Warde Manuel analyzed the selection committee rankings after week 12 with the college football media Tuesday evening during its weekly teleconference.

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

Manuel said the committee felt like those programs had “gone in different directions” since that South Carolina game. As a result, the Gamecocks are at No. 21 this week while LSU is at No. 22.

“Yes, the committee really felt that since that game, South Carolina and LSU have gone in different directions,” Manuel said. “South Carolina had a few wins during that span and LSU had 2 straight losses. So we had the feeling that we were looking at each other face to face. We are obviously thinking about it closely. We look at that in our evaluation and determine when a team — we look closely at when teams play head-to-head and the outcome of the match.

“But in this particular case, we also looked at the overall body of work and where these teams are located, and so the discussion in the committee really came down to taking into account everything, specifically, where these teams were located since this game was played, and obviously LSU has struggled over the last couple of weeks, and South Carolina has really performed admirably since that loss to LSU.

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

Meanwhile, LSU has lost back-to-back games to Texas A&M and Alabama. The Tigers have been outscored 73-19 over their last 6 quarters of football.