We’re going to show you a bracket in a moment, and I want to be clear again what it is:
This bracket is every team’s average final résumé lined up in the order our model thinks the CFP committee will prefer, with automatic bids included. It isn’t what we think the rankings will be this week. It isn’t what we think will happen if every game goes exactly how we predict it to go. It’s every team’s average season, compared to one another. What does that mean?
- Even though Texas A&M isn’t the SEC favorite, their average season right now is better than Georgia’s.
- Even though Oklahoma’s expected to beat LSU, their average season right now isn’t as good as Notre Dame’s.
- Even though Alabama’s expected to beat Auburn, their average season right now isn’t as good as BYU’s.
It’s understandable, especially this late in the year, to do CFP Bracketology differently, and most who make these graphics do the “if every game goes the way I expect” thing. We don’t love that in September (shoutout everyone who called Florida State a 2-seed*), but right now? Totally valid. For the sake of consistency, we stick with average the whole year. If you prefer the modal outcome right now, we get it. We’ll do a little bit of that at the very end.
*To be fair, our model had Ohio in the bracket one week.
The bracket, the probabilities, and average final rankings:
Moving In: BYU, SMU, North Texas
We’ll start with the easy two.
SMU’s the new ACC favorite. They control their fate and we’d have them favored over every possible ACC Championship opponent besides Miami. A couple weeks ago, it was still looking like ACC champion SMU could finish ranked behind two mid-major conference champions. That’s no longer looking possible. If the Mustangs win the ACC, they’re in.
North Texas is the American favorite, and with both the Mean Green and the Green Wave winning yesterday (somewhere, Ralph Nader smiles), James Madison’s path is almost entirely shut. As of right now, we have UNT favored by a point and a half over Tulane in New Orleans. That can change based on what happens this week.
As for BYU.
We don’t think BYU’s going to jump Alabama this week, and neither does our model. We do think their presence here is worth noting anyway. They’re going to be a big favorite at home in the regular season finale (against UCF). In the ensuing expected rematch against Texas Tech, we currently have them a 6-point underdog. Those two games going as expected shouldn’t negatively impact the committee’s perception of BYU. With another loss to Texas Tech, I’m not sure BYU would have dropped even in the old era when conference championship losses definitely counted.
We’ve spent a lot of time focusing on who might drop out if a bid thief materializes (if BYU wins the Big 12, or if Duke wins the ACC, or if the committee panics and puts Miami ahead of Notre Dame). But in instances where someone in the field loses this week—we’ve got all four of Oklahoma, Oregon, Mississippi, and Alabama favored by eleven points or fewer—BYU’s in position to benefit.
Moving Out: Alabama, Georgia Tech, James Madison
We mentioned JMU’s door closing. Georgia Tech showed itself out, losing to Pitt to drop its ACC Championship appearance probability to 1%. As for Alabama…
The Crimson Tide haven’t played great football for a while now. They were fine yesterday—it was Eastern Illinois—but they haven’t won convincingly since they played Tennessee, over a month ago. They’re on the road this weekend against an Auburn team that’s gotten more competitive since Hugh Freeze was fired. That game is risky. Lose, and the Tide are of course done. Win big, and they won’t get the credit they deserve since it will have come against an interim coach. Win close, and it’s a loud red flag at a time when Notre Dame’s beating ACC teams by nine touchdowns and Florida State is potentially making a bad loss even worse, going to Gainesville as a touchdown underdog.
Basically, there are bad things that can happen to the Tide this weekend, and they can even happen if Alabama wins.
Looking ahead to the SEC Championship (which Alabama will make if it beats Auburn): There’s roughly a 50/50 shot that Alabama has to play Georgia again. There’s roughly a 50/50 shot that Alabama gets to play Texas A&M (a team with less depth than Georgia and a highly concerning defense which has only faced two capable offenses all year). Win, and Alabama’s obviously in. Lose—they’d currently be favored by two over A&M and be a three-point underdog against Georgia—and Alabama is firmly the team on the bubble, unless they get some help. It’ll be a propaganda war, and the ACC’s side will point towards Miami’s win over Florida State, who we all remember beating Alabama by two touchdowns in Tallahassee.
How Good Is Everybody?
Movelor’s top 25 right now:
How Good Is Everybody? (Continued)
This is a doozy. Penn State in the top ten. Texas A&M outside the top ten. South Carolina and Auburn in the top 25. Georgia outside the top five.
My gut reaction looking at the model this morning was that it’s overvaluing the Big Ten and undervaluing the SEC. Then again, the Big Ten’s won the last two national championships, and last winter, Movelor was more accurate at predicting playoff games than even betting markets. That’s a small sample, but I wouldn’t write off these ratings. Thoughts, from the top:
- There’s some juicing going on in both directions with Notre Dame winning by 63 and Georgia taking it easy on Charlotte in the second half. If there was a gun to my head and the assailant wanted my best evaluation of teams (it’s amazing how often this happens), I’d probably hedge and say all four of Notre Dame, Oregon, Indiana, and Georgia should be together right now around +42.0. As we keep saying: Georgia has the highest ceiling of those four (followed by Oregon, followed by Notre Dame), but right now? It’s a wash.
- I’m not so sure that one-week oddities are responsible for Utah, Alabama, and Penn State. On the Utah front: Yes, they almost lost to K-State, but they also scored points at will, and Movelor did ding them heavily for that performance. On the Alabama front: We talked about it already, but they only looked like Alabama for about six weeks this year, and those weeks happened a long time ago. With Penn State: They still have just as much talent as they had in August. Now that they’re not relying on Drew Allar, are they a better team despite playing a worse quarterback? In college football, it’s usually better to build an approach around what you have than to try to make players do things they can’t do. Considering the optics around a loss, Penn State might be the last college football team I’d want to play this weekend. Too bad they’re playing Rutgers and not someone more exciting.
- I’m not sure we’ve all realized the breaks Texas A&M and Mississippi caught with this year’s SEC schedule. This isn’t their fault, and Texas A&M did go beat arguably the second-best team in the country on the road, but going through the tiebreaker scenarios last night, I was taken aback. Alabama’s SEC opponents have a combined 29 conference wins so far. Georgia’s have a combined 27. Mississippi’s have 21. Texas A&M’s have 16, and Texas—whom A&M has yet to play—contributes nearly a third of those. Texas A&M is an impressive program with a bright future, and the offense is dynamite, and Mike Elko’s teams are great at taking care of business. But is this team good?
- Washington is playing well again. Interesting to look at the Mississippi vs. Washington gap in light of Florida’s coaching search.
- SMU is hot. If they do play Mississippi, that should be a better game than Penn State vs. SMU was last winter.
- With South Carolina and Auburn…yes. Auburn’s had plenty of black eyes, but they’ve played three playoff teams to an average 7.67-point final. They’ve taken Missouri and Vanderbilt to overtime. This isn’t a bad football team, and to Alabama’s chagrin, the Tide won’t get credit if they do blow them out. (South Carolina has played four potential playoff teams to an average margin of 10.75. South Carolina also took care of business against Kentucky, which is a key distinction.)
For the sake of fun…if the next two weeks went exactly chalk, here’s where Movelor would handicap the playoffs (I’m assuming 12–1 Texas Tech would jump 11–1 Texas A&M and that 12–1 Georgia would jump 12–1 Indiana, and I’m putting Indiana in the Orange Bowl so the Texas State Championship can happen at Jerry World):
- 1st Round: Notre Dame (–6) at Oklahoma
- 1st Round: Alabama at Oregon (–10)
- 1st Round: SMU at Mississippi (–6.5)
- 1st Round: North Texas at Texas A&M (–14)
- Rose Bowl: Notre Dame vs. Ohio State (–4.5)
- Sugar Bowl: Oregon (–4) vs. Georgia
- Orange Bowl: Mississippi vs. Indiana (–6.5)
- Cotton Bowl: Texas A&M vs. Texas Tech (–5)
- Peach Bowl: Texas Tech vs. Ohio State (–8.5)
- Fiesta Bowl: Oregon (–2.5) vs. Indiana
- National Championship: Oregon vs. Ohio State (–5)
Again, I’m not personally comfortable saying Oregon’s four points better than Georgia, or that Notre Dame’s a full nine points better than Oklahoma. But besides that…8–3 last year against the closing Vegas spread. There’s a great model out there that went 0–11 in those games.
This Week’s Rankings
Quickly! For I have yet to eat lunch. And then we’re going to buy a Christmas tree! What a day.
Here’s what our model expects. As always, the number in parentheses is ranking score, which is scaled such that 0.0 is the résumé of the worst team in the FBS (shoutout UMass) and 100.0 is the best.
1. Ohio State (100.0)
2. Indiana (97.7)
3. Texas A&M (96.9)
4. Georgia (91.9)
5. Texas Tech (90.3)
6. Mississippi (89.9)
7. Oregon (89.0)
8. Oklahoma (88.2)
9. Notre Dame (87.1)
10. Alabama (86.0)
11. BYU (85.2)
Nothing to see here. All the same as last week.
12. Vanderbilt (83.6)
13. Miami (82.9)
14. Utah (82.8)
Here, our model has Vanderbilt leapfrogging Miami, but Utah dropping past Miami in return. One in, one out.
Would the committee do this? Maybe. I don’t really think so, but it would be fair to drop Utah after they struggled as a big favorite at home. It would be fair to reward Vanderbilt for a dominant showing against Kentucky. Miami was never in trouble against Virginia Tech, but the Hurricanes didn’t blow the doors off of Lane Stadium.
If you want to get conspiratorial, you could also say that maybe the committee wants to keep teams between Notre Dame and Miami, to avoid the annoying questions about the head-to-head result on Miami’s home turf. More pressingly, you could say the committee wants to keep 9–2 Vanderbilt clear of 8–3 Texas, who beat Vanderbilt head-to-head.
Again, I don’t think the committee will do this. But they’ve got a self-preservation streak, and they surprised me last week by showing some warranted malleability in this range of the top 25.
15. Texas (80.3)
16. Michigan (79.8)
With USC and Georgia Tech losing and no one behind Michigan doing anything that impressive, the assumption would be that these two would move up. That’s what prompted some of our Vanderbilt vs. Texas thinking.
17. Tennessee (77.8)
18. Virginia (77.1)
19. USC (76.6)
20. Georgia Tech (74.6)
Our model doesn’t see USC and Georgia Tech dropping far, largely because: Have you seen what’s going on behind them?
21. Tulane (74.1)
22. Missouri (73.3)
23. Arizona State (71.9)
24. SMU (71.6)
25. North Texas (71.4)
I’m guessing the committee will do the easy thing and pull Mizzou out, but the thing about this part of the curve is that it’s so bad that even Missouri’s impotence in Norman doesn’t move the needle mathematically. (Why was Eliah Drinkwitz settling for field goals when his team couldn’t kick field goals and the goal line was three yards away?)
Elsewhere, you’ll notice a little separation between North Texas and JMU, at least given what we know about the committee’s views on them so far. JMU wasn’t great on Saturday against Washington State. It’s a bad time of year to not be great. JMU can’t rely on beating an impressive opponent. There are no impressive opponents left. JMU needs to beat mediocre teams impressively. Washington State was their last opponent the committee could possibly respect.
Others who could be ranked:
26. Washington (70.5)
27. Pitt (70.2)
28. James Madison (70.1)
29. Iowa (69.5)
30. Arizona (69.5)
Put me down as guessing that Missouri’s unranked but that Pitt finds the top 25 again. That’d be good timing for Miami, who now gets a chance to show it’s still just as good as Notre Dame, playing a very recent common opponent with a similar number next to their name. That’d be more bad timing for Alabama.
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