This season is the best of times and the worst of times to institute a 12-team playoff in the top tier of college football.
It’s the best of times because the results so far have yielded a muddled picture in which picking just four teams would have been extraordinarily difficult, and we’ll need these playoff games to lend some clarity.
It’s the worst of times because picking 12 teams is also extraordinarily difficult.
Like referees and judges, playoff committee members are doomed to the realization that someone is going to feel aggrieved by their work. For every committee member (there are 13), there are dozens of talk radio and TV hosts ready to bray about the selections.
One issue will require a significant rethink in college football is the bloat among the big conferences. We have too many contenders who haven’t faced their fellow contenders.
Take the Atlantic Coast Conference, which now extends to the Pacific Coast. The top three teams – SMU (8-0 conference record), Clemson (7-1) and Miami (6-2) – didn’t face each other, and they lost the majority of their games against teams with a 5-3 conference mark.
The Big 12 had similar issues. Four teams finished atop the league at 7-2, and the only teams in that group to face each other were Arizona State and BYU.
But unless the Big Bang of conference expansion follows the astronomical model of the Big Crunch and reverses itself, we’re stuck with these scheduling quirks.
The larger inherent issue is simpler: Selection is subjective.
In pro sports, that’s not the case. If the Atlanta Falcons win the NFC South division, they’re in the playoffs. The NHL takes the top three teams in each division and then the next two in the conference standings. Aston Villa finished fourth in the Premier League last year and therefore qualified for the Champions League.
In college football, with 134 teams competing for the top prize and each team only playing 12 regular-season games, objective criteria are harder to apply.
But not impossible. Nor is it impossible to come up with a measurement that’s easy to follow in real time rather than next-day polls or computations.
Computer rankings are objective, but while college football programs are still associated with universities that presumably have math and computer science classes, “the computers” have never been popular in college football circles. They also don’t let fans know exactly what teams need to accomplish on the field. ESPN’s Football Power Index generates numbers that don’t mean much – Texas have an FPI of 26.5, Ole Miss is at 20.5, Penn State is at 19.7, etc.
So instead of using the computers to determine a final ranking, let’s use them to establish a reference point. Pick a date – maybe after Week 10, maybe after Week 12 – and set teams into tiers (top 5, top 10, top 20, top 40, etc) based on their computer rankings at that time. There’s no need to update after that – 10 or 12 weeks is long enough to gather plenty of game data, and we want to have clear-cut scenarios in the last couple of weeks.
Then we’ll need a new measure: adjusted wins and losses.
The idea is simple. A win over a Tier 1 team counts more than a win over a Tier 2 team. A road win over a Tier 2 team counts more than a home win over that same team. A road loss to a Tier 1 isn’t as costly as other losses.
Something like this:
Wins:
1.5 adjusted wins for defeating a Tier 1 (top 5) team.
1.4 for Tier 2 (6th through 10th)
1.3 for Tier 3 (11th through 20th)
1.2 for Tier 4 (the rest of the top 40)
1.0 for Tier 5 (the rest of the top 100)
0.8 for Tier 6 (everyone else)
Losses
0.5 adjusted losses for losing to a Tier 1 team
0.6 for Tier 2
0.7 for Tier 3
0.8 for Tier 4
1.0 for Tier 5
1.2 for Tier 6
Bonus: Winning a road game against a team in the top four tiers is worth an 0.1-point bonus. A road loss against such teams is 0.1 points better than a home or neutral-site loss.
Example: Basing values on the ESPN Football Power Index as of 24 November, let’s take a look at two teams contending for a spot in the playoffs who aren’t in the conference finals.
Tennessee: actual record 10-2, adjusted record 10.7-1.1 (net 9.6)
1 Tier 1 win (Alabama), worth 1.5 adjusted wins
2 Tier 4 road wins (Oklahoma, Vanderbilt), each worth 1.3 adjusted wins
1 Tier 4 home win (Florida), worth 1.2
3 Tier 5 wins, worth 1.0 each
3 Tier 6 wins (the Volunteers’ non-conference schedule wasn’t particularly strong), worth 0.8
1 Tier 1 road loss (Georgia), 0.4 adjusted losses
1 Tier 4 road loss (Arkansas), 0.7 adjusted losses
Indiana: actual record 11-1, adjusted record 10.4-0.4 (net 10.0)
1 Tier 4 home win (Michigan), 1.2 adjusted wins
6 Tier 5 wins, 1.0 each
3 Tier 6 wins, 0.8 each
1 Tier 1 road loss (Ohio State), 0.4 adjusted wins
Add it all up through Week 14, and here are the current top-12 teams (*can earn more adjusted wins in a conference championship game):
Teams in conference championships can get more adjusted wins, but because we don’t want to punish teams for playing in a final, they won’t get adjusted losses. The only contending team that could still lose points is Army, who will play the traditional Army-Navy game after the conference championships.
Because we know how much each win is worth, we can see the maximum net record each team can get.
Iowa State are on the bubble with a current net of 8.9. Miami (8.8), Alabama (8.5) and South Carolina (8.4) cannot qualify.
Five conference champions win automatic bids, but two of them will finish well above the cutoff line, so only three champions can move up and bump out any of the teams in the top 12. That means the top nine teams are safe. (To break the tie between Boise State and BYU, we can use the ESPN Football Power Index.)
The Sun Belt, MAC and Conference USA champions cannot qualify, which leaves the ACC, American and Mountain West champions playing a game of musical chairs with two seats.
A few scenarios:
Clemson win the ACC. The Tigers could still miss out. At best, they’d be the fifth-best conference champion. (SMU, though, would still qualify.)
UNLV win the Mountain West. Boise State is still safe. UNLV would only qualify if Clemson and/or Tulane win their conference finals.
Tulane win the American. The Big 12, ACC and Mountain West champions would qualify; Tulane would not.
Army win the American and beat Navy. The Black Knights would easily qualify, and Clemson would have no path to the playoffs because the Tigers would finish behind the Mountain West winner.
When all the math is done, it won’t differ too much from what the selection committee decides. But it’ll be more definitive, and we can see the situation unfold on the field rather than a Zoom call or boardroom meeting.
