CFP Bracketology: The Committee Likes the SEC

The first College Football Playoff rankings are out, and the headline is the ACC. No ACC team is ranked better than 14^th. Georgia Tech has the worst ranking of any one-loss high-major. In our model’s eyes, no team saw their playoff probability drop more than Louisville, who lost a full 80% of their playoff appearances in our latest 10,000 simulations.

The ACC is the headline, but the full story is a little broader. Since the SEC and Big Ten beefed up ahead of the 2024 season, we’ve heard a lot of “Power 2” talk where we used to hear “Power 5.” Just like there’s a gap between the ACC and the American, there’s a gap between the Big Ten & SEC and the ACC & Big 12. We’ve wondered when this would show up in the College Football Playoff committee’s rankings. Last year, it did, but in mixed fashion. This year, it’s a little more prominent, but with an unexpected twist.

Our model accounts for differences between the committee’s rankings and its expectations with a variable called “FPA,” short for “Forgiveness/Punishment Adjustment.” Back when we built this model in 2019, the idea was that the committee forgives some losses and punishes others, sometimes in unexpected ways. It’s not the best name for the variable, but FPA does its job well: Every week, it measures how far the committee deviated from precedent. More accurately, because last year’s rankings weren’t conclusive on the Power 2 vs. Power 4 question, it measures how far the committee deviated from the precedent of the four-team, Power 5 era.

If the story were simple, we’d see the SEC and Big Ten get positive FPA adjustments, in similar magnitudes and across the board. We’d see the Big 12 and ACC get negative FPA adjustments, in similar magnitudes and across the board. Notre Dame and mid-majordom would remain a semi-predictable crapshoot.

We’re seeing some of that play out.

But not all of that.

Here’s the detail from last night’s rankings:

• SEC: 9 positive FPA’s, 0 negative. Average FPA of +2.9 “points.”
• American: 1 positive FPA, 2 negative. Average FPA of +0.8 points.
• Notre Dame: 1 positive FPA, 0 negative. Average FPA of +0.3 points.
• ACC: 2 positive FPA’s, 1 negative. Average FPA of –0.9 points.
• Big Ten: 2 positive FPA’s, 6 negative. Average FPA of –1.1 points.
• Big 12: 0 positive FPA’s, 4 negative. Average FPA of –2.6 points.
• Sun Belt: 0 positive FPA’s, 1 negative. Average FPA of –3.1 points.

There are two questions from this: Whether our model should have expected it and whether it’s fair. For some quick model talk, yes. Some of what happened here is that we should have expected the committee to like the Power 2. But the story’s not that simple. The Big Ten averaged a negative FPA, with teams like Illinois (surprisingly behind Tennessee), Oregon, and USC all treated similarly to their counterparts from the ACC and Big 12. Last night’s rankings weren’t Power 2 vs. Middle 2. They were SEC vs. everybody.

Is this fair? Reasonable? Just?

Over the last 25 years, the SEC’s won 14 of the BCS/CFP national championships. Texas, who is now in the SEC, won one of the eleven others. Right now, the median SEC team would be favored by 5.5 points over the median Big Ten team, 9 points over the median Big 12 team, and 11 points over the median ACC team. The Big Ten is stronger at the top right now. The Big Ten’s best team has won the last two national championships. Top to bottom, the SEC is the best conference in college football.

That said.

• Mississippi’s only beaten one power conference team by more than one possession.
• Oklahoma’s lost twice and hasn’t beaten anyone ranked in the committee’s top 20.
• Georgia beat Mississippi, but it was at home. Two of their last three games have been struggles against teams who fired or were about to fire their coach.
• Tennessee’s lost three times. Their best win came against Mississippi State.

The SEC has earned respect. But it hasn’t earned what the committee gave us last night. Maybe the committee comes around, reconsidering Oregon if they win at Iowa and reconsidering Oklahoma after their trip to Tuscaloosa (probably) goes badly. Maybe the winner of Texas Tech vs. BYU gets a lot of credit. Maybe Louisville is one day set free from their Virginia trap. But as a blog which usually defends the committee and downplays complaints that the SEC is overrated…last night’s rankings were surprising. Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee got rewarded for things Nick Saban did a decade ago. Louisville’s entire résumé was reduced to that loss to Virginia.

The biggest playoff probability movers based on last night’s rankings, from our model:

The other story from last night was Memphis. The committee listed a leader for the fifth automatic bid, and it was Memphis. Two things were surprising about this. First, Memphis was ahead of James Madison. Second, Memphis was seemingly ahead of North Texas and USF.

We warned James Madison yesterday how bad it would be if an AAC team was ahead of them. The message the committee’s sending is similar to the SEC vs. ACC message: It respects the American more than other mid-major leagues, and it doesn’t respect the Sun Belt.

Some of that’s fair this year. The American has a better middle and a much stronger top, with five teams who are probably better than the Sun Belt’s second-best. That doesn’t change that it’s bad news for JMU, though, who has less meat left on the bone than Memphis, USF, and UNT. The Dukes’ big hope now is that those teams beat one another. Unfortunately for JMU, there doesn’t seem to be anything they can do if one of those three teams wins out.

As for Memphis vs. USF vs. UNT. Memphis wins a head-to-head chain there. But. Memphis lost to UAB at home. If you’re evaluating whole résumés, it’s silly to put Memphis ahead of the Bulls and the Mean Green. It’s like ranking Virginia ahead of Louisville. This isn’t surprising—the committee isn’t known for paying mid-majors a lot of attention—but UAB. Memphis lost, at home, to UAB.

On to the bracketology.

I’m including the average final CFP ranking next to the bracketology to try to illustrate how close the pack is from our model’s 3^rd seed to its 6^th seed. Our bracketology lines up teams’ average scenarios in order. We do this because it makes more sense to us to say, “Indiana’s ahead of everyone in the SEC,” than to say, “whoever loses the Big Ten Championship has a 60%-ish chance of being seeded behind the SEC champion, so we’re going to pick an SEC champion who’s barely favored to win it and give them a 2-seed.” Others do it differently, and they’re not doing it wrong. But this is the approach which makes more sense to us.

Comparing Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, and Texas A&M:

• Mississippi has most of its hay in the barn. Unless they find a way into the SEC Championship, they’ve only got two FBS games remaining, and they’ll be favored in both. (Florida at home and Mississippi State away). Their average playoff slot is a home game, not a bye, but they do have a 38% chance at a bye, and their average finish is better than anybody else’s because it’s unlikelier that they’ll lose.
• Georgia has two nice pieces of meat left on the bone. The Bulldogs get Texas in Athens and Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Both of those are games they stand a good chance of winning. They’re a little likelier than Mississippi to make the SEC Championship, because they won that game head-to-head (a reasonable tiebreaker in conference standings or in top 25 rankings when résumés are actually comparable), which introduces both a little more upside and a little more downside. The Bulldogs are 41% likely to get a bye.
• Alabama has a straight path to the SEC Championship, needing to only beat two interim coaches and Oklahoma. (Our model currently has the Bama–Oklahoma line at 13 points.) That introduces the chance of one of these teams beating them, though. 35% bye probability.
• Texas A&M has some work left to do, playing Mizzou in Columbia this weekend and Texas in Austin on Black Friday. They’re in the best position, but they’re the likeliest to lose again, whether it’s one of those two games or the SEC Championship. 40% bye probability.

So, that’s how our model gets those four teams in a counterintuitive order. It’ll all shake out.

Texas Tech comes in ahead of Oregon because it still plays BYU and because of how much likelier it is that the Red Raiders get a conference title. BYU’s still in the field because of the decent chance the Cougars get two shots at Texas Tech.

We haven’t talked much about Notre Dame, who dodged a bullet when the committee didn’t shove them behind Miami. If they take care of business, they’re in. They make it in 98% of simulations. The ones where they don’t involve underwhelming showings against Navy, Syracuse, and Stanford more than they involve other teams actively leapfrogging Notre Dame.

Virginia’s still the ACC favorite.

Memphis narrowly trails JMU in playoff probability, but JMU’s average scenario sees them finishing unranked. JMU’s playoff path is AAC cannibalism.

The probabilities:

We already showed you some of these. Highlights:

• It’s bleak for JMU but the lights aren’t off. Cannibalism is decently likely in the AAC. (Though if it does happen, JMU will then have to hope it’s enough. We don’t know how far JMU is behind that AAC trio. It might be farther than our model expects.)
• Utah’s still in the mix for an at-large berth. The committee wasn’t as low on Utah as Utah could have feared.
• Miami does have a path to an at-large bid. It needs help, but there’s a path.
• Louisville doesn’t have much of a path to an at-large bid. The Cards need to win the ACC. We’ve mentioned this before, but we’re still waiting to get all tiebreaker scenarios into our model. There are still too many for us to handle, so anything larger than three teams and anything that can’t be handled through head-to-head isn’t there.
• Only Ohio State and Indiana are truly safe. Even with a kind committee glance and a smooth road ahead, Mississippi could miss the playoff if they mess this up.

No graphic for this list, but here’s where every team’s FPA and ranking score came out after we applied FPA across the five segments on the rankings curve. 26 through 31 are, of course, estimates, but all of this is estimates.

1. Ohio State: +3.2 FPA (100.0)
2. Indiana: –4.2 FPA (95.9)
3. Texas A&M: +1.2 FPA (91.7)
4. Alabama: +1.3 FPA (88.0)
5. Georgia: +4.7 FPA (87.2)
6. Mississippi: +5.0 FPA (86.4)
7. BYU: –5.0 FPA (85.6)
8. Texas Tech: –3.8 FPA (84.8)
9. Oregon: –2.7 FPA (83.8)
10. Notre Dame: +0.3 FPA (81.1)
11. Texas: +1.9 FPA (80.4)
12. Oklahoma: +5.0 FPA (79.8)
13. Utah: –2.6 FPA (79.3)
14. Virginia: –0.8 FPA (78.7)
15. Louisville: –5.3 FPA (78.1)
16. Vanderbilt: +0.8 FPA (77.5)
17. Georgia Tech: +1.8 FPA (76.9)
18. Miami (FL): –1.5 FPA (76.3)
19. USC: –2.3 FPA (75.8)
20. Iowa: +1.8 FPA (75.1)
21. Michigan: –0.9 FPA (74.6)
22. Missouri: +1.3 FPA (73.9)
23. Washington: –1.6 FPA (73.4)
24. Pitt: +1.5 FPA (71.7)
25. Tennessee: +4.8 FPA (71.2)
26. Cincinnati: –1.5 FPA (70.7)
27. Illinois: –1.8 FPA (70.1)
28. Memphis: +3.7 FPA (69.9)
29. North Texas: –0.6 FPA (69.4)
30. USF: –0.8 FPA (68.9)
31. James Madison: –3.1 FPA (68.5)

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