The Week that Was, and Comparing Bubbles
Well, Georgia defeated Tennessee in a key SEC match and put themselves in pretty good shape to still win the conference. Tulane ended any hope of an Army-Navy AAC championship game pretty authoritatively, and late at night Kansas - arguably the unluckiest team in the country this season - went to Provo and knocked BYU from the ranks of the unbeaten. Meanwhile, Oregon survived an ugly and perilous trip to Camp Randall in Madison, where many a good team has gone down, and Clemson won late at Pitt keeping their hopes alive in the ACC.
The rankings will be below next, but one of the things I was curious about was to look at the current actual College Football Playoff rankings and breaking it down into bubble terms. The rankings themselves are Big Ten heavy at the top which caused a lot of consternation from SEC fandom, but what does it really mean?
Turning the Committee Rankings into a bracket looks like this:
Automatics: Oregon (Big Ten), Texas (SEC), Miami-FL (ACC), Boise State (G5), BYU (Big 12)
At Large: Ohio State (2), Penn State (4), Indiana (5), Notre Dame (6), Alabama (7), Ole Miss (9), Georgia (10)
Bubble (last 3 in): Alabama, Ole Miss, Georgia
Bubble (first 3 out): Tennessee (11), SMU (13), Texas A&M (15)
First round matchups: BYU at Ohio State, Georgia at Penn State, Ole Miss at Indiana, Alabama at Notre Dame
To me, the big surprise is Notre Dame - a good team that keeps improving - at #6. Like, did the Northern Illinois loss matter at all? Northern Illinois is a 6-4 MAC team! That has to be a stiffer penalty than this. They don't deserve quite that high a seed to me. The other surprise to me is SMU, who IS the only unbeaten left in ACC play and should have gotten more automatic bid consideration.
Let's take my rankings from this week:
At Large: Ohio State (3), Indiana (5), Penn State (6), Georgia (7), Alabama (10), Notre Dame (11), Miami-FL (12)
Bubble (3 in): Alabama, Notre Dame, Miami-FL
Bubble (3 out): Army (13), Ole Miss (14), South Carolina (15)
Personally, the top of the rankings look reasonably similar to the committee, but again, the committee seems to be ignoring early losses in terms of who deserves consideration in a way that doesn't make sense. When you have such a small sample of games, they all have to count. For my rankings, Ole Miss' losses to Kentucky and LSU have looked worse over time. Meanwhile South Carolina has been gaining steam to the point that their resume next to Tennessee is pretty close. Army is still an unbeaten conference champ. The committee's ranking of Army will be very interesting if they beat Notre Dame this weekend.
The Rankings
As always, the methodology is here:
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