behind 1-loss Alabama, in the 1st CFP rankings on Tuesday night.
Meanwhile, Young’s 4th tier could just as well be renamed the Pac-12 party, as it consists of Pac-12 powerhouses Oregon, USC and UCLA.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
