The College Football Playoff selection committee had perhaps the most contentious debate it has faced in the short history of the College Football Playoff: Ohio State or Alabama?
What do the advanced metrics say about the Ohio State-Alabama debate?
Alabama’s in, and Ohio State’s out. What do the numbers say?
Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images
On one hand, there was 11-2 Ohio State. The Buckeyes are the wildly inconsistent Big Ten champions who can look great in one week and then get blown out by Iowa in another.
On the other hand, there was Alabama. College football’s perennial juggernaut sat at home during the SEC Championship Game. While the Tide are 11-1, the lack of a conference championship is a glaring hole on its resume.
The committee chose Alabama to face No. 1 Clemson, with chair Kirby Hocutt bringing up Ohio State’s 31-point loss to the Hawkeyes as a massive factor.
But there are other factors at play here, too: These teams are very similar on paper, and look no further than this collection of advanced rankings for the example:
Advanced metric tale of the tape
Advanced stat category | Alabama | Ohio State |
|---|---|---|
| Overall S&P+ | 2 | 1 |
| Offensive S&P+ | 19 | 6 |
| Defensive S&P+ | 3 | 11 |
| Resume S&P+ | 1 | 3 |
| Massey Computer Composite | 5 | 3 |
| Sagarin | 1 | 4 |
| ESPN Team Efficiencies | 1 | 5 |
| Strength of Schedule | 34 | 13 |
| Competitive Power Index | 4 | 7 |
| Football Power Index | 1 | 2 |
| Strength of Record | 4 | 7 |
| Adjusted Win-Loss | 5 | 8 |
| Game Control | 5 | 8 |
| Average Win Probability | 2 | 11 |
| Projected Win-Loss | 6 | 7 |
As you can see, it’s close across the board. It really all might’ve come down to Iowa’s win over Ohio State.
If the college football powers make a decision you disagree with, these numbers could have been factors. But remember that the committee doesn’t care about many of these advanced metrics. They care more about raw stats.
Fox Sports’ Stewart Mandel told us in September that the committee would not be using any sort of strength-of-schedule variable. (“We could build a fancy algorithm, but kind of how the Supreme Court said you know pornography when you see it, you just know a hard schedule when you see it.”)
But the old BCS would’ve seen the decision as pretty tight, too.
Alabama head coach Nick Saban set up this exact scenario last season as far as a deserving team without a conference title, and now the Tide have made it.
Do you think they got it right?
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