We got new College Football Playoff rankings last night, and the committee made a quiet, important statement. It came in the rankings themselves, but Boo Corrigan echoed it in his comments on the reveal show: These guys found Tennessee to be uncompetitive against Georgia.
It’s a big deal, an uncompetitive loss, the kind of thing that sunk Ohio State back in 2017 when Iowa ran them off the field. If you’re going to lose, you want it to be a close loss. This is why our model weights margin so heavily. A close loss shows you can be just about as good as the team which beat you. A big loss shows that you don’t belong on the same field as them. Tennessee may have only lost by fourteen, but to many watching—including, we now know, the committee—it was not that close. Georgia whooped the Vols.
The Vols are a big deal as a playoff candidate because they’re one of the likeliest possibilities to be in the mix for the fourth and/or third playoff spot. As it stands, we can say with a lot of confidence that the Big Ten and SEC Champions—some combination of Georgia, Ohio State, and Michigan, or such is our guess—will take two spots, and that behind them the discussion will be between some combination of A) an 11-1 Ohio State/Michigan loser, B) an 11-1 Tennessee, C) a 12-1 Pac-12 champion, D) a 12-1 Big 12 champion, and E) a 12-1 ACC champion. If C, D, and E all don’t materialize, we probably get A and B. If D turns into a 13-0 TCU, they’re in and it’s a discussion about just the one final spot. If LSU or Alabama or Mississippi wins the SEC or if Illinois or someone wins the Big Ten, we can revisit all of this. But this is generally where we see it going, and it’s far from guaranteed but it’s likely enough to be a legitimate status quo from which we’re operating.
So, then, the Vols receiving some punishment matters. In other circumstances, losing by two scores on the road against the best team in the country might be a pretty good loss, but the game was, as the committee more or less said, not competitive. Not all 14-point losses are created equal, and all that. The Vols couldn’t compete in the Dawghouse, and now they’re in the doghouse, and this all brings us back to something we’ve kind of assumed we’re headed towards, which is a cold war between Tennessee and Michigan.
Michigan, like Tennessee, appears aimed squarely at 11-1, with the assumed path being wins these next two weeks and then a loss at Ohio State. How likely is this explicit scenario? Given they’re nearly a 100% favorite to beat Nebraska, a potential 20-point favorite over Illinois, and a potential seven-point underdog against Ohio State, it’s above 50%. Tennessee, meanwhile, has little left to gain. They could pummel Mizzou, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt—and they should, pummeling always helps you in this realm—and their résumé wouldn’t look much better than it does right now. The bright orange cake, in a lot of ways, is baked, and Georgia put an uncompetitive loss into the batter.
For Michigan, then, what these rankings tell us is that the Wolverines have a better chance than we thought. We expected them to be ranked behind Tennessee even with Tennessee’s loss, with no real path to passing the Vols aside from beating Ohio State, receiving help from South Carolina, or some shenanigans involving Bret Bielema and the Big Ten Championship. Now, Michigan’s up to nearly 80% playoff-likely, Tennessee’s down close to 50/50, and we have a specific thing to watch for when Jim Harbaugh takes his guys to Columbus: Is the loss, if it’s indeed a loss, competitive?
A competitive defeat in Columbus still might not be enough to keep Michigan ahead of Tennessee. Tennessee retains the blowout win over LSU on the road, better than anything Michigan can do without beating Ohio State and removing themselves from the bubble conversation. Tennessee has still beaten Alabama, which dwarfs Michigan’s current second-best win. Tennessee wins the wins. Michigan, if it comes down to these two, needs to win the loss.
The 80% vs. 60% divide between Michigan and Tennessee, we should note, does not mean an 11-1 Michigan is ahead of an 11-1 Tennessee in our model’s eyes. In scenarios where Michigan doesn’t beat Ohio State, they’re close to only 60% playoff-likely themselves. What it really reflects is that the committee told us this week, in inaudible words, not to lock Tennessee ahead of the Michigan/Ohio State loser in scenarios where Michigan and Ohio State both don’t get upset elsewhere. That’s a big thing to be told.
Let’s go through FPA, and then we’ll offer a few more thoughts.
FPA—Forgiveness/Punishment Adjustment—is our model’s reaction to each week’s rankings. It reflects how far the committee’s rankings deviate from precedent, and with that reflects how exactly the committee thinks about each team. FPA is sticky—if a team stays ranked, its FPA stays steady unless it needs to move to make the rankings correct within the model. FPA is cautious—it is only large enough in magnitude to make the rankings correct within the model. With all that established, here’s every team’s FPA, from 1 to our model’s guess at 29:
1. Georgia: 0.0 FPA
2. Ohio State: -0.8 FPA
3. Michigan: -1.1 FPA
4. TCU: +1.9 FPA
5. Tennessee: -1.9 FPA
6. Oregon: +2.3 FPA
7. LSU: +4.2 FPA
8. USC: -0.4 FPA
9. Alabama: -3.4 FPA
10. Clemson: 0.0 FPA
11. Mississippi: +1.7 FPA
12. UCLA: -1.9 FPA
13. Utah: +1.5 FPA
14. Penn State: -3.0 FPA
15. UNC: +0.2 FPA
16. NC State: -0.2 FPA
17. Tulane: +2.3 FPA
18. Texas: -1.1 FPA
19. Kansas State: +1.7 FPA
20. Notre Dame: -0.6 FPA
21. Illinois: -0.6 FPA
22. UCF: +5.5 FPA
23. Florida State: -1.1 FPA
24. Kentucky: +1.0 FPA
25. Washington: -1.0 FPA
26. Liberty: -2.5 FPA
27. Oklahoma State: -1.9 FPA
28. Syracuse: -0.4 FPA
29. Kansas: -0.4 FPA
And, averaged out by conference:
- American: +3.9 FPA/Team
- SEC: +0.3 FPA/Team
- Pac-12: +0.1 FPA/Team
- Big 12: 0.0 FPA/Team
- ACC: -0.3 FPA/Team
- Big Ten: -1.4 FPA/Team
- Independents: -1.5 FPA/Team
Thoughts on this all:
TCU Might Be a Mirage
TCU’s tricky here, because the committee may have said, “Screw it, let’s put TCU ahead of Tennessee, they’re undefeated after all,” and their assessment of the team may not continue to hold over the next four weeks. This is already a big departure from last Tuesday, when the committee ranked TCU exactly where they were expected to be ranked. If the committee really has had a change of heart, it’s a huge deal for a potential 12-1 TCU (and we’re at the point where that isn’t wholly unlikely). More likely, TCU will either go 13-0 and make this irrelevant or lose twice more, possibly to Texas both times, and also make this irrelevant. Either way, I’d imagine future, more refined iterations of our model would have a lot more uncertainty around TCU’s FPA than around that of other teams.
It’s Time to Take Oregon Seriously
This isn’t really an FPA thing—the committee gave Oregon some additional love this week, but not a shocking amount—so much as it’s an acknowledgement that Oregon is ahead of Clemson by a big margin, and if it wins out, it will have done more. The 46-point loss to Georgia hurts. It hurts a lot. But Oregon very nearly controls its destiny. The chances it beats all four of Washington, Utah, Oregon State, and the UCLA/USC winner? Not far from 30%, which is also their playoff likelihood. To the extent it is an FPA thing, we now have a hint the committee equates Tennessee’s loss with Oregon’s, and while Tennessee may retain better wins (Oregon has a lot of schedule left, as evidenced by that 30% number being as low as it is), Oregon can win a Power Five championship, which is often a large deal to the committee.
Alabama, Utah, and LSU All Aren’t Dead
There are eight teams lurking around the playoff picture, down behind the top six, sitting between 1.0% likely and 10.0% likely to make the playoff. Five of them—Clemson, UCLA, USC, UNC, and Mississippi—hold conventional paths. Each could finish 12-1 as a Power Five champion, something that normally gets you in. The other three have all lost twice already, and Alabama doesn’t have much of a shot at winning the SEC, needing LSU to do a whole lot of losing from here.
Still, they aren’t dead. The chance is close to or greater than 1-in-40 for each. LSU’s makes sense—the SEC Champion will always get a look—but Alabama and Utah have scenarios that could work for them, too. What are they? Well, Alabama could win the SEC. That’s one route, and it would at least put them in the conversation, much like LSU winning the SEC would put them in the conversation. But even if the Tide end up at 10-2, what happens if Clemson loses to Louisville this weekend, Michigan gets upended by Illinois next week, TCU loses the Big 12, and Notre Dame beats USC who then wins the Pac-12? It’s a rather specific scenario, but there are hundreds of believable combinations like this one that could make the committee dig really, really deep for teams. For Utah, take the scenario above but have Utah win the Pac-12 themselves and have LSU get obliterated by Georgia in the SEC Championship, weakening Alabama’s case by extension. It’s not impossible. We have six major players in the playoff race. We have five others with conventional paths. But we also have Alabama, Utah, and LSU. This is a 14-team race.
Penn State Is Shaping Things
The biggest source of the Big Ten’s negative FPA is Penn State, which is probably part of why Ohio State and Michigan’s FPA’s are as low as they are. The committee does not think a lot of the Nittany Lions, a team which has only lost to undefeated foes and is ranked as a top-twelve team (not résumé, this is how good they actually are) by all three of Movelor, SP+, and FPI. Is Penn State’s body of work really all that different from Alabama’s? What would the spread be on a game between Penn State and LSU? I don’t know that there’s a complaint here, but it’s possible there will be one later. If, for example, Tennessee’s wins over Alabama and LSU push them in ahead of Michigan, who beat Penn State by 24.
Liberty Keeps Waiting
Liberty can’t get the Group of Five invitation to the Cotton Bowl, because Liberty cannot win a Group of Five championship, so this isn’t the most consequential thing for them, but it’s definitely an item of pride, and their continued snub by the committee is surprising.
It’s hard with the non-Power Five teams because the committee’s impression of them varies so much conference to conference and year to year, and we don’t get many glimpses into the actual thought thanks to the committee only ranking 25 teams. Over a given season, we might see only one or two non-Power Five teams in the committee’s top 25 at all. This is a long way of saying that FPA is often larger for Group of Five teams in either direction than it is for Power Five teams, so we don’t have a good way of knowing how close Liberty actually is. Again: In terms of what these rankings decide (New Year’s Six bowl invitations), Liberty doesn’t matter, and frankly, at this point it’s looking pretty likely the AAC champion gets that Cotton Bowl spot opposite whoever the top-ranked team is outside of the Big Ten one that goes to the Rose Bowl, the Pac-12 one that goes to the Rose Bowl, the Big 12 one that goes to the Sugar Bowl, the SEC one that goes to the Sugar Bowl, the ACC one that goes to the Orange Bowl, and the Big Ten or SEC team (or maybe Notre Dame?) who goes to the Orange Bowl.
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We’ll preview the weekend’s games later this week. See you then and there.
