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What do you get when you mix Halloween, Nick Saban’s 72nd birthday and the first College Football Playoff rankings of the 2023 season? Stranger things on the last day of October.

Come Tuesday evening at 6 on ESPN, Alabama will be ranked in the only poll that matters, as it’s been in every one of the previous 54 CFB Playoff top-25 rankings. Only Ohio State can say the same.

That’s the good news. The bad news: Given its current position at No. 8 in the USA Today coaches poll and No. 9 in the AP poll, Alabama almost certainly will be ranked lower in the first CFB Playoff poll than it was in any initial ranking since the four-team playoff began in 2014.

The previous low start was No. 6, which is where the Crimson Tide began the playoff rankings in 2014 and 2022. In 2014, they rose to No. 1 by the fourth poll and entered the playoff at that spot, only to lose to eventual national champion Ohio State in the semifinals. Last year, Alabama started at No. 6, dropped to No. 9 after losing at LSU, then climbed one spot each week before ending at No. 5 as the last team out of the playoff field.

Otherwise, Alabama started the playoff rankings at No. 1 in 2016, 2018 and 2020; No. 2 in 2017 and 2021; No. 3 in 2019; and No. 4 in 2015. Note where the Tide started during its three national title seasons in the playoff era: No. 4 (2015), No. 2 (2017) and No. 1 (2020).