Last night’s College Football Playoff Rankings drummed up the outrage, and understandably so. Coastal Carolina continues to be disrespected, even relative to a precedent that’s already perceived to be disrespectful. Iowa State is receiving an inexplicable amount of love from the committee. There are logical discrepancies, and FPA (Forgiveness/Punishment Adjustment—our model’s metric that measures how different these rankings are from a precedent-based expectation) swelled by nearly 40% from an already high total. With that said, the discrepancies themselves might not wind up being wholly consequential. Let’s break it down.
The Top Six Are Fairly Normal
Within the top six, there’s minimal FPA going on. Clemson gets a dash of it—half the Notre Dame loss—but even that’s precedent-based, coming from our model’s Kelly Bryant rule, in which the 2017 committee forgave Clemson half the Syracuse loss when it came in part due to the absence of a starting quarterback. Texas A&M also gets a little forgiveness, but that lines up with them being rewarded for their head-to-head victory over Florida.
The top four is the most consequential section of the rankings, and the committee isn’t doing anything all that weird at that level. But then it starts.
Iowa State vs. Coastal Carolina
Iowa State does not have a great résumé. They’ve beaten two ranked teams, and both their losses are against ranked teams, but it’s still odd to see them ranked ahead of Coastal Carolina, who also has two ranked wins, has no losses, and has the better result against the common (ranked) opponent—a three-point road win, not a 17-point home loss. What Iowa State seems to have going for them in that specific comparison is “the eye test,” but their sizable margins of victory have been a recent development. They did not play this well in October.
If you went just off of precedent—and it’s a hard year to do that—Coastal Carolina would be ranked fifth right now, having one of the most impressive Group of Five résumés in history. Granted, their on-field product is questionably competitive—they rank just 24th in Bill Connelly’s SP+—but they’re undefeated and they have good wins. It’s weird the committee is sticking with this.
Coastal Carolina vs. a New Year’s Six Berth
Will all of this matter, though? My impression—and perhaps I’m wrong about this—is that the Orange Bowl will take an ACC team (Miami, as it stands) and a Big Ten team (Indiana, as it stands), with six spots left, meaning Coastal Carolina would need to be in the top eleven as things stand were they to receive a New Year’s Six berth. Remaining on the Chanticleer schedule is a rematch with Louisiana-Lafayette. That game figures to be a tossup. If the Chants win it, ULL could drop out. But if they don’t, Coastal will have a third ranked win (the fact we have to parse this exhibits the stupidity of the ranked-wins metric) to go with a finished undefeated season much longer than that of the rest of the field. Will it be enough to jump the Big 12 Championship loser? Precedent would indicate that it will be. Will it be enough to hold off the Pac-12 Champion? Precedent would indicate that it won’t be, so long as that champion doesn’t lose between now and winning the league. Will it be enough to jump Georgia, another puzzlingly highly-ranked team? Precedent would indicate that it will be, but again, it’s hard to say, and this year precedent is less indicative than most thanks to the different landscape in terms of games played.
There’s a human element to this, and we’d hope that, in the scenario in which Coastal wins out, it would lead the committee to recognize they were about to slight an undefeated team that went so far as to schedule an undefeated opponent on four days’ notice and then correct that mistake by putting said team in a NY6 game. But we don’t know, and as it stands, Coastal needs to climb at least one spot, and potentially more than that.
Cincinnati vs. Iowa State
Cincinnati would be twelfth were precedent followed with precision, but they’d be ranked behind three teams with 4-0 records (USC, Colorado, and Buffalo), which is a comparison precedent—and therefore our model—isn’t equipped to make. Iowa State leapfrogging them does seem to spell the death of their backdoor playoff hopes, but on the other side of the coin, the Bearcats are benefitting from the undervaluing (relative to precedent) of Indiana and Coastal Carolina. The question’s open of how right or wrong precedent is, of course, but that’s how this lines up historically. Make of it what you will.
The Ohio State Situation
We didn’t get much from Gary Barta on this, as was expected, but the fact of the matter is that Ohio State is viewed as better than Texas A&M right now, and there isn’t much Texas A&M can do to change that. If we assume Iowa State and Oklahoma can’t jump the Buckeyes without the Buckeyes losing, that leaves us really with just Florida as a threat to pass Ohio State, and that only eliminating the Buckeyes in the scenario in which none of Alabama, Notre Dame, and Clemson fall past OSU.
So, the short answer? It’s likely that the Big Ten is trying to get everyone on board with changing the rules and letting Ohio State win the conference. But at the same time, it probably doesn’t matter if they do.
Oddities at the Bottom, but What’s the Alternative?
UNC, Texas, Oklahoma State, NC State, and Missouri have massive FPA numbers attached to them. But if those numbers were taken away, it’s unclear who’d enter the top 25. Our model has the next teams, in order, as Buffalo, San José State, Ball State, UCLA, Oregon, Western Michigan, Washington, Boise State, Marshall, Nevada, Wisconsin, Kent State, and Liberty. Of those, only Marshall, Nevada, and Liberty have played more than five games. There just aren’t a lot of teams there for the ranking. So while there’s ample fodder for eye-rolling among those five teams’ inclusion, keep in mind the dearth of candidates.
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Overall, the message here seems to be that yes, the rankings are infuriating in a number of places, but their strangeness might not affect much so long as an undefeated Coastal Carolina still makes a New Year’s Six bowl. And while that’s questionable, we have a few weeks left to go and a lot that can still happen, starting with the Big Ten’s title game decision. We wait.
