More random thoughts on the latest CFP playoff rankings … Again, for those that don’t follow college football all that closely and may have missed it, but the CFP playoff committee released their weekly rankings. And no surprise, the top 4 teams – Oregon, Ohio State, Texas and Penn State – were unchanged, while Notre Dame, Miami, Georgia, Tennessee, SMU and Indiana. Of course, the actual playoff scenario will look somewhat different as the four highest rated conference champions will get the four first-round byes, while the conference championship games could throw a monkey wrench into the proceedings! At the same time, we have been scratching our heads all day trying to figure the reasoning behind some of the rankings. Why curious minds are asking, for example is one 10-1 Big ten teams whose only loss was AT HOME to #2 Ohio State and who won their other games against P4 conferences by an average of 16 points ranked 4th, while another 10-1 Big Ten team whose only loss was also to Ohio State, but on the road and who won their other P4 games by an average of 19 points ranked 10th. We could also add that somehow that first Big Ten team is ranked ahead of two 2-loss SEC teams while the other is behind them. We also just aren’t sure in what world a 2-loss Georgia team which has played 4 top 15 teams this year – three of them on the road – is ranked behind 1-loss teams like Miami, which hasn’t played any top 15 teams and lost to Georgia Tech, and Notre Dame whose loss was at home against a MAC team. Presumably, the role of the committee is to factor in the incredibly wide disparities in schedules, both across the country and even in some cases inside individual conferences. The SEC, for example, has 8 teams ranked in the top 25, but remarkably 3rd ranked Texas has played only one of them to date and lost it by 2 TDs! Kind of reminded us of watching the selection show for March Madness when one began to think that committee just put in the teams they wanted and only then came up with a rationale to explain their choices. In that context, one wonders if maybe the committee and its ultimately subjective decisions should be ditched in favor of some more concrete arrangement in which – say – the SEC and Big Ten each got 4 teams in the playoff, the ACC and Big XII got two each,along with the top champions from othe non-P4 conferences. At least that way the teams know what they have to do to get in! All that said, we are really looking forward to this new format this year because there are a lot of competitive teams across the country.
