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First, an acknowledgment of the reality which surrounds us: It is not currently morning.
Apologies for the delay today. We were finishing up the model, which will launch tonight or tomorrow.
Late in the college football season, the question often turns to Good vs. Deserving. Last year, Georgia and Florida State epitomized this best. Georgia was a good team, but by traditional standards, they did not deserve a playoff berth. By those same standards, Florida State deserved a berth, but they weren’t all that good. This question is more common in college basketball, where there are subjective bubble debates every year instead of a couple times a decade. But it exists in football, and it’s at the heart of our quarrel with the AP Poll once the season’s underway: Are college football rankings about how good a team is, or are they about the quality of different résumés?
As we continue our look at the season ahead, we’re going to offer some prognostications on both fronts. First, we’ll look at the best teams. Then, we’ll look at the teams with the best playoff paths. After that? Make sure you’re sitting down for this. We’re going to weave those lists together. When we’re done, we’ll have three categories of teams in our broad playoff picture: National championship contenders. Good teams. And teams with good paths.
A note, before we do this: The probabilities below come from our college football model’s outlook before Week Zero. This is going to feel most noteworthy regarding Florida State, but we’re doing it because of Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech already having a win in their pocket shakes up the playoff race, and while we’ll deal with live probabilities starting tomorrow, it would create a slanted view of the national picture to include Saturday’s game here. Apologies for that confusion. If you’d like to know the impact of Week Zero on Movelor’s ratings and rankings, it was this: Florida State stayed put at 12th but is rated 2.6 points worse than before. Georgia Tech climbed from 52nd to 36th. SMU dropped from 32nd to 47th. There was other movement, but those are the numbers with meaningful national impact.
The 25 Best Teams
Movelor isn’t a perfect rating system, and it struggles the most at the beginning of the year. Still, over the entirety of the season, it’s less than a point per game less accurate than the closing spread in Las Vegas. You could do a lot worse than trusting Movelor.
We made one major adjustment to our model this year. This is why today’s post is coming late and why we didn’t do more preview posts last week. We’ll explain the details somewhere else tonight or tomorrow, for our fellow nerds, but the short version is that we tempered Movelor’s preseason ratings with the preseason AP Top 25. We by no means told Movelor to defer to the AP Poll, and we won’t let the model consider such smut again until next August, but we allowed it to consider the preseason poll for the first time. Hopefully, this irons out some of the early-season swings the model experiences.
Movelor’s Top 25 follows. The rating in parentheses is how much each team would have been favored, preseason, against an average Division I team on a neutral field. Northern Iowa is currently that proxy. The most average team within all of the FBS and FCS.
1. Georgia (46.6)
2. Michigan (46.6)
3. Oregon (44.2)
4. Alabama (43.9)
5. Ohio State (43.9)
6. Texas (41.3)
7. Notre Dame (41.3)
8. Penn State (39.4)
9. LSU (35.3)
10. Missouri (35.0)
11. Mississippi (35.0)
12. Florida State (34.6)
13. Tennessee (32.0)
14. Kansas State (32.0)
15. Clemson (31.3)
16. Oklahoma (31.2)
17. Arizona (30.4)
18. Washington (29.2)
19. Utah (28.2)
20. Texas A&M (26.7)
21. Oklahoma State (25.9)
22. South Dakota State (25.4)
23. Kansas (24.9)
24. USC (23.9)
25. Maryland (23.6)
These are, by our best objective estimate, the 25 best teams in the country. If we were to get a little subjective, we could debate Michigan, Washington, Arizona, Maryland, and a few others, but we’ll do some of that down below.
The 25 Likeliest Playoff Teams
Now, we’re going to look at our model’s 25 likeliest teams to make the playoff field. The numbers ahead of each team are their Movelor rankings.
1. #2 Michigan: 80%
2. #1 Georgia: 79%
3. #7 Notre Dame: 77%
4. #5 Ohio State: 72%
5. #3 Oregon: 71%
6. #4 Alabama: 70%
7. #6 Texas: 60%
8. #8 Penn State: 55%
9. #12 Florida State: 52%
10. #14 Kansas State: 41%
11. #10 Missouri: 40%
12. #15 Clemson: 36%
13. #17 Arizona: 32%
14. #11 Mississippi: 31%
15. #9 LSU: 31%
16. #19 Utah: 25%
17. #13 Tennessee: 21%
18. #44 James Madison: 16%
19. #46 UTSA: 16%
20. #16 Oklahoma: 15%
21. #62 Liberty: 15%
22. #42 Troy: 14%
23. #23 Kansas: 13%
24. #27 NC State: 13%
25. #21 Oklahoma State: 12%
If you’re looking at this list and realizing that playing in the Big Ten and SEC makes it harder to make the 12-team playoff, while playing in the ACC makes it easier…yes. Despite fears that this playoff is hurting the little big guys, it is actually those little big guys whom the format helps the most. Keep your head down. Tell no one what you’ve seen.
Three Kinds of Contenders
The National Championship Hopefuls: Georgia, Michigan, Oregon, Alabama, Ohio State, Texas, Notre Dame, Penn State
We could cut this list in a number of places, but we’re cutting it here because the top eight teams in Movelor’s rankings are also the eight our model deems likeliest to make the playoffs.
Georgia is the most popular choice for the number one team in football, and Movelor doesn’t disagree. The Dogs have continuity, proven performance, and talent. Outside of Michigan, they were probably the best team in the country last season. Had Alabama not upset them in Atlanta, we might have had a hell of a national championship game.
Maybe that will happen this year? Movelor’s higher on Michigan than just about anybody else is. Subjectively, we doubt our model here. We aren’t that worried about them losing J.J. McCarthy and Blake Corum, but we don’t like the turnover on the offensive line. Still, Movelor would have had Michigan favored by six points over Georgia had they met on a neutral field a week after the national title game. That’s a lot of points. Even as a national champion, Michigan was probably undervalued at the end of last season. That could be leading to some undervaluing this season, especially since the coaching turnover was only partial and Mason Graham anchors a good defense.
Oregon, like Georgia, is a straightforward concept: They were very good last year and they have a lot of continuity. Dillon Gabriel taps in for Bo Nix, but that could be an upgrade. Gabriel is, after all, the current Heisman favorite. Subjectively, we’d probably call Oregon the Big Ten favorite, but we wouldn’t say they’re favored over the field. Their big advantage is that they get Ohio State at home.
Skipping, now, to Ohio State: The Buckeyes are the market’s Big Ten favorites and also the AP Poll’s. They brought in a lot of transfer talent. But talent has never been the issue in Columbus. Never. Can Ohio State compete with Oregon and Michigan? Assuredly. Even Movelor, relatively low on the Bucks, has them within half a point of Oregon and within three points of “that team up north.” But the questions around Ryan Day’s program are fair. Can Will Howard make the plays Ohio State needs him to make? Does Day himself know how to navigate a close, high-pressure game? The big step Ohio State made last year was answering the questions about its defense. This year, they need to show they can win when winning is hard.
The Big Ten, then, is a three or four-team race. I guess we can include Penn State here—they’re pretty good and have a pretty good playoff-making schedule—but the biggest question in the conference is how big Michigan’s decline will be, and the next question is whether Ohio State’s five-stars are better than Oregon’s football players.
Alabama and Texas are in here as well, a notch behind Georgia but very much in the conversation. Texas, it should be noted, goes to Ann Arbor in Week 2 and welcomes the Bulldogs to Austin in October. Markets currently call the road team the favorite in both those games. Movelor currently has Texas an underdog in each.
We aren’t sure Texas is actually five points worse than Georgia right now, as Movelor indicates. Steve Sarkisian has a lot of things going in his favor, and while there are some specifically Texas questions for Texas (e.g. complacency), Georgia isn’t immune from that category of doubt. Both Texas and Georgia could go off the rails. Texas has more of a history of doing that, but Georgia has played with off-field fire in recent years.
Alabama used to be immune from concerns regarding focus. That was something Nick Saban seemed to handle very, very well, and something we think was more Saban than Tuscaloosa in the aftermath of the Brandon Miller incident two academic years ago. Now? Now we don’t know what to expect. They should still be very good. They have a lot of talent, and Kalen DeBoer did a great job at Washington. But Alabama’s a little like the stock cars in Talladega, across the Birmingham metro: Hard to steer, surrounded by risk.
Turning our subjectivity to the SEC, we like Texas’s path more than Georgia’s and we like both those teams more than Alabama. It’s hard to win big in a coach’s first season.
The eighth team in here? Notre Dame. Notre Dame has a great playoff path. They play both Texas A&M and USC on the road and they host preseason ACC favorite Florida State, giving the schedule a little bit of meat. It’s only a little, though. Their other Power Four opponents are Purdue, Louisville, Stanford, Georgia Tech, and Virginia. Georgia Tech is feisty, as we saw on Saturday, but that game will be in a fairly neutral environment at the Falcons’ stadium. Louisville is solid, but that game’s in South Bend. Notre Dame has a schedule on par with those of the Big 12 and ACC favorites, and while it can’t receive a bye, it stands no risk of losing a playoff play-in in a conference championship game. On top of that, there’s a chance the Irish could be really good. They were a lot stronger last year than they got credit for being. The questions are big in consequence—offensive line, quarterback—but they’re small in number.
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Good Teams, Bad Paths: LSU, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Washington, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, South Dakota State, USC, Maryland
Eleven teams in Movelor’s top 25 rank lower in the playoff chase than they rank on the field. Six of those play in the SEC. Three play in the Big Ten. Of the other two, one is the best FCS team in the country and the other is the Big 12 team who made the mistake of scheduling that FCS foe. Oklahoma State has one of the highest-downside, lowest-upside games in the country on Saturday. That’s enough to outweigh the playoff-making benefits of being a Big 12 favorite.
On the SEC side, the polls are very high on Lane Kiffin’s Mississippi. We get it, but there are just a lot of teams they have to beat. Polls are lower on Brian Kelly’s LSU, but they found a way to ten wins last year. A repeat of that is not an unreasonable expectation. Mizzou should be for real, Oklahoma’s consistent, and even under first-year coach Mike Elko, Texas A&M has a lot of talent. Tennessee is tricky. They’re definitely rising as an athletic department, but the depth of their athleticism is limited in football. They trail all of Clemson, Oklahoma, Florida, and Miami in the 247Sports Talent Composite. Plus twelve teams you’d expect.
With the Big Ten, USC should be competitive. The upside is high, but as always under Lincoln Riley, the defense is the question. One note here: The drop-off from Caleb Williams to Miller Moss is significant, but it might not be as impactful as its size implies. Sometimes, there can be diminishing returns at skill positions in college football. Yes, Caleb Williams was the best quarterback in the country last year. But Moss’s results probably wouldn’t have been all that different in Riley’s offense with USC’s talent.
Washington is more of a question mark. Jedd Fisch was unsuccessful in bringing his men with him from Tucson to Seattle, with Arizona pulling off the booster equivalent of a goal line stand. Movelor is hesitant to write the Huskies off, but the schedule is rough, a bad blend of challenging low-upside games (at Iowa, vs. USC) and hellscapes (vs. Michigan, at Penn State, at Oregon). A good start is paramount.
Maryland? Sneakily good! Maybe Taulia Tagovailoa graduating from college football pushes them down further than Movelor expects, but Maryland was a lot better last year than they got credit for being. Unfortunately for the Terrapins, even if they are among the 25 best college football teams this year, their schedule is probably too difficult for anyone to notice.
Good Paths: Florida State, Kansas State, Clemson, Arizona, Utah, Kansas, NC State, Troy, James Madison, UTSA, Liberty
The ACC and the Big 12 dominate the front of this list.
Again, this comes from before FSU lost to Georgia Tech (and before Georgia Tech beat FSU). The FSU playoff probability is south of 50% now. But Movelor still sees the Seminoles as the best team in the ACC, and that makes them a playoff contender.
Will Clemson figure things out? They might not have to. Even if Georgia beats their brains in this Saturday, the Tigers have a clear path to the playoff 3-seed. They do have to win the games to get there, and it’s possible the crumbling continues, but it seems likelier Clemson has stabilized into this territory around the edge of the top ten. They aren’t what they were, but their floor is pretty high.
NC State completes the ACC portion of the list. SMU would have come next among that conference, but their lackluster effort in Reno changed that anyway. When we post the Week 1 numbers tomorrow, take a look at Georgia Tech.
In the Big 12, the favorites are who we expected them to be: Kansas State, Arizona, Utah, and Kansas. Of these four, Arizona and Kansas are in the trickier situations. Arizona has a brand-new coach in Brent Brennan, whose time at San Jose State was good but didn’t make him a rock star. Kansas is heavily reliant on Jalon Daniels, who might be lightning on the field but has still never played more than nine games in a season.
K-State and Utah, then, are the safer bets to contend out of the Big 12. K-State has the easier conference schedule of the two, but neither would be a surprise to receive the bye which likely awaits the Big 12 champion. Unfortunately, given that list of SEC and Big Ten teams above, the 3-seed will probably have to play a national championship contender in the quarterfinals. The Big 12 and ACC can get teams to the quarters, but they can’t help them you once they’re there.
At the tail end of the list, we get four Group of Five schools. Troy and James Madison aren’t much likelier than UTSA and Liberty to take the fifth automatic bid, but their presence here demonstrates how the Sun Belt is jumping the AAC.
Some important notes here:
Movelor, as it showed with Michigan above, cares a lot how teams finished last year. There’s a good reason for that—it’s a good long-term strategy for optimizing Movelor’s accuracy—but it’ doesn’t leave a lot of room for nuance. Markets expect both JMU and Troy to take steps backward under their new head coaches. In the AAC, they like Memphis more than UTSA. Liberty’s still the Conference USA favorite, but the CFP rankings are subjective, and because our model treats all Group of Five teams the same, it might underestimate consensus opinion of the Flames after last year’s Fiesta Bowl beatdown. For what it’s worth, Bill Connelly—whose SP+ system undergoes more rigorous offseason calculations than Movelor—has Boise State as the best mid-major in the country.
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Overall? The message our model sends is simple: It’s probably going to be nice to be in the Big 12 and ACC when it comes to making the playoff. Will the committee treat those leagues as lesser than the SEC and Big Ten? Probably. But that’s an accurate way to treat them. There are ten Big Ten and SEC teams better than the Big 12 and ACC’s best. This committee is built of parties from all four power leagues. Most likely, it’ll split the middle: It’ll treat the Big Ten and SEC as better leagues, but understate the gap.
The model projects an average of three Big 12 and ACC teams to make the field. There’s space for an at-large or two from those leagues. But the national champion? That’ll probably come from the seven or eight teams who make it from the Big Ten, SEC, and Notre Dame. Who will it be? Combining Movelor with our subjective assessments, our best guesses are Georgia, Oregon, Ohio State, Texas, and Notre Dame.
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As part of our work this morning to reconfigure the preseason ratings, we looked at every preseason AP Top 25 since 2002. A trivia question, going off of that:
Three programs have made each of the last 23 preseason AP polls. Which three?
We’ll answer tomorrow, after we take a look at our first bracketology of the season.
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