If College Football Playoff rankings arrived 2 weeks early, they’d look like this

Though we don’t have College Football Playoff rankings to go on just yet, the committee isn’t that big of a mystery. We can make solid guesses on how they’d have teams stacked up at this point, if it was to release a top 25.

(I mean, it’s kind of a mystery by design, just because it barely explains any of its decisions, but if you’ve followed it for a few years, you can start to see their thinking, whether you agree or not.)

It’s time to bring back an annual exercise, which has previously done a solid job at predicting teams the committee’s high on (Penn State’s big jump in 2016 and Georgia taking No. 1 from Bama in 2017, for example). After studying numbers that’ve tended to line up well with CFP rankings, here’s how I’d guess these teams would rank. Several are in groups for now.

The Tide haven’t played the toughest schedule, but it’s nowhere near as weak as you’ve been told. After weeks of Ohio State fans telling me their schedule puts Bama’s to shame, here we have this:

And does Bama’s destruction at 5-2 Ole Miss look better than Ohio State’s neutral-site struggle with 3-3 TCU? Buddy, quite a bit.

From Bill Connelly’s weekly schedule strength rankings:

Here are the SOS rankings for each of the remaining unbeaten teams, by the way:

47. Notre Dame

54. Ohio State

56. Alabama

74. Clemson

89. NC State

115. UCF

125. Cincinnati

127. USF

Nobody’s played anybody, I guess.

On the field, Bama’s annihilated everything. The committee’s had similar dominant-against-mediocrity Bama teams this high before.

Each has had a struggle or two against lesser teams. Good luck sorting out the schedule strength stuff here:

Since that’s all way closer than the fans of each team would probably admit, look at how each team’s actually played.

The computers favor Clemson and then Ohio State on the field. The committee would probably give Notre Dame credit for mostly playing better since Ian Book took over at QB, but the Irish rank only No. 18 in Résumé S&P+.

I’m guessing it’d be Clemson at No. 2, then Ohio State. The committee would take Clemson’s QB injuries against Syracuse into account for the second year in a row.

LSU’s a fun puzzle. Are they the team that got outgained by Miami, beat Auburn by less than Tennessee or Mississippi State did, lost to Florida, underperformed against Louisiana Tech, and rank only No. 14 in S&P+? Or are they Strength of Record’s No. 3 team, which destroyed Georgia in maybe the season’s most impressive win?

Michigan’s only a little simpler. Their only loss was a close one against a Power 5-quality unbeaten, and they’ve since whooped almost everyone, but the best team they’ve beaten also lost to BYU.

Texas’ record looks great, but how many times this year have they looked like a top-10 team? Just the once, right? They’re No. 43 in S&P+ and have an ugly loss to Maryland. And even that win over OU was dubious. The Sooners outgained Texas by 3 yards per play.

Still, it was a win over OU. I don’t see any way the committee would have Texas as high as the AP does (No. 7!), but since I’m not sure who goes there, let’s have Texas in the same group as OU. The committee could decide head-to-head makes the difference, I guess.

BTW, Kentucky ranks No. 6 in Strength of Record and No. 9 in CPI, handling Florida and Mississippi State while only losing in OT at Texas A&M. I’d have UK over Texas, but no one cares what I think.

A big ole mix of all these rankings, but with a couple specific adjustments.

The Hawkeyes are No. 19 in the AP Poll, but No. 13 in Résumé S&P+ and No. 12 in the Massey Composite, which smashes together dozens of computer power ratings (and some polls) into one ranking. I’d bet the committee would have them more like No. 15 right now.

Unbeaten UCF ranks an average of No. 13 among all the non-AP rankings cited in here. Putting the Knights 13th would be three behind their AP spot, and you could probably drop them another couple or so after that, based on how the committee handled them last year.

(Side note: I looked into a fuller history of CFP rankings and found the committee doesn’t always underrate non-powers near as much as we think. For every 2014 Marshall, there’s a really overrated 2014 East Carolina — but that’s because ECU happened to play a bunch of P5 teams. 2018 UCF’s only played 3-4 Pitt.)

The one-loss Ducks rank No. 12 in the AP and are coming off a rivalry win over Washington, but every metric ranks them way lower. They’re No. 23 in Strength of Record, 34 in S&P+, 37 in CPI, and so on.

The committee doesn’t specifically cite any of those, but no matter which numbers it uses, there’s little reason to believe the Ducks would be ahead of undefeated NC State, Kentucky (whose Florida win looks better than Oregon’s Washington win), Texas A&M (who played Bama reasonably tough and should’ve beaten Clemson), and possibly others.

I’ll update this a couple times until then, based on the next two weekends.