The latest round of rankings from the College Football Playoff committee probably don’t mean a ton for No. 14 North Carolina or unranked Pittsburgh on the surface. If UNC wins out, it’s chances for a playoff bid as the ACC conference champ will provide a good debate. Pitt’s spot as a top-25 team would be largely ceremonial. Where it is ranked right now is less important than what it does on the field this week.

But dig a little deeper into the numbers, and there is a reason both teams should be slightly concerned.

North Carolina’s spot at No. 14 isn’t necessarily a death knell for the Tar Heels. They can move up quickly with two more wins over winning teams, including an ACC championship game matchup against No. 1 Clemson. But if that all happens, the playoff competition for North Carolina will likely be three teams: The winner of Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, the winner of Notre Dame-Stanford, and Baylor. (Note: If Florida loses to Florida State but beats Alabama, this would add another layer.)

If Oklahoma wins, it’ll definitely be in the playoff, so let’s compare North Carolina to those other three.

UNC, Notre Dame and Oklahoma State would all have one loss. Stanford would have two.

The Heels and Cardinal would have a conference title, and the Cowboys and Baylor could end up splitting the Big 12.

If all this should happen -- and this remains a big if -- the resumes for each team would be similar, with the exception of UNC’s awful loss to South Carolina and just one win over a team currently in the top 25. And this is where Pitt comes into play.

Teams at the bottom of the rankings aren’t going to compete for playoff spot at this point, but they might impact who gets in at the top. And for UNC and the ACC, that’s a problem.

Pitt isn’t currently considered a top-25 win for North Carolina (or Iowa or Notre Dame), but its resume isn’t too far off from a number of teams crowded around the bottom half of the rankings, including Oregon, Washington State, UCLA and Utah out of the Pac-12. And really, that bottom half of the rankings have been relatively fluid.

In the three weeks since the committee has released rankings, teams ranked 16 through 25 have gone a combined 14-12 the following week. Essentially they’re playing .500 football, and therefore haven't offered much solid footing for the teams at the top to stake their claims for a playoff berth upon.

But don’t be mistaken: This will be a metric the committee considers, and so a win over 8-3 Washington State looks a heck of a lot better on a resume right now than a win over 8-3 Pittsburgh. And while the Panthers have only lost to teams currently ranked in the top 14, and the Cougars have two losses to unranked foes, including one FCS opponent, that’s a bit of nuance that might not matter much to the committee.

So what separates Washington State and Pitt? Again, it’s ranked wins. The Cougars have beaten UCLA and Oregon, but those wins fall into that Nos. 16-25 demographic, too. And Stanford’s only ranked wins are also against teams ranked from 16-25, so there’s another step toward the abyss of parsing resumes.

All of which brings us back to North Carolina, which can still hope for a win over No. 1 Clemson, but won’t have much else of note on its resume. And while it might be true that teams 16 through 25 aren’t markedly better than teams 26 through 35, it's that first group that's providing the ranked wins for Stanford, Iowa, Michigan and Florida, giving them an edge UNC might not have come time to select the playoff teams.