The College Football Playoff Committee has released its report. first rating of the top 25 of the seasonwhich is a sporty version of Walmart opening its doors at midnight on Black Friday. Things are about to get ugly and someone will end up bleeding while battling Oklahoma for a top-12 spot. In other words, this is the best time of the year.
This year the committee said it was considering a new “record strength” indicatorintended to provide some mathematical guidance in the process and soon replace “game control” as the most hated fictional statistic in the country.
Ten weeks into the season there is a lot of chaos and few seemingly good teams, but the committee needs all the help it can get. For example, only eight teams in the country have already beaten more than one of the committee's current top 25 teams, 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 doesn't have a team in the Group of 5 at all, making these rankings less of a coveted top 12 and more of a requirement for a top 10 finish.
In other words, a lot is still undecided as we move deeper into the final month of the season. But this means that our anger towards the committee is only simmering, waiting to boil over in the coming weeks.
However, several schools already have good reason to be outraged.
What was lost in all the fuss over last year's final playoff rankings, which left a trio of SEC teams on the sidelines, was that BYU may have had more to be angry about than Alabama, Ole Miss or South Carolina. At least two of these teams suffered heavy losses. Each of these teams had three losses. BYU, on the other hand, checked the final committee rankings behind each of them despite a 10-2 record and two close losses to solid teams.
So surely this year the committee will feel some sympathy for the Cougars and view them with a little more optimism, right?
Oh no.
Let's look at some blind resumes.
Team A: No. 3 ranked, No. 33 on schedule, 4-0 against top-40 SP+ opponents, best win over No. 11 in committee poll.
Team B: No. 4 ranked, No. 45 on schedule, 3-0 against top-40 SP+ opponents, best win over No. 13 in committee poll.
Sure, Team A has a slight edge, but the resumes look pretty similar.
Well, Team A is the committee's No. 1 team, Ohio State. Of course, if the other team's resume looks more or less the same, that team will have a first-round bye in the playoffs, right?
Nope. Team B is BYU, and the Cougars trail three SEC teams with losses, all three of which are ranked lower in the ESPN rankings.
With BYU facing a huge showdown with Texas Tech, it's possible the committee was simply banking on any tough decisions on the Cougars this week. After all, given how much love the committee has shown the Big Ten in these rankings, punting would be the appropriate play.
We get it. As a conference, the ACC might actually just be an episode of “Punk'd” that Ashton Kutcher started in 2008, then got distracted and forgot to tell everyone it was a joke. The conference's Week 10 train wreck was certainly reflected in these rankings – more on that in a moment – but it's almost as if the committee simply added Louisville to the list, deciding the Cardinals were guilty by association.
Let's take another look at some blind resumes, shall we?
Team A: 10th ranked, 58th on schedule, one win over top 40 SP+, best win over committee's No. 13 team, only loss to unranked team.
Team B: 13th in the rankings, 56th on the schedule, three wins over top 40 SP+, best win against the #18 committee team, only loss against the #14 committee team.
It's essentially a coin toss, although with additional wins over high-level opponents and a larger loss, it would be hard to argue with Team B, wouldn't it? Add to this, Team B's only loss came in double overtime of the game when they outgained their opponent by 150 yards. Of course you'd be on Team B's side right now, right?
Well, unsurprisingly, the B team is Louisville. Team A, Texas Tech, finished seven spots higher in 8th place.
There seems to be a desire to write Miami off with two losses in their last three games, and given the struggles the team appears to be having offensively, perhaps that's smart.
But two things must be true about the committee's evaluation process. First, the committee should not care when wins and losses occurred. Losing in September is no better than losing in November. A loss is a loss. Second, the committee should not make assumptions about the future. Sure, Miami's offense is a mess at the moment, but assuming that will lead to future losses is not part of the deal.
Still, Miami's 18th-place finish—eight full spots behind another two-losing team that the Canes beat head-to-head—can only be attributed to atmosphere. Notre Dame's season is in full swing. Miami has hit several stumbling blocks. It doesn't matter that the Keynes are two late Carson Beck interceptions to avoid going undefeated. Not to mention, Miami has four wins over teams in the FPI top 35, which is twice as many as any other two-loss team except Oklahoma. It doesn't matter that Miami is going head-to-head with the No. 10 team in the committee's rankings, or that it upset a Florida team that knocked off No. 5 Georgia and actually beat No. 11 Texas. Not to mention, Miami beat then-ranked USF by 37.
Instead, the committee has now sent Miami to the scrapheap – which is a shame because Miami probably would have done this to itself anyway, and it's much funnier when it happens in the last game of the season.
4. Group 5
A year ago, Boise State ended up in the first round, knocking off the Power 4 league champion, which was probably pretty embarrassing for this Power 4 league, except the ACC embarrasses itself often enough to be quite immune to embarrassment.
This year the rules have changed. The top four conference champions are no longer guaranteed a first-round bye. But that didn't seem to stop the committee from stacking the deck anyway, just in case.
No teams outside the Power 4 made these initial rankings, although the committee notes that Memphis currently leading a long Group 5 playoff bid.
So of course Group 5 must be very upset, right?
Yes, but not about the fact that he was expelled from the top 25 party. None of the Big Five leaders are doing well—and certainly none of them like Boise State did a year ago. But Memphis? Really? The same team that lost by a touchdown to UAB just fired their coach?
The new record strength review committee guidance suggests that really big losses carry a lot of weight, but that's definitely not the case this time.
North Texas has one defeat from SP+ No. 27.
James Madison has one loss to SP+ No. 16 (and team No. 15 in the committee rankings).
San Diego State has one defeat from SP+ No. 73 and one defeat from SP+ No. 119.
Memphis has one loss to SP+ #119.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the Tigers weren't punished at all for the terrible loss.
5. SEC
The second half of the committee's top 25 is usually the equivalent of the phone lines in the Finebaum episode – just a place where a lot of mediocre SEC employees hang out, patiently waiting their turn. But this time, the committee has filled the bottom half of the rankings with Big Ten teams — No. 19 USC, No. 20 Iowa, No. 21 Michigan and No. 23 Washington — and that could really make a difference in the long run.
One of the committee's favorite metrics is victories over ranked opponents. We question how many Big Ten teams deserve a little number next to their name. There are still four teams in the league that have yet to win a conference game, and the bottom third is a complete dumpster fire. It's easy to get some wins when half your conference schedule is already disrupted by UCLA's interim coaching staff.
But the SEC is where the real depth is. Nearly half of SEC conference games this season have been one-player games. A Mississippi State team that hasn't won an SEC title in nearly two years has already knocked off last year's Big 12 champion. LSU, a team that fired its coach, beat last year's ACC champion. Florida beat Texas. Placing a group of undeserving teams at the bottom of the rankings only bolsters the resume of teams like Oregon that haven't beaten a single player of note. And frankly, the committee should be doing this for the SEC, not the Big Ten.
Also angry: Virginia Cavaliers (8-1, No. 14, behind four teams with two losses), USF Bulls (6-2, unranked), Arizona State Sun Devils (6-3, unranked), Cincinnati Bearcats (7-2, unranked), Brian Kelly (just angry for other reasons).
