Utah Football moves up to 18th in both polls after USC win

After a massive win over then-No. 20 USC in Rice-Eccles Stadium, the Utes find themselves up one spot in both the AP and Coaches Poll, to 18th. The 6-1 (3-1 in the Pac-12), bowl eligible Utes find themselves in control of their own destiny in the Pac-12 South, with some major Pac-12 games the next five weeks. The schedule will be a monster, starting next week with a trip to Arizona State, followed by Oregon, at Stanford, Arizona and at Colorado.

Oregon is still the highest rated team from the Pac-12, at 5th in the Coaches and 6th in the AP. ASU, Arizona and UCLA are all also ranked, while USC and Stanford are receiving votes. However, starting on Tuesday, these polls are just for show.

Tuesday night the College Football Playoff Selection Committee will release their top-25 poll, basically what the BCS rankings have been the past decade. Neither the AP or Coaches Polls factor into the College Football Playoff officially. They can be used by the committee as reference, but they aren't factored into a crazy formula, like the BCS.

From the College Football Playoff website, here is how the process will work:

Data
Selection committee members will have a wealth of information including review of video, statistics and their own expertise to guide them in their deliberations. They will emphasize obvious factors like win-loss records, strength of schedule, conference championships won, head-to-head results and results against common opponents. The playoff group has retained SportSource Analytics to provide the data platform for the committee's use. While the details of the platform have not been finalized, it is anticipated that it will include countless pieces of statistical information for every Football Bowl Subdivision team. It will also include general information such as each team's opponents' record and opponents' opponents' records. The platform will allow the committee members to compare and contrast every team on every level possible.

It should be noted that the committee will not use a single data point such as the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) that is used for NCAA championships.

Voting Procedures
The committee will rank the top 25 teams in the country and assign teams to the semifinals and to the Cotton, Fiesta and Peach Bowls in years when they are not hosting semifinal games. The full voting protocol is attached to this release, but in summary the committee will identify small groups of teams that will then be evaluated against each other in a detailed and deliberative manner. The committee will then vote the teams into the rankings in a combined selection-and-seeding process.

To check out the voting protocol for the committee, stop by their website (click here to see more).

It will be very interesting to see where the Committee will put Utah in their first ever CFP Top-25.

For a composite Top 25 ranking, visit SBNation.com