Florida State is lucky to be No. 3 in the College Football Playoff rankings

The Playoff committee made waves by dropping Florida State to No. 3 behind one-loss Oregon. We’ve got an undefeated defending national champion that’s struggling to maintain its position in the all-important top four, which, what?

On its face, it seems suspect, according to the old saw that by going 9-0, FSU has done nothing to lose its position. And there’s a lot of truth to that; the best a team can do is go undefeated.

Well, sort of.

Taking a step back, one can ask: if one were to reverse-engineer a situation in which an unbeaten reigning champ could fall two spots from No. 1, what resemblance would it bear to FSU in 2014? The answer is a lot.

The biggest threat to an undefeated team’s reputation is the possibility that the team’s record lacks legitimacy compared to teams with one loss. For example, Marshall’s undefeated record is against such a lightweight schedule that there’s no reason to think the Thundering Herd’s mark is exceptional.

Marshall’s an extreme example. But when comparing FSU to other contenders, the Seminoles’ schedule is lacking.

The Noles are No. 8 (!) and given the 43rd-toughest schedule by the Massey Ratings, third-worst among top-20 teams. Factoring in future games, FSU’s SOS rises to 35th, similar to its 2013 SOS, including Auburn: 34th. Duke in the ACC Championship might make a difference, but Duke has barely been on the national radar all year.

Oklahoma State has not panned out as a quality non-conference opponent, and FSU’s difficulty in dispatching the Cowboys looks worse as OSU slides down the Big 12 ranks. It’s not FSU’s fault that OSU is fading; the Cowboys have suffered key injuries since that game. But a team can only be defined by the 2014 teams it’s played, and unless the Cowboys turn things around against Texas, Baylor, and Oklahoma, the OSU win isn’t an asset.

The ACC is a net weakness for FSU. Clemson has hung around the fringes of the top 25 all season, and Louisville has been ranked above No. 25 in the AP for exactly one week. But the statement wins that SEC West teams pick up just aren’t there, because there are no opportunities. Next is unranked-all-year, one-vote-in-the-AP- poll Miami.

Wait, let’s amend that. It’s got one word too many.

Much better.

If the argument is that a Team X cannot control the quality of opponents it faces, then Team X should at least blow out its weak opponents. And though the committee said before the season that it wouldn’t “incentivize” margin of victory, it evidently still uses it.

Last year, FSU faced a weak schedule but demolished it, leaving no doubt who the best team in the nation was. Only one of FSU’s competitors was even within two touchdowns in the regular season: Boston College, which jumped out to an early lead only to fold, 48-34. The four then-ranked teams FSU played went down by an average score of 50-9, and aside from BC, nobody else fared appreciably better.

Now? Florida State has dominated Wake Forest (43-3), The Citadel (37-12), and Syracuse (38-20) and otherwise won by one- or two-score margins. We’re talking about a team that has continued a fantastic winning streak, but at a noticeably lower level.

FSU’s point differential was historic in 2013; before the championship, the Seminoles outscored their opponents by over 42 points per game, and afterward, it was 39.5. In 2014, it’s down to 15.5.

That has apparently allowed Oregon (21.0 differential, even with a loss and a tougher schedule) to pass FSU, and if both Baylor (29.1) and TCU (25) win out, they could both make cases for having better seasons than FSU’s.

The Sagarin ratings make the effect clear. Even with a weak schedule last year, FSU was hilariously ahead of the pack in every metric. This season, Florida State sits at No. 14 in those same Sagarin rankings, and only the ELO Score factor, which caps margin of victory, has FSU near the top 10.

This may seem unfair, but remember, if score differential didn’t matter, we’d only be going off record and strength of schedule ... which would’ve put FSU in bad shape last year.

One of the easiest avenues to doubting the legitimacy of an undefeated record is if those wins comes under less-than-ideal circumstances. Anything that a reasonable observer — like, say, a member of a Playoff committee — might say “yeah, but ...” about.

More damning was the win over then-No. 5 and now-No. 18 Notre Dame, the crown jewel in FSU’s case. On fourth-and-goal in the dying seconds, Notre Dame committed an offensive pass interference that wiped out a go-ahead touchdown. Whether the penalty was legitimate has been the subject of debate, but Notre Dame didn’t need to commit the penalty in order to score. A massive blunder by the Irish gifted the win to Florida State.

Some amount of luck is an integral factor in whether a team wins the mythical/Bowl Coalition/Bowl Alliance/BCS championship, and the Playoff will be no different. But we’re talking about a lot of luck just to keep Florida State undefeated and at No. 3.

The greater luck that works in Florida State’s favor and will likely continue to do so, though?

There’s a small group of teams that Team X can affect in the rankings:

As such, Team X had better hope there are not four better candidates out there. In our hypothetical scenario on how Team X misses the playoffs, there are. In Florida State’s case, there are not — not now, anyway.

Oregon’s one loss didn’t keep it behind the Seminoles this week, but Alabama and the Big 12 duo of Baylor and TCU still have ground to make up because of their own losses, and they’ve got a vanishing number of weeks to do it.

It’s difficult to imagine undefeated Florida State over an undefeated Alabama, Arizona State, Baylor, or TCU right now. “But they’re not undefeated” is the correct answer, but that’s something Florida State has no control over. That’s luck working in the Noles’ favor.

And that’s FSU in a nutshell: undefeated and lucky.