Texas A&M comes in at number three overall in the initial College Football Playoff rankings— a well-deserved high ranking for the Aggies, but still lower than they should have been, by the committee's own standards.
The Aggies are the top team in the nation when it comes to Strength of Record, or 'SOR', which is a new consideration that the committee is bringing in when creating the rankings this year. Previously, bare win-loss record and the extremely nebulous "game control" were the biggest factors, but the committee finally got some sense and decided to use the SOR metric, which judges how hard it is to get a team's win-loss record considering the schedule they've played— or at least, they said they did.
Of course, the Aggies have played, top to bottom, the toughest schedule of the top three teams— their best win in Notre Dame came in at the no. 10 spot in the rankings, just behind no. 9 Oregon, which was Indiana's best win. But the number of highly skilled teams that the Ags have played (and will continue to play) is much higher than it is for Indiana or Ohio State. Even so, the committee decided, for some reason, to rank the Aggies behind those two teams.
Texas A&M undersold massively by CFP committee in first rankings
That offseason promise of the SOR metric becoming a big player is conspicuously absent in these first rankings. When the hosts on ESPN asked Mack Rhoades, the committee spokesman, about SOR, he mentioned Oregon being lower thanks to them having played nobody. But somehow, it didn't enter into the mind of the committee that the Aggies should be higher.
Here's just one example of how the SOR metric favors the Aggies pretty massively:
Wins above what an average FBS team would expect to have against the schedule faced through Week 10, per FEI:
— Brian Fremeau (@bcfremeau) November 4, 2025
+5.6 Texas A&M
+5.0 Indiana
+4.9 Ole Miss
+4.9 Ohio State
+4.8 Alabama
+4.4 Georgia
+4.2 BYU
+3.5 Oklahoma
+3.4 Texas
+3.4 Notre Dame
The gap between no. 1 Texas A&M and no. 2 Indiana here is the same as the gap between no. 2 Indiana and no. 6 Georgia. That's pretty decisive.
Texas A&M also ranks first in ESPN's SOR rating, as well as Brian Fremeau's FEI metric for SOR. With all this in mind, the Aggies should have been far more of a player in these ratings than they turned out to be. Number three isn't a bad spot— but the Aggies were still undersold.