The regular season’s last 2014 college football rankings: Playoff, polls, and computers
Here are the last pre-bowls rankings of the college football season.
The top of the rankings were unaffected by upsets on championship weekend, as Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, Ohio State, Baylor and TCU all handled business on the last weekend of regular season college football.
Instead, the arguments shifted to the strength of the wins, as only FSU’s victory over Georgia Tech in the ACC Championship was a single-digit margin of victory. But FSU secured a conference title with the win, as did Alabama, Oregon and Ohio State, while TCU and Baylor have to settle for a split of the Big 12 title. That lack of a singular champion for the Big 12 ultimately helped result in exclusion from the playoff.
The selection committee has released the rest of its final rankings of the year on Sunday afternoon, setting the table for the first-ever Playoff and the remainder of the New Year’s Six bowls.
Here are the rankings after the final week of the regular season:
| Playoff | AP | Coaches | Massey computer composite | |
| 1 | Alabama | Alabama | Alabama | Alabama |
| 2 | Oregon | Florida State | Florida State | Oregon |
| 3 | Florida State | Oregon | Oregon | TCU |
| 4 | Ohio State | Baylor | Ohio State | Ohio State |
| 5 | Baylor | Ohio State | Baylor | Florida State |
| 6 | TCU | TCU | TCU | Baylor |
| 7 | Mississippi State | Michigan State | Michigan State | Ole Miss |
| 8 | Michigan State | Mississippi State | Mississippi State | Mississippi State |
| 9 | Ole Miss | Ole Miss | Georgia Tech | Michigan State |
| 10 | Arizona | Georgia Tech | Kansas State | Georgia |
| 11 | Kansas State | Kansas State | Arizona | Auburn |
| 12 | Georgia Tech | Arizona | Ole Miss | Kansas State |
| 13 | Georgia | Georgia | Georgia | Georgia Tech |
| 14 | UCLA | UCLA | Missouri | UCLA |
| 15 | Arizona State | Arizona State | UCLA | Wisconsin |
| 16 | Missouri | Missouri | Arizona State | Missouri |
| 17 | Clemson | Wisconsin | Wisconsin | Arizona |
| 18 | Wisconsin | Clemson | Clemson | LSU |
| 19 | Auburn | Auburn | Auburn | Oklahoma |
| 20 | Boise State | Louisville | Louisville | Clemson |
| 21 | Louisville | Boise State | Boise State | Arizona State |
| 22 | Utah | LSU | Nebraska | Boise State |
| 23 | LSU | Utah | LSU | USC |
| 24 | USC | USC | Oklahoma | Louisville |
| 25 | Minnesota | Nebraska | Utah | Nebraska |
Here’s something like how this would’ve looked in the BCS era:
Side-by-side comparison of final @CFBPlayoff ranking and what the BCS would have looked like: pic.twitter.com/JhGpwupKFv
— BCSKnowHow.com (@BCSKnowHow) December 7, 2014 And here’s more on each ranking included here:
The College Football Playoff rankings: The one that matters. The top four teams make the semifinals, while the other New Year’s Six bowls are matched up based on the rest of the rankings.
CFB Playoff results
The Associated Press Top 25: The longest-running and best-respected human poll. Usually comes out Sundays around 2 p.m. ET.
The USA Today Coaches Poll: Formerly part of the BCS, and now just a poll. Though polling athletic departments in order to rank other athletic departments is dubious, we still want multiple human polls in here, and it’s the other big one. Releases early Sunday afternoons.
The Massey computer composite: A collection of ... every computer rating out there, plus a couple polls. By including it here, we’re giving extra weight to the two human polls, since they’re already two of the dozens of ratings included in the Massey. It changes over the course of the week as more rankings arrive, so we’ve included the latest version as of publication.
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