The nightmare is over. Our liberator has arrived. The undeserved power will soon be removed from its station. The first College Football Playoff rankings are on their way in a few hours. For the rest of the season, we can kiss the AP Poll goodbye.
We love the CFP rankings, mostly because they aren’t the AP Poll. I won’t dwell on this, for fear of realizing that amidst much personal scoffing at the culture war, I’ve been unwittingly engaging in a culture war of my own, one involving beat writers voting on football teams. We love the CFP rankings: They are flawed, but they at least use a pretty rigorous process to get there.
Our model forecasts where the rankings will land, and I regret to inform you that in the most prominent place, it’s very wrong. Why are we sharing this instead of going and fixing the model? Well, it’s not as wrong as it appears. Let me show you what it thinks, and then I’ll explain.
Now, Ohio State is not going to be ranked first overall, and Oregon is not going to be ranked fifth. That is not going to happen. The committee will release its rankings, and our model will be wrong, and we will update our model and it will say, “Ahh, this committee likes Oregon more than I thought,” and it will beep and boop and bop and account for more Oregon respect than it previously perceived. Still, it’s illustrative that our model will be surprised by this. Our model isn’t perfect, obviously, but it does a pretty good job. The fact it has Ohio State, Miami, Indiana, Georgia, and BYU all right there with Oregon or ahead of the Ducks says a lot about what all six teams are doing and have done. Oregon will likely have the lead in the committee’s eyes. But the rest of the top six has put together a strong body of work.
Notably, our model still likes Oregon going forward. There’s a paradox going on where it 1) thinks the Ducks are the best team in the country and 2) is more impressed by Oregon’s raw wins and losses than anyone else’s but Georgia’s, yet 3) doesn’t think the committee will prefer Oregon yet. This is crazy, but the reason isn’t: Oregon hasn’t blown teams out. It’s winning games by an average of 19.6 points. Indiana’s up at 32.9. And while Oregon’s got the better best win by a mile, after that the advantage shrinks. It’s objectively harder to beat Michigan State by 37 in East Lansing than it is to survive Boise State by a field goal at home. Boise State’s the better opponent, but 37 is a lot of points, and winning is roughly six points harder on the road than it is at home.
Our model doesn’t directly use average point differential. It uses something called adjusted point differential, and with that, the Indiana/Oregon gap does narrow. At the same time, though, the Ohio State/Oregon gap widens, as does the Georgia/Oregon gap. Georgia spanked Texas. Ohio State barely lost to Oregon on the road (a result which on its surface implies Ohio State is the better team) and went and won in Happy Valley.
Basically, we don’t have a problem with the committee ranking Oregon first overall. We’d rank Oregon first overall right now if we were voting. But we also aren’t super concerned about our model saying Oregon’s body of work is a few percentage points less impressive than Ohio State’s based on the committee’s traditional rubric.
Moving further down the list, it would seem that the rankings between 7th and 16th will be the next block. I said this in our bracketology post, but I’m most watching to see how SMU, Notre Dame, and Penn State line up. Notre Dame has the best win of the three and far and away the worst loss. SMU has the best second-best win. Notre Dame’s been the most dominant, on aggregate. With all three facing a pretty straightforward path to an eleven-win record, each is likelier to make the playoff than not. But the chalkiest world would leave all three at risk, and so we watch.
I’d guess our model is wrong about Alabama vis-à-vis Tennessee. The Tide have one more loss and lost to the Vols head-to-head. The committee has an institutionalist and self-preservationist streak. Why pick that fight?
Mississippi has two losses, but with one coming to Kentucky (and thereby looking almost as bad to our model as Notre Dame’s to NIU) and the other to fellow two-loss LSU, it’s possible Mississippi will be ranked a lot lower than our model believes. If that’s the case, they’ll almost certainly need to win out to make the playoff. But…they already probably need to win out. Things are decently neat and tidy right now.
Will Boise State come in ahead of Pitt and Iowa State? Between them? Behind them? I’m not sure. Normally, the committee’s a little hard on Group of Five teams, but our model accounts for that, and Boise State’s a media darling and a half. One thing here that’s pretty important and could really impact Miami’s eventual seeding: How will the committee treat the ACC and Big 12 compared to the SEC and Big Ten? How will the committee treat the SEC and Big Ten compared to one another? Our model’s errors generally correlate by conference. That could especially be the case this year if the committee is treating this more as a Power Two landscape than a Power Four.
We alluded to the possibility Mississippi could line up behind LSU. South Carolina’s three losses make that a little easier circle for the committee to square. They have an easy reason to leave the Gamecocks out of a Texas A&M/LSU/Mississippi pecking order. Will South Carolina really land this high despite the three losses? Will Louisville? The losses are all respectable from those two teams, so our model thinks yes. I’m always curious, though, whether the committee will simply line teams up by how many losses they have and the station of their conference.
Army’s ranking is important for the playoff race, as the Black Knights have one fewer loss than Boise State but will in all likelihood lose to Notre Dame, especially if Bryson Daily doesn’t come back soon or is limited when he returns. Washington State’s ranking isn’t important to the playoff race, but it’s important to Washington State.
The two-loss Power Four teams our model is leaving out are Missouri (27th), Arizona State (28th), and Syracuse (33rd). As we mentioned, it’s including both Louisville and South Carolina despite their three losses.
Moving on to our other top 25’s, here’s how good Movelor thinks every team actually is. This is right now. Movelor makes no claims on what will happen from here.
Ohio State rises into the second position. Again, it’s very tight at the top. Of note: Miami passed Clemson here too, K-State dropped past BYU, Iowa and Florida both look pretty decent, and Movelor still can’t quite quit the Michigan/USC/Oklahoma trio.
Has Movelor found Indiana’s level yet? That’s one we don’t know. They’re the third-biggest surprise to Movelor this year, trailing only Florida State and Michigan. The fact they play Michigan this weekend, then, is noteworthy. If Movelor still hasn’t found these teams’ respective levels, this should hasten the process.
Finally, WAB. I’m not convinced that WAB is better than SOR for grading college football résumés, but it’s a little easier to calculate, and it’s not meaningless. As a reminder, WAB compares a team’s record to what an average bubble team would be expected to produce against the exact same schedule. An average bubble team would be expected to have a 5.45–2.55 record right now against the schedule Georgia has played, An average bubble team would be expected to have a 7.33–0.67 record against Washington State’s schedule to date.
Alabama, SMU, and Notre Dame are the outliers here. The rest of the thirteen core playoff contenders are in the top ten in WAB. Alabama, SMU, and Notre Dame are getting by partly on margin of victory and partly on Movelor expecting strong futures performance.
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We’ll have a post up tonight or tomorrow reacting to the rankings, plus a fresh batch of bracketology. As with everything right now, this is baby-permitting. He’s getting close. We do have a class during the rankings reveal itself. So don’t hold your breath for too long. Take your mind off the important stuff. Go watch election results come in.
