National media continues to doubt the Tennessee Vols with their CFP predictions

We have reached Week 12 of the 2024 football season and the Tennessee Volunteers are the No. 6 team in the country. Oh, how good it feels to say that. Josh Heupel continues to bring the program back to where it belongs.

With the College Football Playoff rankings now live, and another edition coming Tuesday night, the Vols fanbase is feeling pretty dang good about what this team might be able to get done this campaign. However, not everyone is too high on this squad.

Leading up to the second CFP rankings of the fall, NBC lead college football and basketball insider Nicole Auerbach has dropped her predictions for how the Top 12 will shape out. Not only does she have Tennessee losing to Georgia this weekend, but she also has the Vols as one of her first four teams out once the final rankings arrive in December:

Tennessee football continues to be doubted by members of the national media

"Thankfully, the final CFP rankings come out on Dec. 8, so we’ll know a lot more about the pecking order of SEC teams at that point," Auerbach wrote. "But as I evaluated teams and worked to project the 12-team CFP field, I still had to make some educated guesses. My bracket assumes Georgia beats Tennessee and sneaks into the CFP field despite its downward trajectory (which will be a concern for the selection committee, which uses the eye test as part of its evaluation process) behind the two teams it lost to this season."

In her final Top 12 for this year's CFP, Auerbach has Oregon, Texas, Miami, BYU, Ohio State, Penn State, Notre Dame, Alabama, Ole Miss, Indiana, Georgia and Boise State all making it in. Assuming Georgia does beat Tennessee, its two losses to the Bulldogs and Arkansas will immediately wipe them out?

The fact that Georgia gets in with two losses is head-scratching. We get the head-to-head over the Vols, but then shouldn't Alabama's loss to Tennessee be taken into consideration too? How about Notre Dame's loss to Northern Illinois? We don't envy Auerbach, as it's so tough to try and break down the CFP spots this year.

However, we're going to respectfully disagree with her thought that Tennessee will be on the outside looking in if they lose to Kirby Smart and Co. All this talk could be wiped away if Tennessee takes care of business in Athens with the rest of the country watching. Yeah, let's just go ahead and hope a win gets posted and we don't have to worry about the other scenarios that might come into play.