
Using numbers to explore a dumb premise.
With the College Football Playoff bracket set – and noticeably absent a Missouri Tigers football team – I wanted to run through the final CFP rankings and explore a question that some of us may have been asking over the past three weeks:
Would Missouri have made the Playoff if they had beaten South Carolina?
So let’s explore!
In this alternate history journey I’m going to change only one thing: on 2nd-and-4 from Missouri’s 15-yard line, Rocket Sanders catches the shovel pass but the first hit from Johnny Walker, Jr. knocks the ball out of his hands and Missouri recovers. Ball game. Good guys win.
Everything else plays out exactly the same way from there: South Carolina goes on to beat Clemson and Missouri beats Mississippi State and Arkansas in the exact same fashion as they did in our timeline.
So let’s reassess from there.
Heading into the Mayor’s Cup, Missouri ranked #23 in CFP rankings and South Carolina ranked #21. In our timeline Mizzou’s CFP ranking didn’t change at all while South Carolina jumped to #18:
To keep this simple let’s just flip it: Missouri, at 8-2, is now #18 while South Carolina, at 6-4, is now out of the rankings completely. This actually works because, in our new timeline, Missouri – mostly doubted and disrespected by poll voters in 2024 – is the lowest ranked 2-loss team in the country, right behind fellow two-loss teams Texas A&M (#15), Colorado (#16), and Clemson (#17).
But A&M would go on to lose 2 of their last 3 games and fall out of the rankings completely, while Colorado and Clemson also lost one more game before the regular season closed. And since we’re keeping Missouri’s other wins the same, I’m going to put a 10-2 team from the SEC that is viewed as having a weak schedule right behind Miami in the final CFP rankings. That means the final CFP rankings #10-15 looks like this:
- #10 SMU (11-2)
- #11 Alabama (9-3)
- #12 Arizona State (11-2)
- #13 Miami (Florida) (10-2)
- #14 Missouri (10-2)
- #15 Ole Miss (9-3)
You could argue on Mizzou’s exact spot but, again, let’s just keep it simple and place them there.
Ok! So now that we have the backdrop established let’s look at what the committee did.
Oregon, Georgia, Boise State, and Arizona State are all locked in because they won their conference and were the highest ranked teams in the CFP rankings so they get the Bye. We’ll remove them from the discussion for now because their resume isn’t considered for their Playoff placement.
The teams whose resume was considered for Playoff placement were:
- #3 Texas (11-2)
- #4 Penn State (11-2)
- #5 Notre Dame (11-1)
- #6 Ohio State (10-2)
- #7 Tennessee (10-2)
- #8 Indiana (11-1)
- #10 SMU (11-2)
The other teams that were part of the placement discourse were #11 Alabama, #13 Miami, and – to a lesser extent – #15 South Carolina and #14 Ole Miss.
Now, I’m obviously not part of the discussions that the committee has about which teams to place and how to seed them. But I have been tracking teams that make the Playoff since 2014 and – even with the expanded filed in 2024 – I think there’s a much simpler way of viewing the criteria that the various committee’s pick from:
How many wins, how many losses, quality wins (i.e. wins over teams ranked in the final CFP poll), and your record against teams with 7+ wins.
Here’s the final Playoff Rankings from our timeline:
Since 2024 (and excluding the wonky COVID year), no team had ever made the Playoff while playing fewer than five teams with 7+ wins at the end of Championship weekend. But with the expanded field, this is the first time that a team that has lost more than two games to opponents with 7+ wins has been allowed in the Playoff, as before this year the maximum had only ever been one such loss.
While the discourse swirls around non-conference games and conference schedules and strength of schedule, I truly see it as a viewing of those four* metrics being in line, and, furthermore, I think the order of operations for those metrics is as follows:
- Total wins
- Wins over opponents with 7+ victories
- Total Losses
- Quality Wins
*Extra Protection/Consideration: Championship Game participation
Let’s look at some examples.
Ohio State, ranked #6 with a 10-2 record. Ten wins is good, two losses is not great but acceptable since it was a tight loss to the #1 team and a loss to last year’s national champion in a rivalry spot. Plus they have two victories over teams ranked in the final CFP poll and both of those are in the Top 10 and in the Playoff as well! Easy in.
Notre Dame, ranked #5 with a 11-1 record. We like that 11-spot in the W column for sure. The one loss is to Northern Illinois which is bad but, oh look, NIU has 7+ wins and Notre Dame went 6-1 in games against teams with such a record, the most games played against that caliber of opponent outside of Georgia! Plus they beat Army and the Black Knights are ranked. Yup, put the Irish in.
Indiana, ranked #8 with an 11-1 record. 11 wins is good, the only loss is a competitive game against fellow Top 10 ranked team Ohio State, and while the 1-1 record against teams with a winning record is low and they don’t have any quality wins, only seven other teams P4 teams won 11+ games this year and they’re all in the Playoff so…yeah…Hoosiers are a go.
But what about #11 Alabama at 9-3? Well, the 5-1 record against teams with 7+ wins is nice, as are victories over Georgia and Missouri. But they didn’t get to double-digit wins and, oof, those three losses stand out pretty bad. No thanks.
In the end, I see a Missouri team that beats South Carolina as very similar to a #13 Miami at 10-2. Both would have ten wins, both would be 3-2 against teams with 7+ wins, but neither would have a quality win and each would have two losses, including to unranked foes. And you need a quality win if you have two losses (i.e. Tennessee), OR that new “championship game participant” shield that the committee deployed this year (i.e. Texas, Penn State, SMU).
So, no, I don’t think Missouri would have made it into the Playoff even if they beat South Carolina. There were enough two loss teams floating around with the mandate of not punishing championship game participants that I believe Mizzou still gets left out in the cold with a win in the Mayor’s Cup.
But, for peace of mind and simplicity of discourse, I do think it’s easier to view the metrics listed above to get a better idea of how teams are being selected.
And, oh, keep in mind: the College Football Playoff is a TV entertainment product, not a sports league mandated championship format and, at the end of the day, the Committee can choose whoever they want and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Ok, bye!
0 Comments