The College Football Playoff Committee has released its first rankings of the season’s top 25 players, Walmart’s sports edition that opens its doors at midnight on Black Friday. Things are about to get ugly, and someone will end up with blood on their hands as Oklahoma battles for a spot in the Top 12. In other words, it’s the best time of the year.
This year, the committee said it is considering a new “standard power” metric, designed to provide some math-based guidance in the process and to soon replace “game control” as the country’s most hated made-up statistic.
Ten weeks into a season filled with a lot of chaos and a few teams that look great, however, the committee needs all the help it can get. For example, only eight teams in the country have actually beaten more than one of the current top 25 teams on the committee — and one of those eight teams is NC State. Utah, Iowa, Oregon, Pitt, Washington, Missouri and Tennessee — all ranked this week — are a combined 0-12 against other teams in the committee’s top 25. The ACC does not have a team ranked higher than 14, and the Group of Five has no team ranked at all, making these rankings less about the coveted top 12 than the need to be in the top 10.
In other words, there is still a lot of volatility as we delve deeper into the final month of the season. But this means that our anger towards the committee is boiling now, waiting for the anger to boil over in the coming weeks.
However, a few schools actually have a good case for anger.
In all the hype around last year’s playoff seedings that left three SEC teams out, what was overlooked is that BYU probably had more to fuss over than Alabama, Ole Miss or South Carolina. Two of those teams, at least, suffered tough losses. Each of those teams suffered three losses. BYU, on the other hand, checked the final committee standings behind all of them despite a 10-2 record and two close losses to strong teams.
So, surely the committee is going to feel some sympathy for the Cougars this year and look at the Cougars with more optimism, right?
Oh no.
Let’s take a look at some blind resumes.
Team A: #3 Strength of scoring, #33 Strength of schedule, 4-0 vs. SP+ Top 40 opponents, best win vs. #11 in committee poll.
Team B: #4 Strength of scoring, #45 Strength of schedule, 3-0 vs. SP+ Top 40 opponents, best win vs. #13 in committee poll.
Sure, Team A has a slight advantage, but the resume looks pretty similar.
Well, Team A is the No. 1 team in the committee, Ohio State. Surely, if another team’s resume looked even remotely similar, that team would have a bye in the first round of the playoffs, right?
no. The B team is BYU, and the Cougars sit behind three SEC teams with a loss, all three ranked lower in ESPN’s standard power metric.
Since BYU has a huge showdown with Texas Tech coming up, the committee may have just gambled away any tough decisions on the Cougars for this week. After all, given how much love the committee has shown the Big Ten in these rankings, kicks would be an appropriate play.
We got it. As a conference, the ACC may, in fact, be just an episode of “Punk’d,” which Ashton Kutcher started in 2008, then got distracted and forgot to tell everyone it was a joke. Sure, the Week 10 conference trainwreck shows up in these rankings — more on that in a moment — but it feels as if the committee has just thrown Louisville into the mix, and decided the Cardinals are guilty by association.
Let’s take another look at some blind resumes, shall we?
Team A: Strength of record #10, Strength of schedule #58, 1 win vs. SP+ top 40, best win vs. #13 team in the committee, 1 loss vs. unranked team.
Team B: #13 Strength of record, #56 Strength of schedule, three wins vs. SP+ top 40, best win vs. #18 team in the committee, only loss to #14 team in the committee.
This is basically a coin flip, though with the extra wins versus higher-level opponents and the bigger losses, it’d be hard to argue against Team B, right? Add to that, Team B’s only loss came in double overtime in the game when they outgained their opponent by 150 yards. Surely, you’ll be on Team B’s side now, right?
Well, not surprisingly, the B team is Louisville. The “A” team is Texas Tech, which finished in eighth place with seven spots.
There seems to be a desire to write off Miami due to two losses in the past three games and given the struggle the team seems to be having on offense, perhaps that is wise.
But two things are supposed to be true about the committee’s evaluation process. First, the committee is not supposed to care when gains and losses occur. Losing in September is no better than losing in November. A loss is a loss. Second, the committee is not supposed to make assumptions about the future. Sure, Miami’s offense is a mess right now, but assuming that will lead to future losses isn’t part of the deal.
However, Miami’s 18th-place finish — a full eight places behind another team with two losses, as the Canes won head-to-head — can only be explained by emotion. Notre Dame’s season is now underway. Miami has hit some snags. Never mind that the Canes are two late interceptions from Carson Beck away from going undefeated. Not to mention, Miami has four wins against a top 35 team in the FPI, double that of any other losing team except Oklahoma. Not to mention that Miami is going head-to-head against the No. 10 team in the committee’s rankings or that it beats a Florida team that took No. 5 Georgia to the wire and actually beat No. 11 Texas. Not to mention that Miami beat then-ranked 37 USF.
Instead, the committee has consigned Miami to the scrap heap now — which is unfortunate because Miami probably would have done this to themselves anyway, and it’s even funnier when it happens in the last game of the season.
4. Group of Five
A year ago, Boise State found its way to a first-round bye ahead of the reigning Power 4 league champion, which might have been pretty embarrassing for this Power 4 league except that the ACC embarrasses itself often enough to be immune to infamy.
The rules have changed this year. The top four conference champions are not guaranteed a first-round bye now. But that doesn’t seem to have stopped the committee from stacking the deck anyway, just to be safe.
No team outside of the Power 4 has found its way into these preliminary rankings, though the committee noted that Memphis is currently at the top of the longstanding Group of Five playoff bid.
So, surely the group of five must be very upset, right?
Yes, but not about being excluded from the top 25 party list. None of the G5 leaders are in good shape — and certainly none were like Boise State a year ago. But Memphis? truly? The same team that lost by relegation to UAB just fired its coach?
In the Commission’s new guidance for considering standard strength, there is an assumption that really bad losses are highly likely, but that was certainly not the case this time.
North Texas has one loss to SP+ No. 27.
James Madison has one loss to the No. 16 SP+ (and the No. 15 team in the committee’s rankings).
San Diego State has one loss to SP+ No. 73 and one loss to SP+ No. 119.
Memphis has one loss to SP+ No. 119.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the Tigers weren’t punished at all for the tough loss.
5. Securities and Exchange Commission
The bottom half of the top 25 committees are usually in the equivalent of the phone lines of a Finebaum ring — just a place where a lot of average SEC people hang out, impatiently waiting their turn. But this time, the committee has stuffed the bottom of the rankings with Big Ten teams — No. 19 USC, No. 20 Iowa State, No. 21 Michigan and No. 23 Washington — and that could actually matter in the long run.
One of the committee’s favorite metrics is wins over ranked opponents. We’re skeptical about how many Big Ten teams deserve a little number next to their name. The league still has four teams that have yet to win a conference game, and the bottom third is a complete dumpster fire. It’s easy to pick up some wins when half your conference schedule is already embarrassed by UCLA’s interim coaching staff.
But the SEC – that’s the real depth. Nearly half of the SEC’s conference games this season have been one-possession affairs. Mississippi State, a team that has gone nearly two years without an SEC win, actually knocked off the Big 12 championship last year. LSU, the team that fired its coach, got a win over last year’s ACC champion. Florida beat Texas. Putting a bunch of undeserving teams at the bottom of the rankings only bolsters the résumé of teams like Oregon, which has never beaten a team of consequence. Frankly, the Commission is supposed to do this for the SEC’s benefit, not the Big Ten’s.
Also angry: Virginia Cavaliers (8-1, No. 14, behind four losing teams), USF Bulls (6-2, unranked), Arizona State Sun Devils (6-3, unranked), Cincinnati Bearcats (7-2, unranked), Brian Kelly (only angry for other reasons).