First off, in the interest of full disclosure, let me state that I am a University of Oregon alumnus and fan. I have a vested interest in the success of the Duck football team, and would cheer for and celebrate even the most controversial of victories. This I cannot (and won’t attempt to) deny.
Now that we got that out of the way, I’d like to also think that I am somewhat rational. Maybe not if you sat next to me during a game, in the heat of the moment, with emotions running high and a couple of adult beverages floating around in my belly. No, I’m just another irrational fanatic at that point, just like everyone else.
However, after the dust settles, the emotions wear off and I can take a moment to step back and process things a bit, I think I can be pretty rational. I may not be a college football lifer, former coach, or even be able to dissect a defense from the booth, but, I’ve seen my fair share of games, scenarios and controversies. I have a good idea of how things are supposed to go.
So, when the College Football Playoff Committee announced the latest incarnation of their weekly rankings, with one-loss Oregon jumping undefeated Florida State for the #2 spot, my initial reaction was purely emotional. “Heck yeah! Go Ducks! Damn right!” Followed by a couple of hearty fist pumps, and a high five with my buddy sitting nearby. Sure, it’s still early, and I wasn’t entirely sure that I agreed with it, but, right now I didn’t care. I liked it and I was in fan-mode, so a celebration was in order.
After taking some time to go over the complete rankings, however, I realized that I not only agreed with their logic, but, that it was a welcomed deviation from what we had gotten used to with the traditional poll system. The rankings seemed to not only be bucking the conventional wisdom around college football, but, it seemed to do so in a logical and thought out manner.
In years past, media and coaches polls did most of the heavy lifting in determining who got to play for the National Championship each season. In theory, that seems all well and good, as who knows more about college football than the coaches themselves and the media who watch every game, right?
Yet, over the course of decades, the polls started adopting a sort of unwritten rulebook regarding their rankings. Sure, most were based in some sort of logic, but, by the time the BCS rolled around, that logic had been completely taken out and only the “rules” applied. Things like: “The defending National Champion are preseason #1”, “No team could drop without losing”, and “It’s better to lose early than late”, to name a few.
Eventually, the rankings became more of a game than an opinion, where rules and the status quo trumped open-minded views and careful analysis. While rankings were released each week, you’d rarely see any change outside of the opening weeks of conference play. Opinions had already been formed, and by-golly they were right!
With the College Football Playoff committee now fully in charge of the rankings, however, we’ve seen a subtle, but noteworthy, shift in the ranking process. Each and every week is a brand new ranking, completely independent of previous rankings.
No longer do teams simply get a free pass to hold on to their previous ranking with clichés and buzzwords such as “a win is a win” masquerading as logic. Just ask Florida State, after dropping in the rankings after yet another lackluster victory over an inferior opponent, despite owning a “25 game winning streak” (as if they didn’t lose more than a dozen players off last year’s team to graduation and the NFL).
No longer is a team’s schedule analyzed in the preseason and declared universally good, bad or average for all of eternity. Just ask Notre Dame how those games against “ranked opponents” such as 4-4 Michigan and 5-4 Stanford are helping them now. Or, maybe talk to TCU and their win over 7-2 “cupcake” Minnesota.
Instead, we’re finally seeing the triumphant return of logic and reason to college football rankings. Sure, it may rankle some feathers in Tallahassee and Tuscaloosa, but, when you stop reading the names on jerseys and spewing age-old clichés, you’ll notice that these rankings actually… wait for it… make sense [queue dramatic music].
Take off your school colors for a moment and just look at the facts (easier said than done, I admit), and you’ll see exactly what the committee is valuing and why it makes perfect sense, despite what the robotic media and coaches polls would have you believe. This is best illustrated in when comparing the College Football Playoff rankings versus the traditional polls in few key spots on the poll, including the big shocker: Oregon “jumping” Florida State.
I put “jumping” in quotes because that’s the first part of the flawed logic of traditional polls. In the AP and Coaches poll, the previous week’s polls are the starting point for each new rankings. Then, each team is “moved up” or “moved down” based on who won or lost. This is how biases are created and reinforced over the course of a season. Rather than taking the time to re-evaluate each team anew every week, pollsters get lazy and do one of three things: drop them for a loss, bump them up a little for a win over a higher ranked team, or leave them where they are if they beat a lower (or un-) ranked team. You rarely see fluidity in the poll, and almost never past the mid-point in the season.
In this vein, you have a Florida State team who is the undefeated, defending national champions, with the reigning Heisman Trophy winner and are riding a 25-game winning streak. Typically, that means they have a stranglehold on the #1 spot. Yet, not only has the CFP Committee dropped the Seminoles to #2, behind fellow undefeated Mississippi State, they have now dropped them behind a one-loss Oregon team. While an undefeated SEC team vaulting to #1 is no shocker, dropping the undefeated defending champs behind a one-loss team is absolutely unheard of in the old system.
But, look strictly at the facts, and you can see how the committee systematically picked away at that old logic, and had the cojones to buck tradition and put the once blemished Ducks at #2.
The first step is debunking those nifty monikers. Heisman Trophy winner? Irrelevant. Defending National Champs? Who cares, that was last year’s team. 25 game winning streak? Impressive, but again, 16 of those were from previous years and have no bearing whatsoever on this team. The undefeated record is impressive, as they are one of only three teams without a loss. Of course, one of those teams is Marshall, and they aren’t even in the rankings at all. So, it’s clearly going to take more than an unblemished record to impress this committee.
Unlike the traditional polls, the committee has clearly shown that simply winning is not going to be enough. Quality of competition is a key component. And, when you compare the schedules of Oregon and Florida State up to this point in the season, well, it’s not a comparison.
According to the committee, Oregon has played four top 25 teams this season, going 3-1 in those contests, with road wins over #11 UCLA and #23 Utah, and a home victory over #12 Michigan State, all by double digits. Their lone loss came at home to #14 Arizona, with the Ducks missing much of their starting offensive line. (The committee says they will consider injuries, but, a loss is still a loss.)
When you start to analyze Florida State’s schedule and results, you are immediately met with an undeniable fact. Not only have the Seminoles played only two top 25 teams so far, but that both of those teams are in the bottom half of that top 25, in #18 Notre Dame and #19 Clemson. On top of that, both games were played in Tallahassee, and FSU escaped both by the skin of their teeth, relying on a penalty flag to negate a go-ahead touchdown in the final seconds against the Irish, and needing overtime to dispatch the Tigers. Not exactly dominating performances befitting a #1 team.
When you take all of that information into account, you start to see why the Ducks got the nod. It appears as if the committee doesn’t consider FSU’s narrow escapes over Notre Dame and Clemson as all that impressive. And, why should they? While the Ducks have proven on multiple occasions that they can dominate top competition both at home (Michigan State) and on the road (UCLA), Florida State simply hasn’t.
All that they have shown on the field this year is that, when in the friendly confines of Doak Campbell Stadium, they can play evenly with a couple of teams in the back half of the top 20. You can argue until you’re blue in the face that they could beat anyone, anytime, anywhere, but, up to this point, there is no on-field proof that supports that argument. Some of it is Florida State’s fault (allowing inferior teams to stick around in games) and some of it isn’t (the lack of top 15 teams on their schedule).
That being said, the committee wasn’t tasked with dealing in “what if?” scenarios, they were tasked with ranking the top 25 college football teams based on what they have done on the field. This year. And, this year the Seminoles have failed to show anyone that they would fare any better than Oregon against a top 15 Arizona squad. And, they certainly haven’t shown the capacity to teams of the caliber of Michigan State and UCLA. If anything, the on-field evidence says that Florida State would likely lose to anyone even marginally better than Notre Dame or Clemson.
Of course, that is all not to say that things can’t and won’t change over the next couple of weeks. Which is of course, the beauty of it all. With Oregon heading into a bye week, followed by games against a couple of bottom feeders to finish out the season, they’ve likely made all of their noise until they get matched up with a yet-to-be-determined opponent in the Pac-12 Championship Game.
Meanwhile Florida State must travel into hostile territory against in-state rival Miami this weekend, and then host a couple of good-but-not-great teams in Boston College and Florida, before a possible matchup with one-loss Duke in the ACC Championship. It’s certainly not impossible that the committee might see enough from the Seminoles in those games to flip flop the teams again. Or, maybe someone like Alabama runs the SEC West gauntlet, taking down #1 Mississippi State, #9 Auburn, a possibly still ranked Georgia in the championship game, catapulting them in front over everyone.
Which brings me all the way back to why this College Football Playoff Committee is so much better than the tired old media and coaches polls. It’s not because they placed the Ducks at #2. Just like it won’t be a total sham if they drop the Ducks to #4 (or lower) next week. It’s because they are actually taking the time and making the effort to create calm, rational and intellectually defensible college football rankings. What a novel concept.
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