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College Football Playoff 2015: A Smarter Way to Look at the Scenarios

cigaretteman

HB King
May 29, 2001
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When the first College Football Playoff ranking came out around this time last year, Ohio State was ranked 16th. The Buckeyes not only made the tournament but also won it in convincing style, beating Alabama and Oregon.

A failure on the committee’s part? Not exactly. The bigger problem is the way the rest of us analyze the rankings. We pay too much attention to the specific order and not enough to the buckets into which each team falls. It may have been deeply surprising that a team starting at No. 16 rose to become champion. It was less surprising that a one-loss conference champion – which describes Ohio State – won it all.

Our goal here is to give you a guide to this year’s rankings, the first version of which will appear Tuesday at 7 p.m. The best way to approach the early seeding is to think less about specific teams than about categories of teams. An example is the Southeastern Conference champion. You don’t know who that will be, but you can be reasonably confident that, having won the mighty SEC, that team will make the playoff. By contrast, the Pac-12 champion, no matter who it is, will be at risk of missing out this year.

Here, we rank categories of teams based on their current chances. We’ll update this list each week until the bracket is revealed, on Dec. 6.

1An Undefeated Big Ten Champion

Partly, this is a bet that the Buckeyes will win out. Even though Ohio State has undergone a quarterback change and has not always body-slammed inferior competition, the committee will be loath not to hand the top seed to an undefeated defending national champion. Besides, if the Buckeyes go undefeated, that means they will have beaten highly regarded Michigan State as well as won at Michigan, with its top defense.

If this team is Michigan State or Iowa, it will still have strong qualifications: The Spartans would have beaten Ohio State and probably Iowa; the Hawkeyes would have prevailed in the championship game over, most likely, Ohio State or Michigan State. Such a resume may not be good enough for the No. 1 ranking, but it does seem playoff-worthy.

2An undefeated or one-loss SEC champion

Last year, the committee considered the SEC the strongest conference, handing one-loss Alabama the top seed over other one-loss conference champions, not to mention over undefeated Florida State. There is every reason to suspect the committee will treat the conference with similar respect again, especially because computer rankings overwhelmingly agree that the SEC remains the best conference.

L.S.U. is the only team in the conference that can go undefeated. We expect that a one-loss Alabama or Florida would be seeded over undefeated champions from the Atlantic Coast Conference or the Big 12.

3An undefeated A.C.C. champion

This year’s Clemson team may end up looking a lot like last year’s Florida State team: undefeated, with a win against Notre Dame at home and a home win in the Clemson-Florida State game, but with few other big wins. Last year, the committee made Florida State the third seed – and watched it get mauled, 59-20, by the one-loss Pac-12 champ, Oregon.

Clemson isn’t the defending national champion, as Florida State was, but arguably has a more important advantage: It has looked much better this year than Florida State did last year. The 2014 Seminoles won a few excruciatingly close games. The 2015 Tigers have looked great. Bonus: The A.C.C. Coastal Division, whose champion Clemson would face in the conference title game, has looked generally impressive this year.

4An undefeated Big 12 champion

Last year, Baylor and T.C.U., both 11-1, were left out of the playoff in favor of 12-1 Ohio State. Some blamed the snub on the conference’s hesitance to declare a clear champion, and this year, that won’t be a problem. Head-to-head result is now officially the first tiebreaker.

But the lack of “One True Champion,” to quote a conference motto, wasn’t really the problem last year; the lack of one true championship game was, and the Big 12 faces the same problem this year. It is the only top-five conference without one. To make matters worse, injuries have decimated T.C.U.’s defense and ended the season of Baylor’s starting quarterback, which in turn could lead to close calls down the stretch. Still, an undefeated champion will probably make the tournament.

5A one-loss Big Ten champion

As the defending champion, Ohio State might get some benefit of the doubt and edge out other one-loss champions. One potential path involves the Buckeyes beating Michigan State, losing a close game at Michigan and then dominating the conference championship game. Michigan State would have a harder time overcoming a loss (say, to Penn State), given that it isn’t the defending champion and won in fluke fashion over Michigan. Iowa, likewise, will have a shot if it loses in the regular season and wins the conference title game, but its chances would depend on what happened elsewhere.

6A one-loss Pac-12 champion

The Pac-12 has a deservedly good reputation, but most computer rankings suggest it has slipped to the nation’s third-best conference, behind the Big 12. And its leaders this year are flawed. Neither Stanford nor Utah has a clear signature win. At the same time, the conference remains broadly strong, with few doormats, and both Stanford and Utah had their only losses on the road. Stanford looks the better bet, with a stronger track record in recent years and with its loss having come in the season’s first week. It could easily vault over a one-loss Big Ten champion if it wins out, especially if that champion is not Ohio State.

7A one-loss A.C.C. champion

Florida State has the clearest path in this category. By season’s end, it would have beaten Clemson and Florida, and its only loss would have come on a freakish play – the so-called “Block Six” – to Georgia Tech. The Seminoles would then have won 51 of their past 55 games – not too shabby. Clemson seems an unlikely one-loss champion, given that a loss to Florida State, its only tough remaining opponent, would probably vault Florida State into the conference championship. Pour one out for the Blue Devils: Duke would be a prime candidate for this division were it not for Saturday’s loss to Miami on a crazy final play that the A.C.C. itself admitted was officiated incorrectly.

8A one-loss Notre Dame

Two words: road schedule. Where most top colleges play four or five road games, this year Notre Dame plays away from South Bend, Ind., six times (though a game at Fenway Park is technically a home game). And they include some doozies, at Clemson, Stanford, Temple, Pittsburgh, and Boston College, which has a top defense. The Fighting Irish already lost to Clemson, but Clemson might be great; Notre Dame already beat Southern California, which might be very good. So what’s the problem? As an independent, the best Notre Dame can hope for is 11-1 without a climactic, neutral-site championship game – not ideal, as Baylor and T.C.U. can tell you.

9A one-loss Big 12 champion

Such a team last year did not qualify, so there is little reason to be more optimistic this season, barring chaos elsewhere. The most novel narrative here involves Oklahoma, which would need to beat three currently undefeated teams, and already has the best out-of-conference win among these Big 12 contenders, at Tennessee.

10A bracket-busting midmajor

After Temple’s close loss to Notre Dame, there are three undefeated teams in the so-called Group of 5 conferences, and they look good. Two of the three – Houston and Memphis – are in the American Athletic Conference and will need to beat the other to emerge as a 13-0 champion. Perhaps more important, Memphis beat Ole Miss. Less likely, out of the Mid-American Conference, is Toledo, whose main out-of-conference win came at Arkansas.

Full disclosure: We rank a midmajor 10th here, but 11th is probably more accurate. If L.S.U. ends the season with one loss but does not win the SEC, it might well make the tournament as a second SEC team over any midmajor, which will surely bring joy to the hearts of fans from other conferences.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
 
To even have the discussion before the season is over is dumb. All it is about is filling up tv programming and generating hype.

Strength of schedule for many teams is going to change a lot going forward. Iowa's will probably go down while Ohio states will go up as they play Michigan state and Michigan.

People getting worked up about it know is hilarious.

Many of the unbeaten will end up playing other unbeaten teams. So many things will naturally work out without some lard ass ex coach rambling on about it on ESPN tonight.
 
I'm not going to get worked up over it, but I do find it interesting to map out potential scenarios and project.
 
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