Final Playoff Rankings Thread

[jkppkjjkp]

Credit is due to Saban who reiterated that he thinks it would be better if all P5 teams played all P5 opponents when he was interviewed on the selection show. Basically he was making the point that there's not enough data to be sure when comparing conferences to conferences with the way things are done now.

 

[Buffnik]

Credit is due to Saban who reiterated that he thinks it would be better if all P5 teams played all P5 opponents when he was interviewed on the selection show. Basically he was making the point that there's not enough data to be sure when comparing conferences to conferences with the way things are done now.

^this

Give me 4 conferences, each with 16 teams. Pod scheduling so that everyone plays 9 conference games. Then the non-conference is 1 game against each of the other 3 conferences. Each conference then has a 2-round playoff to determine its champion.

Hell, if you did that I wouldn't need a playoff. I could go back to the BCS system of picking the Top 2 for a championship game and letting everyone else go to bowl games.

 

[SINKRATZ]

How is Bama's schedule substantively better than Wisconsin's? Please use this data table or another data source to support your stance.

Wisconsin				Alabama
Opponent	Margin	FPI	Sagarin	Opponent	Margin	FPI	Sagarin
n-Ohio State	-6	2	4	@Auburn	-12	6	8
Michigan	14	23	21	LSU	14	17	18
Iowa	24	24	22	@Mississippi St	7	19	20
N'western	9	26	19	n-Florida St.	17	20	30
@Indiana	28	49	52	@Texas A&M	8	44	45
Purdue	12	50	35	Ole Miss	63	55	59
FAU	17	61	57	Fresno St.	31	60	56
@Minnesota	31	66	61	Arkansas	32	70	75
@Nebraska	21	74	74	Colorado St.	18	72	77
Maryland	25	84	80	Tennessee	38	75	92
Utah St.	49	85	84	@Vanderbilt	59	77	83
@BYU	34	96	113	Mercer	56	UR	149
@Illinois	14	107	126

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

It's not a dramatic difference. But if I look at each teams top 11 wins side by side in your chart I see that Alabama played the tougher opponent (in both rankings) 5 times with Wisconsin playing the tougher opponent 3 times, and the other 3 times the rankings were split on who was the tougher opponent. That combined with the larger margin of victories gives the edge to Alabama to me.

 

[SINKRATZ]

Yeah. I think that SINKRATZ got it conflated between SOS and SOR. Alabama's got a great SOR, as do tOSU and USC. The SOR is how you perform against your schedule relative to how an average Top 25 team would be expected to perform against it.

I'm looking at this which has Alabama #10 and tOSU #2 on SOS. Maybe I'm reading it wrong:

https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/ranking/schedule-strength-by-other

 

[Jens1893]

Yep. Just like with USC. If they played Notre Dame again in the bowl game, it's a lot different than playing them on the road in the midst of a season with no bye week and coming off the physical Utah week. If USC had scheduled UC Davis that week instead of Notre Dame, they would have still played a better schedule than Alabama and would be 12-1 heading to the playoffs.

The committee has made it clear that it's better to play 8 conference games and no more than 1 real opponent in the non-conference.

And I think that's where the inconsistency comes in. I don't remember the exact details, but I think A LOT was made of SOS like 2-3 years with Baylor (?) and even with UW last season.

It also really does not sit well with me when teams get hammered and punished for playing an extra game like TCU here, for example.

 

[Jens1893]

Credit is due to Saban who reiterated that he thinks it would be better if all P5 teams played all P5 opponents when he was interviewed on the selection show. Basically he was making the point that there's not enough data to be sure when comparing conferences to conferences with the way things are done now.

Saban is very welcome to lead by example. Suggested points to start would be pushing for a 9 game conference game SEC schedule, elimination of the essential bye the SEC enjoys in November when they all play FCS teams or actually playing a true road game against a P5 team OOC, which is something Alabama has only done twice under Saban and not since 2011 (Duke, Penn State).

 

[jizzrag85]

^this

Give me 4 conferences, each with 16 teams. Pod scheduling so that everyone plays 9 conference games. Then the non-conference is 1 game against each of the other 3 conferences. Each conference then has a 2-round playoff to determine its champion.

Hell, if you did that I wouldn't need a playoff. I could go back to the BCS system of picking the Top 2 for a championship game and letting everyone else go to bowl games.

I started typing this earlier and got lazy and tired and decided I didn’t care that much at that point. But this, this is what I want.

 

[jizzrag85]

I think the funniest thing for me is that we let other sports decide it on the field. We get angry when crap divisions/conferences get playoff members who don’t seem deserving. But in college football we’re so ****ing smart that we have to out-smart ourselves and let humans who are by nature, subjective, tell us who they believe are the best teams. I doubt you’ll find a single person who wouldn’t admit they believe Alabama is a top 4 team. But you can’t find me 1 person that could convince me they’re top 4 deserving. They skated by with Mercer and FSU and lost when it mattered most while Wisconsin got hosed. You can’t tell me that one week you believe Wisconsin was the 4th best team but after a 13th game and losing to #6? they’re not. It’ll be like this until the end of time.

They should rank the conferences by overall winning percentage for the year and award points based off that. If the SEC has the highest you get 6 points and so on for winning that championship. Division championships should effectively mean nothing in this case.

1 point for beating a conference or P5 team, 1/2 a point for FCS (**** you Alabama and the SEC)
1 additional point for every win for beating a top 25 team. Based ONLY on their ranking at the END of the year, not the time you play them. Nobody cares if 4-8 Missouri was ranked #5 to start the year. Artificial SEC record pumping FTW.

Or something like this, whatever.

 

[FightCu1414]

I think the funniest thing for me is that we let other sports decide it on the field. We get angry when crap divisions/conferences get playoff members who don’t seem deserving. But in college football we’re so ****ing smart that we have to out-smart ourselves and let humans who are by nature, subjective, tell us who they believe are the best teams. I doubt you’ll find a single person who wouldn’t admit they believe Alabama is a top 4 team. But you can’t find me 1 person that could convince me they’re top 4 deserving. They skated by with Mercer and FSU and lost when it mattered most while Wisconsin got hosed. You can’t tell me that one week you believe Wisconsin was the 4th best team but after a 13th game and losing to #6? they’re not. It’ll be like this until the end of time.

They should rank the conferences by overall winning percentage for the year and award points based off that. If the SEC has the highest you get 6 points and so on for winning that championship. Division championships should effectively mean nothing in this case.

1 point for beating a conference or P5 team, 1/2 a point for FCS (**** you Alabama and the SEC)
1 additional point for every win for beating a top 25 team. Based ONLY on their ranking at the END of the year, not the time you play them. Nobody cares if 4-8 Missouri was ranked #5 to start the year. Artificial SEC record pumping FTW.

Or something like this, whatever.

I would imagine most conferences would have almost equal winning percentages. 75% of the schedule each conference would have a .500 winning percentage.

 

[somebody]

I'm looking at this which has Alabama #10 and tOSU #2 on SOS. Maybe I'm reading it wrong:

https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/ranking/schedule-strength-by-other

That's a subjective ranking? (I don't see the methodology) FWIW, Sagarin has bama's SOS at #56 but has them ranked #1. I can't figure out his rankings though, he has USC behind TCU with 3 losses against a worse SOS and Stanford with 4 losses, but at least Stanford had a higher SOS. IMO it's just a mess and a great argument for 8 teams with all P5 conference champs and 3 at large.

 

[SINKRATZ]

That's a subjective ranking? (I don't see the methodology) FWIW, Sagarin has bama's SOS at #56 but has them ranked #1. I can't figure out his rankings though, he has USC behind TCU with 3 losses against a worse SOS and Stanford with 4 losses, but at least Stanford had a higher SOS. IMO it's just a mess and a great argument for 8 teams with all P5 conference champs and 3 at large.

Yeah and to be honest, unless the Buffs are involved, I'm not going to spend much time researching methodology.

 

[CarolinaBuff]

Alabama beat 5 teams with winning records
OSU beat 5 teams with winning records with an extra game to do it

Alabama's only loss was on the road by 12 in a rivalry game to a team that was in the CFB playoff mix until yesterday.
OSU lost by 31 to a 7-5 team on the road and by 15 at home to a playoff team.
So Bama's loss to Auburn is at least equal to if not better than OSU's loss to OU given that Bama lost on the road and OSU lost at home by about the same margin, both to high quality teams.

What very few people are talking about is that Bama beat an FSU team that going into the season was a consensus pick to reach the CFB playoff with Francois playing into the 4th quarter in that game before his injury. Once Francois went down that team clearly lost its mojo, yet they had a close loss to a good NCSt team, lost on the last play to Miami, and was only down 3 to Clemson midway thru the 4th quarter on the road and all this with a true freshman QB. In fact, their worst loss was on the road at a BC team that went 7-5.

Lastly and most importantly, OSU had 2 losses and Bama had 1.

Bama was clearly the right choice for the 4th playoff team.

 

[jkppkjjkp]

It's not a dramatic difference. But if I look at each teams top 11 wins side by side in your chart I see that Alabama played the tougher opponent (in both rankings) 5 times with Wisconsin playing the tougher opponent 3 times, and the other 3 times the rankings were split on who was the tougher opponent. That combined with the larger margin of victories gives the edge to Alabama to me.

The lynchpin of your argument is that LSU (#17/#18) and MsSt (#19/#20) are meaningfully tougher than Michigan (#23/#21) and Iowa (#24/#22). That's pretty weak support. You augment your overall argument by referring to margin of victory, yet the top two Wisconsin victories are by a combine 38 points compared to Bama's 23 point margin. I guess Bama being +38 to Tenn compared to Wisc being +25 against Maryland equalizes that? Now what you're left with is Bama has a better resume because Wisconsin didn't blow out Purdue and Bama's blowouts of Vanderbilt and Mercer were bigger than Wisconsin's blowouts of Utah St and BYU.

Lets run another pointless sorting exercise on the schedules and sum the rankings and decide which opponent is tougher that way. In this matchup Wisconsin plays the tougher opponent 7 out of 12 times (compare the losses this time and still throw out Wisconsin's extra win, and assign an FPI ranking of 131 to Mercer bc FPI only ranks FBS schools) I think that's equally as meaningless as your comparison.

The question I asked is if there is a substantive difference between the strength of the two schedules. I am wholly unconvinced that there is any substantive difference in the way you've laid out the comparison.

 

[hawg1]

Probably also not a coincidence the 2 biggest and most popular conferences are the ones with the best TV deals.

Pissing off Delany and the B1G is NOT an advisable course of action either way.

Delaney signed up for these rules in the beginnng. All knew the possibilities. I applaud Urb. Handled it with class. He’s been on both sides.

 

[hawg1]

Saban is very welcome to lead by example. Suggested points to start would be pushing for a 9 game conference game SEC schedule, elimination of the essential bye the SEC enjoys in November when they all play FCS teams or actually playing a true road game against a P5 team OOC, which is something Alabama has only done twice under Saban and not since 2011 (Duke, Penn State).

Yes, he has been a loud proponent of all these points. They can’t find other P5s that will play them.

 

[Jens1893]

Bama was clearly the right choice for the 4th playoff team.

You have to be incredibly biased to say there's a "clear" right choice here. USC, Alabama and Ohio State all had arguments for and against them and all 3 had weaknesses where they were extremely vulnerable. This was far from a clear cut choice.

 

[Jens1893]

Yes, he has been a loud proponent of all these points. They can’t find other P5s that will play them.

Look harder. Talk is cheap.

 

[jkppkjjkp]

Alabama beat 5 teams with winning records
OSU beat 5 teams with winning records with an extra game to do it

Alabama's only loss was on the road by 12 in a rivalry game to a team that was in the CFB playoff mix until yesterday.
OSU lost by 31 to a 7-5 team on the road and by 15 at home to a playoff team.
So Bama's loss to Auburn is at least equal to if not better than OSU's loss to OU given that Bama lost on the road and OSU lost at home by about the same margin, both to high quality teams.

What very few people are talking about is that Bama beat an FSU team that going into the season was a consensus pick to reach the CFB playoff with Francois playing into the 4th quarter in that game before his injury. Once Francois went down that team clearly lost its mojo, yet they had a close loss to a good NCSt team, lost on the last play to Miami, and was only down 3 to Clemson midway thru the 4th quarter on the road and all this with a true freshman QB. In fact, their worst loss was on the road at a BC team that went 7-5.

Lastly and most importantly, OSU had 2 losses and Bama had 1.

Bama was clearly the right choice for the 4th playoff team.

Both teams beat 5 teams with winning records. Wisconsin beat a Conference champion that won 10 games OOC, Bama beat a conference runner up that won 9 games.

Wisconsin has 12 FBS wins, Bama has 10

Wisconsin's only loss was by less than a TD in a Conference Championship Game against a top 5 team. Bama's only loss was to a lower ranked team by more than a single score.

Both teams played their rivalry games on the road, Wisconsin shut out their rival and won by 31 points, Bama lost.

The argument for Wisconsin over Bama is just as legitimate.

There are no meaningful, objective arguments that are 100% correct about who should have got the #4 seed.

 

[Jens1893]

Delaney signed up for these rules in the beginnng. All knew the possibilities. I applaud Urb. Handled it with class. He’s been on both sides.

And all conferences signed up for the BCS concept and yet the BCS was brought down when the SEC lobbyed its way into an all SEC national title game.

 

[SINKRATZ]

The lynchpin of your argument is that LSU (#17/#18) and MsSt (#19/#20) are meaningfully tougher than Michigan (#23/#21) and Iowa (#24/#22). That's pretty weak support. You augment your overall argument by referring to margin of victory, yet the top two Wisconsin victories are by a combine 38 points compared to Bama's 23 point margin. I guess Bama being +38 to Tenn compared to Wisc being +25 against Maryland equalizes that? Now what you're left with is Bama has a better resume because Wisconsin didn't blow out Purdue and Bama's blowouts of Vanderbilt and Mercer were bigger than Wisconsin's blowouts of Utah St and BYU.

Lets run another pointless sorting exercise on the schedules and sum the rankings and decide which opponent is tougher that way. In this matchup Wisconsin plays the tougher opponent 7 out of 12 times (compare the losses this time and still throw out Wisconsin's extra win, and assign an FPI ranking of 131 to Mercer bc FPI only ranks FBS schools) I think that's equally as meaningless as your comparison.

The question I asked is if there is a substantive difference between the strength of the two schedules. I am wholly unconvinced that there is any substantive difference in the way you've laid out the comparison.

I very clearly said in my first sentence "It's not a dramatic difference". You're spending way too much time on this. There doesn't need to be a significant difference between the two - the slightest if differences is all it takes.

I believe Alabama had a slightly better resume based on looking at the data you posted. You think Wisconsin did based on some mind numbing analysis that I chose not to read through - fine.

The committee agrees with me apparently.

 

[MtnBuff]

Both teams beat 5 teams with winning records. Wisconsin beat a Conference champion that won 10 games OOC, Bama beat a conference runner up that won 9 games.

Wisconsin has 12 FBS wins, Bama has 10

Wisconsin's only loss was by less than a TD in a Conference Championship Game against a top 5 team. Bama's only loss was to a lower ranked team by more than a single score.

Both teams played their rivalry games on the road, Wisconsin shut out their rival and won by 31 points, Bama lost.

The argument for Wisconsin over Bama is just as legitimate.

There are no meaningful, objective arguments that are 100% correct about who should have got the #4 seed.

If Wisconsin had not played the CCG they would have been a lock but they were in the risk situation. Bama sat home after not winning their division and waited for someone else to do their work for them.

 

[hawg1]

And all conferences signed up for the BCS concept and yet the BCS was brought down when the SEC lobbyed its way into an all SEC national title game.

Huh? You read Death of the BCS?

 

[hawg1]

You have to be incredibly biased to say there's a "clear" right choice here. USC, Alabama and Ohio State all had arguments for and against them and all 3 had weaknesses where they were extremely vulnerable. This was far from a clear cut choice.

Kirby seemed to indicate it was an easy choice with near full support in the room.

 

[jkppkjjkp]

I very clearly said in my first sentence "It's not a dramatic difference". You're spending way too much time on this. There doesn't need to be a significant difference between the two - the slightest if differences is all it takes.

I believe Alabama had a slightly better resume based on looking at the data you posted. You think Wisconsin did based on some mind numbing analysis that I chose not to read through - fine.

The committee agrees with me apparently.

It's just odd to me that "not a dramatic difference" qualifies as substantive for you. More than anything I just find it these discussions fascinating because most vehement arguments are made by filtering data through a confirmation bias to fit presumptions. I'm curious if you looked at the table and looked for a way to prove that Alabama had a tougher schedule or if you looked at the table and asked how do these data points make an argument in favor of either team?

Apologies if my statements were offensive to you.

If you had read what I wrote I said that an alternate, yet equally meaningless, analysis could favor Wisconsin. My point was not that Wisconsin had a better resume it was that the two resumes are roughly equivalent.

 

[CarolinaBuff]

"The selection committee looked at a one-loss Alabama team with that loss coming against the final ranking No. 7 team Auburn in a very competitive game," selection committee chairman Kirby Hocutt said on ESPN. "We compared that to a two-loss Ohio State team -- obviously with one loss at home to No. 2 Oklahoma -- but more damaging was the 31-point loss to unranked Iowa. We spent a great amount of time last night into the morning -- beginning at 7:30 this morning -- talking about the full body of work. Now that the complete season is in front of us, the selection committee just favored Alabama's full body of work over that of Ohio State. It was consistent over the course of the year, as we saw Alabama play week-in and week-out, our rankings showed when we start with a clean piece of paper every week, that Alabama was the better football team."

It's clear based on how the committee voted that unexplainable losses are far more impactful than big wins, because the Buckeyes do have more signature wins than the Crimson Tide.
"When you looked at Ohio State, the win over Wisconsin, winning the Big Ten Championship, when you look at the resume and wins over CFP top 25 times, it was impressive," Hocutt said. "But it wasn't enough for the selection committee to place them over Alabama. The selection committee has continued to be impressed with Alabama's performance on the field. We believe we got it right this week and that Alabama is the No. 4 team."

It's also clear that the "eye test" trumps conference championships, which is part of the selection criterion for the committee.

"Alabama was clearly the No. 4 ranked team as a non-champion," Hocutt said.

This is bull**** since it doesn't support the anti-SEC narrative.

https://www.cbssports.com/college-f...ade-college-football-playoff-over-ohio-state/

 

[BuffLuke80]

OU and Georgia is a heck of a matchup, looking forward to that one. The other game too I guess but definitely less so.

 

[SINKRATZ]

It's just odd to me that "not a dramatic difference" qualifies as substantive for you. More than anything I just find it these discussions fascinating because most vehement arguments are made by filtering data through a confirmation bias to fit presumptions. I'm curious if you looked at the table and looked for a way to prove that Alabama had a tougher schedule or if you looked at the table and asked how do these data points make an argument in favor of either team?

Apologies if my statements were offensive to you.

If you had read what I wrote I said that an alternate, yet equally meaningless, analysis could favor Wisconsin. My point was not that Wisconsin had a better resume it was that the two resumes are roughly equivalent.

I'm not offended, I just have no interest in arguing semantics or combing through the minutae of every chart, graph, or data set to prove a point. Again, the committee seems to agree with me, but if it makes you feel better to conclude that Alabama and Wisconsin have roughly equivalent resumes then let's go with that.

 

[BuffWarHog]

Alabama beat 5 teams with winning records
OSU beat 5 teams with winning records with an extra game to do it

Alabama's only loss was on the road by 12 in a rivalry game to a team that was in the CFB playoff mix until yesterday.
OSU lost by 31 to a 7-5 team on the road and by 15 at home to a playoff team.
So Bama's loss to Auburn is at least equal to if not better than OSU's loss to OU given that Bama lost on the road and OSU lost at home by about the same margin, both to high quality teams.

What very few people are talking about is that Bama beat an FSU team that going into the season was a consensus pick to reach the CFB playoff with Francois playing into the 4th quarter in that game before his injury. Once Francois went down that team clearly lost its mojo, yet they had a close loss to a good NCSt team, lost on the last play to Miami, and was only down 3 to Clemson midway thru the 4th quarter on the road and all this with a true freshman QB. In fact, their worst loss was on the road at a BC team that went 7-5.

Lastly and most importantly, OSU had 2 losses and Bama had 1.

Bama was clearly the right choice for the 4th playoff team.

It’s easier to beat an extra team with a winning record when every team you play plays one less conference game, thereby almost automatically having an extra win...no matter how ****ty that team is. The same team that went 6-6 in the Big 10 would have gone 7-5 in the SEC or ACC.

 

[gobuffs58]

we need to go to an 8 team playoff that way all of us can move the arguement down to who is 8 or 9!..... and it will put the buffs into the mix once every 20 years or so

 

[Kuratz]

A case could have been made for several teams. Unfortunately I do think Alabama gets the benefit of their recent history, whether subconsciously or not, which put them over the edge. Also not that this was necessarily a deciding factor but the Pac-12, and by proxy USC, looked completely bush league with their conference championship compared to the SEC. It doesn't make good business sense to take USC if all else is equal.

My gestalt is that Bama would beat OSU, UW or USC and so are the "best" team. I'll be rooting for Clemson