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David Hale
The College Football Playoff committee has released its first top 25 ranking of the season, which is the sport’s version of Walmart opening its doors at midnight on Black Friday. Things are about to get ugly, and someone’s going to end up bloodied while fighting Oklahoma for a spot in the top 12. In other words, it’s the best time of year.
This year, the committee has said it is considering a new «record strength» metric, designed to provide some math-based guidance in the process and to soon replace «game control» as the country’s most hated made-up statistic.
Ten weeks into a season filled with a lot of chaos and few seemingly great teams, however, the committee needs all the help it can get. For example, just eight teams in the country have already beaten more than one of the committee’s current top 25 — and one of those eight teams is NC State. Utah, Iowa, Oregon, Pitt, Washington, Missouri and Tennessee — all ranked this week — are a combined 0-12 against other teams in the committee’s top 25. The ACC doesn’t have a team ranked higher than 14th, and the Group of 5 doesn’t have a team ranked at all, making these rankings less about the coveted top 12 than a need to be in the top 10.
In other words, there’s a lot still in flux as we dive deeper into the final month of the season. But that means our anger toward the committee is just simmering for now, waiting for the rage to boil over in the weeks to come.
Still, a few schools have a pretty good case for outrage already.
1 Related
This is basically a coin flip, though given the additional wins vs. high-level opponents and a better loss, it would be hard to argue against Team B, right? Add to that, Team B’s lone loss came in double overtime in a game when it outgained its opponent by 150 yards. Surely, you would be on Team B’s side now, right?
Well, not surprisingly, Team B is Louisville. Team A is Texas Tech, ranked seven spots higher at No. 8.
Carson Beck interceptions away from still being undefeated. Never mind that Miami has four wins vs. FPI top-35 teams, twice as many as any other two-loss team except Oklahoma. Never mind that Miami has that head-to-head against the No. 10 team in the committee’s rankings or that it walloped a Florida team that took No. 5 Georgia to the wire and actually beat No. 11 Texas. Never mind that Miami beat a then-ranked USF by 37.
Instead, the committee has assigned Miami to the scrap heap now — which is a shame because Miami would probably have done this to itself anyway, and it’s so much funnier when it happens in the last game of the season.
4. The Group of 5
A year ago, Boise State found its way into a first-round bye ahead of the champion of a Power 4 league, which was probably pretty embarrassing for that Power 4 league except that the ACC embarrasses itself often enough to be pretty well immune to shame.
The rules have changed this year. The top four conference champs aren’t guaranteed a first-round bye now. But that doesn’t seem to have stopped the committee from stacking the deck anyway, just to be safe.
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Not one team outside the Power 4 found its way into these initial rankings, though the committee notes that Memphis currently is in the lead for the long Group of 5 playoff bid.
So, surely the Group of 5 should be pretty upset, right?
Yes, but not about being snubbed from the top-25 party. None of the leaders in the Group of 5 have a great case — certainly none like Boise State had a year ago. But Memphis? Really? The same team that lost by a touchdown to a UAB team had just fired its coach?
In the committee’s new guidance to consider record strength, there is an assumption that really bad losses are weighted heavily, but that certainly hasn’t been the case this time around.
North Texas has one loss to SP+ No. 27.
James Madison has one loss to SP+ No. 16 (and the No. 15 team in the committee’s rankings).
San Diego State has one loss to SP+ No. 73 has one loss to SP+ No. 119.
Memphis has one loss to SP+ No. 119.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the Tigers weren’t punished at all for a terrible loss.
5. The SEC
Virginia Cavaliers (8-1, No. 14, behind four two-loss teams), USF Bulls (6-2, unranked), Arizona State Sun Devils (6-3, unranked), Cincinnati Bearcats (7-2, unranked), Brian Kelly (just angry for other reasons).
