College football has a number of start dates every year, but it feels like the number’s especially high this year. We had the FCS “Kickoff.” We had the first FBS game. We had the first Saturday games. We had the first game with two national brands. We had the first game featuring a Power Five school. Tomorrow, we have the ACC conference openers. In two weeks, we’ll have the Big 12 and SEC conference openers. Through it all, questions have abounded as to whether the Big Ten will renege on its plan for a spring season and try to start something as early as October, with simultaneous questions abounding as to whether the six leagues still playing (and the Central Arkansas-led band of FCS schools pinballing around picking up buy games and TV slots) will make it through the season as planned, with games already being pushed back due to positive tests. Above it all, some national trepidation lingers regarding whether the return of students to campuses will result in a national spike in cases and deaths, like the one we saw over the first half of summer.
One truth the pandemic has taught is that things we write off as impossible can happen, and I don’t just mean that in the there-can-be-a-pandemic way. The Big Ten could decide at any moment to fire up a season. The SEC could cancel theirs at any time. Schools could go rogue. Players could go rogue. The NCAA, which has always been kept out (or kept itself out) of the college football championship process, could step in and try to throw its weight around. Bowls could be canceled or postponed or changed entirely. We could see an expanded playoff. We could see a contracted playoff. When we say anything can happen in college football, that’s actually true this year. Anything, for once, means anything.
Predictably, this is complicated to predict, so if you’re reading this looking for an update on our College Football Playoff model (and we’re aware not a ton of you are, but we’re also aware not a ton of you are reading this, so we figured we’d throw it in either way), the update is that we’re currently targeting a rollout around Tuesday the 22nd, though that’s subject to change. We’re hoping to have a start date from the Big Ten (and ideally the Pac-12) that makes it clear whether the playoff is a possibility. We’re hoping to have some clarity on the bowl process. We’re running behind because we didn’t think college football would make it this far and we’ve been prioritizing other things like gambling on Major League Baseball.
So, rather than predictions, or data right now (we do still intend to get to those), a few general thoughts on college football, as it stands today:
The Top 25 Is Dumb
It’s always kind of dumb, or at least used as an overly simplistic conversational battering ram by people at the crossroads of not knowing what’s going on but thinking they do. This year, it looks to be especially dumb.
Not to pick on Wake Forest, but let’s pick on Wake Forest. Wake Forest, in 2019, was a fine football team in the ACC. There was only one good team in the ACC, and the Deacs used that to their advantage, coming three points against Louisville short of opening the year 8-0. It was fun for them, I’d imagine, but I’d also imagine a number of Wake Forest fans were deceived into thinking Wake Forest was the 19th-best team in the country when the College Football Playoff rankings debuted them at 19th before they lost by three scores at Virginia Teach and were run through a wastewater treatment facility by Clemson. There was nothing wrong with Wake Forest being ranked 19th at 7-1, and its fans were deservedly excited, and because there were five power conferences we didn’t have to endure speculation Wake Forest was a playoff contender.
There are not five power conferences right now.
There are three.
And if you take the Big Ten and Pac-12 out of that debut CFP ranking from last year, Wake Forest would’ve been ranked 11th.
Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. It’s just an illustration that Top 25 wins aren’t going to be as meaningful as normal, and Top 10 rankings aren’t going to be as meaningful as normal, and it’s likely such things are going to be treated as more normal than they are because we’ve got the same amount of energy to devote to college football and not as much meaningful action to devote it to. And it’s going to be annoying to sit and point at a model that says a “Top 10” team has a 1% chance of making the playoff, but I suppose maybe we can turn that into social media engagement. We’ll see.
September Doesn’t Mean Much
It’s possible something will happen before September 26th to shake up the playoff race, but if it does, it’ll come out of nowhere, and while yes, things come out of nowhere every year in college football, this is more a point about how boring the schedule looks without those marquee nonconference games. BYU/Navy might have actually been the biggest pre-September 26th game in terms of playoff impact and general deservingness of hype. It might have been the biggest game of September as a whole.
Thankfully, this won’t last forever. On October 3rd, Texas A&M is scheduled to play at Alabama, Auburn’s scheduled to play at Georgia, and if you’ll indulge me, Oklahoma’s scheduled to play at Iowa State. From there, one would expect things to start feeling normal. I’d imagine we’ll have a final answer on whether Big Ten teams are in playoff consideration. We’ll have the beginnings of conference title races. We’ll have more big games emerge through the natural erosion of undefeated teams resulting in collisions between contenders.
But unlike in previous seasons, when a team could notch a huge win in September and significantly boost their playoff hopes, all we’ll get this September is the possibility of teams shooting themselves in the foot.
We Could Learn a Lot About the Playoff Rankings
We learn more every year about these, and every year they’re a bit different, given they’re subjective. But this year, we should learn more.
If there really are only three power conferences, we should learn whether the committee evaluates Group of Five teams (and Army and BYU) differently when a playoff spot’s on the line. If we keep seeing Covid-driven position group absences, we could learn a lot about what it takes for a loss to be forgiven, and to what extent losses will be forgiven. If we make it to a point where there’s 70 or however many FBS teams and 25 of them are being ranked each week by the CFP committee, we’ll get a deeper sample than we normally do, dipping down towards .500 teams and below, which should in turn give us a better idea of what variables the committee considers.
We might not learn much meaningful. But even that could be meaningful in itself.
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College football starts tomorrow, for the fourth or fifth or sixth time this year. We’ll see when, and how, and where it ends.
