Three of the four teams in the initial Playoff Committee rankings are included in our Kickoff Games of the Week: LSU at Alabama and Florida State at Clemson.

This week the Playoff Committee released its first poll, which has Clemson in the top spot, followed by LSU, Ohio State, Alabama, Notre Dame, Baylor, Michigan State, TCU, Iowa, and Florida in the top 10.

Alabama leads the series against LSU 49-24-5, but this is a rivalry that’s had national significance over the past decade, just as it does today. Undefeated LSU is ranked second in the nation on the Kickoff Top 25 this week, Alabama (7-1) comes in at No. 7. Expect a great game in the mud in Tuscaloosa, but The Kickoff expects LSU to remain undefeated. Kickoff is at 7 pm Eastern on CBS.
FSU (No. 14) will try to play spoiler for Clemson’s playoff hopes as we have the Tigers ranked No. 4 on the Kickoff Top 25. AP has Clemson ranked No. 1 in the country. Today we’ll see if they live up to the hype. We’re going with Clemson. Watch the game at 2:30 pm Eastern on ABC.
There are some other great games to watch today. The Kickoff’s No. 1 team on our Top 25 this week is TCU. They play Oklahoma State, ranked No. 14 by the Playoff Committee, The Kickoff has them ranked No. 10. We’re picking TCU to prevail. The game starts at 2:30 pm on FOX.
In this week’s issue of The Kickoff, we included a list of the Top 2016 high school prospects in the nation, a conference breakdown through issue 9, the FBS standings, scheduled and scores for every FBS team in the country, news and notes, the Kickoff Thermostat, a look back to the rankings in 1993, overall trends through last week, and Kickoff Power Ratings for this week’s games, plus more.