Texas A&M came into Tuesday night's initial CFP rankings with a hope at getting the top overall spot thanks to their stellar strength of record. This metric has been around for a while, but is newly being considered by the committee this year— it's a common-sense number that takes into account how well a team performed against the difficulty of their schedule, recognizing that not all 12-game slates are created equal.
Even with that number reportedly factoring in this year, the Aggies still landed at third in the first rankings— and A&M was all but entirely dismissed by Mack Rhoades, the committee spokesman, on the studio show following the rankings being revealed.