At this time last week, the leaders in the playoff race could breathe easy. In the SEC, all of Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi were in a safe position. In the Big Ten, Ohio State and Indiana had similar room to spare. Notre Dame was comfortably distant from head-to-head wolf Miami and comfortably far from the cut line. Even Texas Tech and Oregon, teams the committee doesn’t seem to respect relative to the strength of their résumés, comfortably controlled their fate. Of the twelve playoff spots, two would go to automatic qualifiers from the ACC, American, and Sun Belt. That left ten for those nine at-large leaders. There was little cause for concern.
Then, on Saturday, Oklahoma beat Alabama.
The situation isn’t exactly fraught. All nine of those teams—plus Oklahoma now, we’d assume—still probably control their fate. But there are dangerous scenarios afoot. What if 11–1 BYU beats 11–1 Texas Tech in the Big 12 Championship? Do both get in, eliminating one of Oregon, Notre Dame, and Oklahoma? What if Miami gets close enough to Notre Dame that the committee votes on them in the same pool as the Irish? Would this push Notre Dame back? Would others be pushed back with them? Most likely, someone from the back half of these ten teams will lose. But the list of potential spoilers is a sorry bunch: Auburn and LSU have interim coaches. Missouri’s still without Beau Pribula. West Virginia, Syracuse, Stanford, and Mississippi State are bad. USC and Washington aren’t, but they’re not good enough to inspire a lot of confidence for teams who’d prefer Oregon lose.
We’ve used poker analogies recently, and they still fit. What’s happening for Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and maybe even Alabama is like a poker player holding a good but not dominant hand pre-turn. A lot of the cards that could come up will save them. The majority of cards, even. But if those cards don’t come up, at least one of those three teams is going to be sweating the conference championship weekend. They should also be sweating tonight’s rankings, but more on that later.
What our model sees, with last week’s games included but without tonight’s rankings:
Moving In: Utah, Georgia Tech
Georgia Tech’s narrowly our model’s ACC favorite right now, and unlike SMU (last week’s favorite), the Yellow Jackets’ average finish leaves them ranked ahead of James Madison and North Texas. It doesn’t hurt that USF lost.
For the other…why Utah and not Oklahoma?
Movelor—our model’s power rating system—is a simple guy. He cares about who won and by how much but he doesn’t care about much else. This works, especially at the top of the FBS and the top of the FCS. Other systems aren’t capable of saying Ohio State is more than a touchdown better than everybody else, so while they get a lot of things correct about matchups between 6–4 teams in the MAC, they struggle to accurately predict the playoff. Movelor’s a little looser with those MAC games in exchange for more accuracy in December and January.
This is a long way of justifying why Movelor doesn’t know or care that LSU fired Brian Kelly, or that Beau Pribula’s out for Mizzou. Another long way of justifying it? Those things just don’t matter that much. Penn State’s played better the last few weeks than they did in the final days of James Franklin. The same can theoretically happen for LSU. On the Mizzou front, backup quarterbacks outperform starters all the time in college, and even when they don’t, it’s easy to overstate the impact, applying NFL logic to a sport where offensive line strength is often more important than who’s throwing passes. Matt Zollers isn’t better than Beau Pribula. But Movelor’s seen a few games of Matt Zollers Mizzou, and if that’s the Mizzou who plays Oklahoma on Saturday, Movelor will be mostly ready. As a human being, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Oklahoma decimate a Zollers-led offense. But Movelor’s not a human being, and for as often as it gets surprised, it does a better job than me of predicting final scores.
Taking all that together: There’s a better chance Oklahoma loses again than that Utah does. The Sooners still have to play two teams Movelor rates as top-20 outfits. The job’s not done.
Moving Out: Texas, USF
Texas might have been able to survive losing to Georgia. But losing to Georgia by 25, seeing Florida continue to lose, and seeing Texas A&M—that prize piece of meat left on the schedule—nearly lose to South Carolina was a bad combination of events for the Longhorns. USF, meanwhile, was in the driver’s seat until they weren’t. We’ve mentioned a lot how Navy’s not as good as their record, and how before last week, Navy had underperformed Movelor’s slowly dropping expectations every time they took the field. The Midshipmen picked a good time to play their best game of the year.
Moving Up: Notre Dame
Notre Dame went on the road against a ranked opponent and beat the crap out of them. Theoretically, the committee should love this. But, of course, the ACC is the ACC, and while this year’s committee doesn’t seem to say that about ACC teams (it’s been fairly generous towards them) it might not view that win over Pitt the same way it’d view a similar margin over Tennessee. That part’s fair. The ACC generosity isn’t.
Our model doesn’t know this about the committee, though. It sees a road blowout over a ranked team and says, “Hell yeah, a road blowout over a ranked team!” We’ll share our model’s full rankings prediction later, but as a preview: It has Notre Dame jumping Oregon. I am skeptical of that expectation.
Moving Down: Alabama
The Crimson Tide have a tricky team sheet. On one hand, they beat Georgia, who currently looks like the SEC’s only believable national title contender, and they ultimately comfortably beat Vanderbilt and Tennessee, two respectable teams. On the other, they lost to Florida State by multiple touchdowns, and their wins against Missouri and South Carolina and LSU weren’t pretty, and they just lost a home game to a team Texas bludgeoned last month. If Mississippi, Oregon, Notre Dame, and Oklahoma all win out, there’ll be a case to be made that Alabama should be the last at-large in the field, and therefore vulnerable to a bid thief. We’ll learn more tonight.
Playoff Probabilities, Average Final CFP Rankings
What really matters:
Playoff Probabilities, Average Final CFP Rankings (continued)
As a reminder—and this is relevant for Utah vs. BYU—our model treats the “Do conference championships matter for the loser?” question as one with three possible answers. Either they don’t matter much at all (25% of the time, this is how the model treats them), they matter half as much as regular season losses (50%), or they matter just as much as regular season losses (25%). If they don’t matter much at all, our model is underrating BYU’s chances, plus Alabama’s as well.
(Side note: If the committee has a self-preservation instinct, it should rank Notre Dame ahead of Oklahoma ahead of Alabama. Alabama’s probably going to make the SEC Championship. There’s a good chance they’re an underdog in that game. Leaving them as the last team in gives the committee a way to take the 10–2 teams instead of the 10–3 team without hearing ESPN bellow, “You can’t punish a team for making their conference championship!”)
The other big thing here is James Madison vs. North Texas vs. Tulane. Tulane, you’ll notice, is not on either of these pages. 19 days ago, UTSA ran Tulane off the field. Our model won’t be stunned if North Texas is ranked ahead of JMU tonight. It will be stunned if Tulane is ranked. But we just don’t know what the committee makes of this year’s Sun Belt. So I want to mention that possibility. Movelor has JMU 90% likely to win the Sun Belt. It has North Texas 60% likely to win the American. If each takes care of business, it’s going to be really tight for the committee. If UNT doesn’t and JMU does, hopefully the committee won’t default to an undeserving American champion.
How Good Is Everybody?
Movelor’s Top 25:
How Good Is Everybody? (continued)
Three of the four most talented teams in the country play in the SEC. Talent is normally essential for winning a national championship, especially because the way we define talent (we use a measure similar to the 247 Talent Composite) also reflects depth, and guys are gonna get hurt. Right now, though, one of those teams—Texas—is sitting behind 4–6 Penn State in these power ratings, and another—Alabama—is behind two teams from the Big 12.
Movelor is trying to predict this weekend’s results. There is still time for Alabama to figure it out. (Texas less so, though two big wins would at least get it up into the top ten again.) Right now, however, Georgia is the only SEC team who’s a believable national champion. I’d personally call them the only non-Ohio State team who’s a believable national champion, but the chance of a rogue upset is too high to make that a reasonable statement. I don’t think anyone but Ohio State or Georgia will win this year’s national championship, and I think Georgia needs to keep improving to get it done, but I’m not being reasonable when I say that.
Go ahead and notice Utah, who’s been obliterating teams in a Big 12 that Movelor indicates is mostly disrespected. Go ahead and really notice Indiana and Texas A&M, who’ve slipped again lately. Plenty of teams are missing three starters. Indiana is really missing Drew Evans and Elijah Sarratt, and it might really miss Mikail Kamara if he isn’t back come December. Injuries are likelier to mount than to recede.
As for A&M? Scooby Williams and Mario Craver are great players, but the first half on Saturday wasn’t all that much about them. It was about Marcel Reed struggling and a questionable Texas A&M defense failing to bail him out. Texas A&M upset Notre Dame in South Bend in September. Since then, they haven’t played anyone Movelor ranks better than 18th. Beating Mizzou and LSU and even South Carolina isn’t nothing, and the résumé is perfectly solid. But there’s a difference between taking care of business against top-20 teams and beating teams in the top ten. At the time they played, I’m not sure Notre Dame was a top-10 team. And you can make a case Notre Dame outplayed A&M that night and just shot themselves in the foot at the end.
We’re not trying to say Texas A&M is bad.
We’re saying we don’t have reason to believe they’re great.
The program can (and should!) get there under Mike Elko, but they’re still a year or two away.
Tonight’s Rankings
We’re going to list what our model expects, complete with the expected ranking score next to each team (from the bottom of the FBS at 0.0 to the top at 100.0). We’ll add our own skepticism or justification after each group.
1. Ohio State (100.0)
2. Indiana (97.7)
3. Texas A&M (96.0)
If the committee was a feisty bunch, they could try slipping Georgia ahead of Texas A&M to give radio shows some fodder. I don’t think the committee’s feisty. Especially not with Mack Rhoades gone, though he was feisty in a different way. (I’m referencing the undershirt fight—I have no idea what the allegations are against him.)
4. Georgia (91.4)
5. Texas Tech (90.4)
6. Mississippi (89.2)
Still what you’d expect here. Mississippi could be ranked lower, but what we’ve seen from the committee so far doesn’t indicate that they will be. We should mention: Weird Lane Kiffin situation. Comes with the territory, but if we’re talking about ten deserving teams for nine at-large spots, speculation about Mississippi’s head coaching situation will come into play, just like the infamous Jordan Travis injury came into play once upon a time. Even if Kiffin does leave, Mississippi might want to encourage him to coach them through the playoff. Better that than being left out.
7. Notre Dame (88.3)
8. Oregon (87.4)
9. Oklahoma (86.7)
10. Alabama (85.9)
11. BYU (84.9)
This is the crucible tonight. This is where it counts. Whoever is last among Notre Dame, Oregon, Oklahoma, and Alabama is the one in danger.
Do I think Oregon will be ranked behind Notre Dame? Not really, but the committee has disrespected this Oregon team since the outset. Will Oklahoma stay behind Notre Dame? I think that’s the question. Which means the real question is probably, “Is Alabama better than Notre Dame?” Movelor doesn’t think so. Considering last year’s playoff result between Notre Dame and Georgia, I don’t think so. But there’s a habit with Alabama—an understandable habit—of assuming they are as good as their talent indicates they can be. They’re not that good, but the committee might think they are. That might buoy Oklahoma and make Notre Dame the team on the hot seat.
I’m including BYU in here because it would be perfectly reasonable for the committee to drop Alabama past them. I don’t think that’ll happen, and neither does our model given what the committee’s said so far. But ranking 9–1 BYU ahead of a team who lost to Florida State would be a fine thing to do.
12. Utah (83.9)
13. Miami (81.4)
14. Vanderbilt (81.4)
15. USC (80.1)
16. Georgia Tech (79.4)
17. Texas (79.4)
18. Michigan (78.9)
Our model has Miami jumping Vanderbilt and USC jumping Georgia Tech, two things I don’t think the committee will bother to do. The real question is how far Texas falls. The Longhorns have a great chance to beat a top-3 team on Thanksgiving weekend. Where they’re ranked tonight will tell us how likely it is for that chance to include a playoff shot.
We mentioned the Miami vs. Notre Dame thing above. We mentioned the committee voting on them in the same “pool” as Notre Dame. My impression of how the committee assembles the top of its top 25 is as follows, based on this explanation of the voting process:
- From a group of six teams, rank the top four.
- From a new group of six teams—the two left outside the top four plus four more—rank teams five through eight.
- From a third group of six teams—the two left outside the top eight plus four more—rank teams nine through twelve.
Depending on whether Notre Dame’s ranked 8th or better, and depending where Texas lands, Notre Dame and Miami could be in the same pool of voting. If Notre Dame’s outside the top eight, Miami should be in their pool. It would be shocking if the committee backtracked on their previous assessments of the two, especially because it could potentially cause BYU, Utah, and Vanderbilt collateral damage, but the Notre Dame vs. Miami head-to-head result (a three-point Miami win at Hard Rock Stadium) will come up in that conversation. It hasn’t had to come up before because these two haven’t been that close. As more teams lose between them, it gains potential relevance. If you think about this for a little while, you may find yourself amused and/or disappointed in your favorite sport. It’s pretty silly.
19. Virginia (77.5)
20. Tennessee (75.4)
21. James Madison (74.3)
22. North Texas (73.8)
23. Illinois (73.4)
24. Iowa (73.1)
25. Washington (71.9)
26. Missouri (71.6)
27. Houston (71.0)
Arizona, Louisville, Arizona State, SMU, Pitt, Nebraska, Cincinnati, and Wake Forest are the remaining power conference teams with three or fewer losses, but there doesn’t seem to be a good reason to rank any of them. Even if the committee takes out Iowa, who’s 6–4, and leaves out Washington, who recently lost to Wisconsin, and takes out Louisville, Pitt, USF, and Cincinnati as expected, they can still plug their holes with two 9–1 mid-majors, two 7–3 teams from the Big Ten and SEC, and an 8–2 Houston.
Keep an eye, though, on Virginia, James Madison, North Texas, and I suppose SMU. At least one automatic bid is probably going to those four teams. Maybe two.
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