On this week’s SB Nation Selection Committee, Bud, Bill and Ryan discuss the case for Clemson as the No. 1 team in the nation, what to do with Ohio State, and whether one conference should get multiple entries in the first top four.
If the season ended today, here’s who should be in the College Football Playoff
The official College Football Playoff committee releases its first ranking Tuesday night. The SB Nation version has been doing this for weeks, because we’re better and work harder.
Here’s voter Jason Kirk on our fourth spot, where Baylor and Alabama are currently tied:
One cool thing about our make-believe committee: we’re able to fairly evaluate what Baylor’s done against a soft schedule. The Bears have torn apart bad teams as you’d expect of a top-five contender. How do we know this?
Unlike the actual committee, we can look to advanced stats (Baylor ranks No. 5 in opponent-adjusted S&P+, for example) or the remedial basics like margin of victory (the committee’s procedure mentions MOV only as a way to compare wins against common opponents).
This came into play last year most clearly when 10-0 Marshall was unranked due to a weak schedule, despite obliterating that schedule as a top-25 team should.
With that in mind, I don’t see the committee having Baylor in its top four right now. If it does, that’ll be an encouraging sign, even though I personally have the Bears around No. 5.
Alabama’s a similar story. We have it higher than the committee will, but we can also support Bama’s ranking with numbers the committee can’t use. S&P+ ranks the Tide No. 2, for instance.
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