Bill Connelly, over at ESPN, has developed a rating system called SP+ which, in my experience, is about as good a college football rating system as you will find. Its absolute error this season in games between FBS teams was 13.0 points per game, meaning its predictions missed each game’s final score by an average of exactly thirteen points. Against the Vegas spread, it won 48.4% of the time, implying Vegas’s spread had a similar absolute error. A 2020 FiveThirtyEight examination found the Vegas absolute error consistently between eleven and thirteen from 2002 through 2020, so let’s call the normal absolute error twelve.
In the 23 College Football Playoff games we’ve seen so far, through the system’s nearly-eight years, we’ve seen an absolute error of 14.3 points per game (here are the lines for the seven playoffs prior to this one). In the seven championship games, that number’s only 11.7. In the sixteen semifinals, it’s 15.5. What do we take away from this? Well, it’s a small sample, so not too much, but generally speaking, Vegas has struggled to handicap the semifinals, relative to its normal performance, but done just fine with the championship games. Again, we should stress that this is a small sample, but the basic takeaway is that oddsmakers in Vegas, who make a lot of money all of the time because they and the market are good at handicapping, are still good at handicapping games like tonight’s. Meaning, when you see that Georgia’s a three-point favorite against Alabama, that’s probably the best guess anyone can give you.
Now, college football’s still hard to predict. Twelve points is a lot, and as the average error, it implies the final score’s only about fifty percent likely to land between a fifteen-point Georgia victory and a nine-point Alabama triumph (it’s not exactly fifty percent, because we’re dealing with mean and not median here, but they aren’t far off one another). The other half of the time, tonight won’t wind up all that close. Such is the nature of the sport.
There are a few possible explanations for what happened the last time these two played, 37 days ago now in the SEC Championship, when Alabama won 41-24. One, the simplest, is that Alabama had a good game and Georgia had a bad game. Another, a stretch but simple in its logic, is that Alabama is seventeen points better than Georgia (backing this one up, SP+ viewed Alabama’s play as 16.2 points better than Georgia’s in totality in that game) and that those who realize this are about to get rich. A third is that Georgia, knowing it was in the Playoff win or lose, kept cards up its sleeves and/or didn’t play with the same life-or-death fire Alabama employed. A spin-off of all of these is that Georgia has adjusted to what Alabama did well, and that the game will be closer tonight, though a counter to that is that Alabama can also adjust to what Georgia did well, even if the list of things is more limited.
The best prediction, though? Georgia by three. They make this money for a reason.
A few other thoughts:
How Much Do Quarterbacks Matter?
In the NFL, quarterbacks are a huge freaking deal. In college football…well, the last time these two played one another for the national championship, Jalen Hurts got benched at halftime and Alabama still won. Hurts and his then-replacement, Tua Tagovailoa, are each currently starting quarterbacks in the NFL, likely each among the twenty best in the world right now at playing the quarterback position, so maybe this is an embarrassment-of-riches situation. But it’s worth asking how much who’s playing QB really matters in college football, especially with Georgia’s situation uncertain between J.T. Daniels and Stetson Bennett for so much of this year. It might matter a great deal if Kirby Smart again turns to Daniels, should things start badly. It also might not matter at all. Similarly to that Vegas line, there’s uncertainty over how each might play, but the uncertainty goes in both directions and the expectation’s about the same.
How Did Alabama Do That to the Georgia Defense?
Georgia’s defense is, by most accounts, the best in the country, and Alabama’s offense entered that SEC Championship having pulled teeth to get past Auburn in the Iron Bowl. Bryce Young torched the Georgia secondary, and it wasn’t like Bryce Young was making the best throws anyone had ever seen. They weren’t bad, but it didn’t seem to be some otherworldly Alabama performance. Had Georgia just not seen a good passing offense yet? Had they dodged the Hendon Hooker bullet when they played Tennessee? Should Arkansas have gone to the air more in that October shutout? Did Georgia catch a break by drawing Michigan in the semifinal? Would Ohio State have lit the Dawgs up through the air?
Should Georgia Throw the Ball More?
Georgia has one of the most efficient passing offenses in the nation by yards per attempt, but they throw the ball less often than 99 of the 129 other FBS schools. They weren’t great through the air in the SEC Championship (and the first of the two interceptions was especially lethal), but they sure got bottled up on the ground. If you’re UGA, do you come out firing? Or do you trust your defense to keep the game close and stick to your guns?
Messing With Playoff Formats
Zooming out from the game itself, there’s some discontent around the college football media about this matchup, with a narrative that it’s boring to have two SEC teams playing for the title. I’ll be curious to see how the ratings shake out—they might be fine, as the media isn’t exactly representative of the average sports fan (and as we wrote recently, fears of perpetual SEC domination are probably overblown)—but if it’s a lackluster showing, with expansion talk rattling on, I wonder if anyone would swallow their pride enough and offer a format where the SEC got a guaranteed spot in the championship in exchange for two SEC teams not being allowed to play one another for the title (or something that might have this effect, like making teams’ second representatives play road games in the opening round). Then, I get curious on whether the SEC would agree or if the Power Five would really start breaking apart, and finally, I start wondering whether we’d go back to a playoff-less world, but with an agreement where the SEC Champion would play the best team from the rest of the country. If we’d used that format these last seven years, with the ranking methodology staying the same, the games would have been:
- Alabama vs. Oregon (2014-15)
- Alabama vs. Clemson (2015-16)
- Alabama vs. Clemson (2016-17)
- Georgia vs. Clemson (2017-18)
- Alabama vs. Clemson (2018-19)
- LSU vs. Ohio State (2019-20)
- Alabama vs. Clemson (2020-21)
- Alabama vs. Michigan (2021-22)
Alternatively, a four-team B1G/B12/ACC/P12 playoff makes a lot of sense, and the SEC could have its own four-team playoff, having abandoned divisions in favor of pods. I do wonder if that’s where we’re ultimately headed for a stretch, especially if conferences really are keen on grabbing more independent power away from the NCAA. If the NCAA starts to crumble and conferences are the highest governing body, an eight-team Power Five playoff with four SEC teams on one side of the bracket might make its way into reality. But this is all just speculation on my part, and there are better speculators out there on such things (the conventional wisdom seems to be that the twelve-team playoff will happen with automatic bids for the Power Five, and I have no reason to proclaim my speculation superior to the thoughts of insiders). (Final aside on this: In this 4-v-4 setup, would Notre Dame align with The Alliance? Absolutely not. Notre Dame and the SEC would form an agreement giving ND potential access to one of those four spots in exchange for a certain number of SEC-vs.-ND games, leaving the Big Ten apopleptic as their religious bigotry one hundred years ago finally came home to roost.)
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Anyway, should be a good one tonight, judging by that spread. Georgia is probably the better team, judging by that spread. There are more questions about Georgia, but they’re so largely based on that one game that they’re probably overblown, and I say that having just asked a lot more questions about Georgia. Regardless, we’ve got the two best teams in the country playing for a national championship. The last time these two teams played for a national championship, we got overtime out of the deal. Really, what else could we want?
