Georgia survived Florida, but it wasn’t a pretty sight. Texas beat Vanderbilt after playing with all sorts of fire. Georgia Tech and Miami went down in ACC play. And Notre Dame’s 10–2 path might be shrinking?
After ten weeks of college football, here’s what our model’s got:
Moving In: Mississippi, Virginia, James Madison
We wrote a lot last week about Ole Miss’s shaky résumé. Their best win came against Oklahoma, and before this weekend they’d only beaten Tulane and Georgia State by more than one score. Saturday, both those pieces got better. Oklahoma upset Tennessee in Knoxville. Mississippi shut down South Carolina in Oxford. And in a quiet but not meaningless twist, the combination of Florida playing well under Billy Gonzales and Tennessee playing poorly against Oklahoma makes Mississippi’s November 15th game against the Gators a bigger opportunity than it looked like it would be. Florida has a better shot at 6–6 now. That could matter for the Rebs. Our model’s still skeptical—it sees a 6% chance that an 11–1 Mississippi who misses the SEC Championship also misses the CFP—but when our model gets a hold of tomorrow night’s rankings, uncertainty should lessen and that number should move towards zero. Mississippi’s in a good spot. It’s theirs if they can keep it.
Virginia is also in a good spot as the only team in the ACC without a conference loss. They’re not very likely to go 8–0 in conference play, and losing only at Duke could create a real mind-buster of a tiebreaker (one our model doesn’t consider yet unless it can be handled through direct head-to-head). But they’re the ACC favorites after Georgia Tech’s loss. Welcome, UVA.
James Madison is the new favorite for the fifth automatic bid, but we’ll be anxiously watching tomorrow night’s rankings on their behalf. Right now, they have almost the exact same average final ranking as USF and North Texas, and Memphis isn’t far behind. Our model expects to be surprised by tomorrow night’s rankings, but it doesn’t know in what direction. It only has JMU 44% playoff-likely before seeing that first top 25.
We’ll have another post up later today or early tomorrow covering what our model expects from the first rankings, and what each team should be hoping to see.
Moving Out: Miami, Georgia Tech, USF
Miami did Miami things on the road against SMU. Georgia Tech’s season of narrow escapes went up in smoke in Raleigh. USF didn’t play, but with Memphis handling Rice on Friday, Memphis is the AAC favorite again, albeit narrowly.
All three of these teams still has a playoff shot, but for all three, help is necessary. Miami and USF either need kind glances from the committee or their competition to fall apart. Georgia Tech still has a realistic shot to win the ACC, but they don’t control their fate.
Moving Up: Texas Tech
The Red Raiders rolled Kansas State, and if they beat BYU on Saturday they’ll probably be better than a 50% favorite to win the Big 12. They’re up into one of our bracket’s bye spots, with a better average final ranking than even Oregon (who has a 50% chance to finish with only one loss). The Big 12 is the Big 12, so chaos lurks, but Texas Tech got through losing to Arizona State and losing one of its two quarterbacks. They’re in a good position.
Moving Down: Texas A&M, Notre Dame, Georgia
Texas A&M’s out of a bye, and as we often say, don’t make too much of the SEC champion not getting a bye in our bracket. All that means is that no one from the SEC has a better average finish than Oregon. Oregon only has a 34% chance at a bye. The SEC collectively has a 75% chance of getting at least one bye.
Notre Dame’s out of a home game after a disorganized showing against Boston College. They still won, but without seeing any rankings from the committee, our model only has hypothetical 10–2 Notre Dame at 88% playoff-likely. That’s a great number—eight out of nine times, Notre Dame controls its fate—but the chance of a glut of two-loss teams has grown. Notre Dame has a lot riding on tomorrow night.
Georgia’s also out of a home game, sliding from the 8-seed to the 9-seed. Not a huge shift, but it does underscore how concerning Saturday’s performance was. Maybe it was just an interim bump for Florida and the pressure of a rivalry game. We’ll find out.
Playoff Probabilities, Average Final CFP Rankings
More important than what the bracketology says:
Playoff Probabilities, Average Final CFP Rankings (continued)
Alabama and BYU have the same playoff probability. I don’t think that matches public perception. We’ll keep stressing that these numbers are going to change (we’ll do an updated post after we get those first CFP rankings), but while we have our own guesses about which direction they’ll move, if we really felt confident in those guesses we’d build their logic into our model.
Utah is up above 50% playoff-likely after crushing Cincinnati, and since two of their losses came to conference opponents, that’s mostly at-large candidacy. Two thoughts on the Utes:
First, if Utah gets through this season only losing to Texas Tech and BYU, that’s not very different from the hypothetical 10–2 Notre Dame résumé which got so much talk in September.
Second, if Utah does wiggle into the Big 12 Championship and loses it, the committee might break from last year’s approach to conference championship losers (it mostly forgave those losses). To refresh everyone’s memory, including our own, our model includes a 25% probability those losses mostly don’t count, a 25% probability they count just as much as they did in the 4-team playoff era, and a 50% probability they’re halfway in between those poles. That is all obviously a big fat guess.
Virginia’s the favorite to win the ACC but Louisville’s the likeliest ACC team to make the playoff. Louisville has a realistic at-large path. Virginia does not.
Texas is still on the probabilities graphic. This will change based on how Georgia plays against Mississippi State, but our model currently has the Longhorns a 6-point underdog in Athens on the 15th. An ugly team? Sure. A bad team? No.
We’re going to hear a lot this week about how many top-25 wins everybody has, and that’s going to matter but it also isn’t. College football rankings are funny. You could argue that the most important time to have a lot of top-25 wins is right now, ahead of those first rankings. For teams whose résumés don’t dramatically change from here, those first CFP rankings can be an anchor. The committee evaluates teams once, and then it doesn’t always fully evaluate them again unless they win a big game or pick up a new loss.
For what it’s worth, those average end-of-season rankings from our model are a better proxy for the final top 25 than whatever we’re seeing in the current AP Poll, or even what we see tomorrow night. If top-25 wins was a serious metric, that would be a better list to use for measurements. (Oklahoma and Utah might each finish without a single ranked win.)
The 25 Best Teams Right Now
Movelor’s current power ratings:
The 25 Best Teams Right Now (continued)
We’ve got some separation in the second pack, where Notre Dame and Georgia both fell back while Indiana stepped forward yet again. We’ll still point out that Alabama and Georgia have more depth than Indiana. You could argue that this depth is theoretical since we haven’t seen all of it, but it’s a long season. What Indiana’s doing is incredible. Indiana also has a lot of games left to play.
Notre Dame remains ahead of Texas A&M despite Texas A&M beating them in September and looking perfectly capable of doing it again. Maybe Movelor’s too slow to react. Maybe Texas A&M’s defense has been lucky to get away with some of what it’s done.
Utah remains ahead of Texas Tech despite Texas Tech whooping them in the fourth quarter in Salt Lake City back in September. The Utes are playing better right now. That probably won’t end up mattering.
Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Texas all lining up in that order isn’t that impactful on anything, but it’s fun! Look at those three. Doin’ neighbor stuff.
We still haven’t seen interim LSU. Interim Penn State looks…fine?
There are two ACC teams in this top 25 and neither is among the four teams likeliest to make the ACC Championship. This doesn’t have to be good or bad, but the ACC will make a little more sense when it goes to that nine-game conference schedule. Bigger samples help. Especially for conferences with an unwieldy number of teams.
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