Week 14 CFB Modern Bowl Playoff Rankings

CFB Rankings driven by data

by Abhi Gupta

November 28, 2018

In my previous piece, I proposed a new college football ranking system called the Modern Bowl Playoff (MBP). The MBP is driven by data, taking into account 7 major computer rankings used by the BCS from 1998-2013 and unofficially by the current College Football Playoff Committee. The MBP rankings also factor in the AP and Coaches polls to fully capture dimensions the computer rankings may have missed. More importantly, the MBP provides a clear formula behind each team's ranking, a component missing throughout the current playoff era. For Week 14 in the 2018 College football season, the MBP would produce this Top 25:

 

Rank Team Score CFP Human Computer
1 Alabama 0.981 1 1 1
2 Clemson 0.956 2 2 2
3 Notre Dame 0.909 3 3 3
4 Georgia 0.891 4 4 4
5 Oklahoma 0.817 5 5 6
6 Ohio St 0.811 6 6 5
7 Michigan 0.754 7 8 7
8 UCF 0.650 8 7 9
9 LSU 0.589 10 13 8
10 Florida 0.576 9 10 10
11 Penn St 0.535 12 14 11
12 Washington 0.504 11 11 12
13 Washington St 0.470 13 12 13
14 Texas 0.406 14 9 20
15 Kentucky 0.403 15 15 17
16 Miss St 0.372 18 19 14
17 West Virginia 0.338 16 16 19
18 Texas A&M 0.335 19 22 15
19 Utah 0.326 17 17 18
20 Missouri 0.270 24 27 16
21 Boise St 0.239 22 20 21
22 Syracuse 0.236 20 18 22
23 Iowa 0.099 N/R 28 23
24 Fresno St 0.080 25 23 25
25 Northwestern 0.078 21 21 33

 

Important Observations

  • 1. #5 Oklahoma leads #6 Ohio State by the slimmest of margins (0.006). The CFB community anticipates an intense debate this weekend over which of these teams should be the 4th team selected for the playoff, assuming #1 Alabama beats #4 Georgia in the SEC Championship and both Oklahoma and Ohio State win. We'll wait for the teams to make their final arguments this weekend, but in the meantime, the MBP rankings yield an interesting comparison of the two teams. Oklahoma would be 1-1 against the top 25 (W at #17 WVU, L vs #14 Texas), playing #14 Texas in the Big 12 Championship. Ohio State would be 2-0 (W vs #7 Michigan, W @ #11 Penn State), with a 29 pt loss to #40 Purdue, playing #25 Northwestern in the Big 10 Championship.
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  • 2. Rankings for #14 Texas are highly varied, as seen by the wide discrepancy between human and computer rankings. Although humans rate Texas as #9, the computers see the Longhorns as the #20 team.
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  • 3. Despite #19 Texas A&M's thrilling 7 Overtime win over #9 LSU, the Aggies did not move in the AP Poll. The human polls do not rank A&M as a high as the computers, and this reflects in LSU's drop in the human ranking from 9 to 13. Alternatively, the computers did not punish LSU and kept them at 8, likely due to a close loss to a high ranked team.
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  • 4. Similarly, #20 Missouri is ranked much higher by the computers than human polls (16 vs 27).
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  • 5. #25 Northwestern is ranked much higher by humans than computers (21 v 33). It will interesting to see how the MBP reacts to the result of the Ohio St v NW game.
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  • 6. In both Weeks 13 and 14, 15 teams had a maximum difference of 2 between computer and human rankings. In Week 13, the 10 other teams had a 5.8 average rank difference, while jumping to 6.6 in Week 14. This indicates that there is either high consensus or strong disagreement amongst humans and computers, but nothing in between.
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The 8 Team Playoff

As conference championship games will be played this week, for simplicity we assume that the highest ranked team from each Power 5 conference win the conference (although we can recognize that this may change come Saturday). The 8 MBP teams would then be:

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  • SEC Champion: #1 Alabama
  • ACC Champion: #2 Clemson
  • Big 10 Champion: #6 Ohio St
  • Big 12 Champion: #5 Oklahoma
  • Pac 12 Champion: #10 Washington
  • At Large Bid 1: #3 Notre Dame
  • At Large Bid 2: #4 Georgia
  • At Large Bid 3: #7 Michigan
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After reseeding, the MBP Playoff bracket would yield these potential matchups:

 

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