Warde Manuel overturned the election Committee’s rankings after Week 12 He spoke to college football media during his weekly teleconference Tuesday night.

Manuel, who is in his first season as CFP selection committee chairman, covered a lot of ground in his meeting with college football media. Regarding the SEC, Manuel was asked about the potential contradiction in the committee’s reasoning in ranking South Carolina 1 spot ahead of LSU. The Tigers beat the Gamecocks in a head-to-head matchup in Columbia earlier this season.

Manuel said the committee felt those programs had “gone in different directions” since the game at South Carolina. As a result, the Gamecocks are ranked 21st this week and LSU is ranked 22nd.

“Yes, the committee felt that South Carolina and LSU had gone in different directions since that game,” Manuel said. “South Carolina has had some wins during this time frame and LSU has had 2 straight losses. So there was a feeling that we were looking at it head on. Of course, we are evaluating this closely. We look at this in our evaluation and determine when a team is breaking through; We take a hard look at when teams play head-to-head and the outcome of the game.

“But in this particular case, we also looked at the overall nature of it and where those teams were, and so the discussion among the committee really came down to taking everything into account, especially where those teams have been since that game was played, and obviously LSU has struggled the last two weeks and the South “Carolina has performed truly admirably since its loss to LSU.”

South Carolina has 3 losses so far this season, but 2 of them were very close. After narrowly losing in Tuscaloosa on October 12, South Carolina has won 3 straight games against SEC opponents in dominant fashion.

Meanwhile, LSU lost back-to-back games to Texas A&M and Alabama. Tigers outscored 73-19 in the last 6 quarters.