Over the next few weeks, ahead of the first College Football Playoff Rankings release on Nov. 1, we will be predicting what the top 25 would look like if the CFP Selection Committee started early. It is a warmup act for the warmup act, which are the CFP Rankings releases before the final one. Note: Predictions in this post are based only on results to this point, so they do not reflect the final forecast for the playoff, which can be found here. Here, we will try to emphasize the same criteria the committee uses. That will be difficult because, as we have learned, the committee can be all over the map. Sometimes, it decides that head-to-head record matters; sometimes, it doesn’t. Sometimes, strength of schedule matters; sometimes, it doesn’t. Sometimes, relative dominance matters; sometimes, it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s about game control — whatever that is — or recency bias or … ah, you get the idea. What we have learned is that this process is highly subjective. It is much more subjective than the process that the basketball committee uses, which is what the football committee was modeled after. With all of that in mind, here is what I…
Continue Reading: Projecting the College Football Playoff Rankings: Alabama jumps Ohio State
