The College Football playoff has been announced. Finally, after decades of hoping for this, we finally get a first step, a four-team event that in no way is best, but is better than before. Still, sure enough, more than one team got screwed in this first iteration. Surprise, though…its not TCU or Baylor. It’s not even Mississippi State or Michigan State. The team that should have been in the top four was Ole Miss. 
Yep….Mississippi, at 9-3, deserved to be in the final four….that is, if you really want the best teams.
Wait, you protest, how could a three-loss team be among the best teams. Simple…who they played and lost to. Look, any team could be undefeated or have only 1 loss if they played really easy competition. And no, do not even try to start suggesting that all of the 64 teams among the Power 5 conferences are equal. In fact, year after year, it is apparent that maybe there are 40 teams, but more likely 25-30 teams that are really good teams that are strong. And individual team season records never actually provides the evidence.
Here’s what I mean….if a team plays against 12 opponents and those 12 teams include 3-4 with losing records, another 3-4 with .500 records and only 3-4 with winning records….the team has really only played a 3-4 game schedule. Case in point is this year’s Baylor team. Looking only at teams that won at least 8 games, Baylor played a three game schedule against TCU, Oklahoma and Kansas St. They went 3-0 but lost to a 7-5 West Virginia. If you only have to “get up” for three games, that is not really a huge hurdle. Ohio State, equally, played a limited schedule, only three tough teams: Cincinnati (who is not even in the Power 5, but I’ll give OSU a break), Michigan State and Minnesota. They won all 3, but earlier lost to a .500 Virginia Tech.
Go through the schedules of the supposedly top teams and you will find this again and again. FSU played a two game schedule….against Clemson and Louisville. EVERY OTHER TEAM THEY PLAYED HAD FIVE OR MORE LOSSES. Oregon? Better with five games, against Michigan State, Arizona, UCLA, Washington and Utah. However, they countered that by playing six teams with losing records, including four in-conference.
In the SEC, however, the story is better. Alabama played also only four teams with 8 wins or more…going 3-1, but two teams with losing records. Mississippi State played also only played four teams, and three teams with losing records. Auburn and Ole Miss, however, played against seven teams with 8 or more wins. Auburn went 4-3 while Ole Miss went 5-2. When you play seven hard games, going 5-2…that is better than playing two hard games and going 2-0.
You can see this issue perhaps better when you compare the cumulative records of these teams’ opponents. Not surprisingly, Auburn and Ole Miss played the toughest schedules, with their opponents going 94-51, a .650 winning percentage. Now, most years, a smaller percentage of teams end up with seven or eight wins, so on average, the cumulative opponent records will fall somewhere in the 50-60% range. Thus, the hardest schedules will be closer to a .600 winning percentage and the weaker schedules will be closer to .500. Thus, you can see that for Auburn and Ole Miss to have faced that tough of a schedule and come out with an 8-4 and 9-3 record respectively means they are among the nation’s best teams. Let’s look at a selection of the top teams this year, based on their records.
- Auburn 8-5; 94-51 65%
- Ole Miss 9-3; 94-51 65%
- Alabama 12-1; 80-63 56%
- Miss St 10-2; 79-66 54%
- Missouri 10-3; 78-67 54%
- Ohio St 12-1; 76-66 53%
- Arizona 10-3; 77-70-52%
- FSU 13-0; 73-70 51%
- TCU 11-1; 72-71 50.3%
- Oregon 12-1; 73-73 50%
- Baylor 11-1; 68-75 48%
Look at the bottom of this list. FSU, TCU, Oregon and Baylor played schedules that were basically .500. The teams they faced were average to weak teams. Consider how many opponents were .500 or below. As already stated, Oregon faced six teams with losing records. Baylor faced EIGHT TEAMS that were .500 or worse, with five having losing records. FSU and TCU both played against six teams that were .500 or worse, but facing four teams with losing records.
In contrast, Alabama played only four teams with .500 records or worse; Ole Miss and Auburn faced only three teams. Yes, Mississippi State faced seven teams at .500 or worse, but only three had losing records. Missouri faced six, just like FSU, but only three had losing records.
Do you think the SEC pulled that off because they played against patsy teams from non-Power 5 conferences? Okay…then let’s only look at the conference games. It’s not any better for the supposedly best teams.
- Auburn 67-30 69% 0 teams losing records, 1 team at .500
- Alabama 60-35 63% 0 teams losing records, 2 teams at .500
- Ole Miss 60-37 61.8% 1 team losing records, 2 teams at .500
- Miss St. 58-39 59.7% 2 teams losing records, 1 team at .500
- Ohio St 62-43 59% 2 teams losing records, 2 teams at .500
- Arizona 64-46 58% 3 teams losing records, 0 teams at .500
- Oregon 57-53 51.8% 4 teams losing records. 0 teams at .500
- Baylor 56-52 51.8% 3 teams losing records, 2 teams at.500
- TCU 56-52 51.8% 3 teams losing records, 2 teams at.500
- FSU 49-47 51% 3 teams losing records, 1 team at.500
Not till you include Missouri, the SEC East champion do you find an SEC team worse than FSU. Missouri not only faced the weaker SEC East, but also had .500 Arkansas and 7-5 Texas A&M…none of the West’s more powerful teams this year.
What this means is simply because Ohio St or TCU or Oregon, and yes, FSU, claim to have the best record matters little if that record came against paltry opponents, especially from within their own conference. And, when you look at the teams Ole Miss played from outside the conference…none of Ole Miss’s four out-of-conference teams had losing records and included the always tough Boise St. Auburn did face the 3-9 San Jose St, but also had Conference champs in Louisiana Tech as well as the very tough 9-3 Kansas St. I would probably put even money on San Jose St against the ACC’s Wake Forest or the Big 12’s Iowa St. FSU, by contrast, did play tougher out of conference teams….because they had to in order to be impressive. So, they picked up Notre Dame, UF and Oklahoma St…all Power Five teams….and yet, those four teams’ record was a sad 24-24. Ooh…so scary…four teams with .500 records.
In conclusion, the only way to settle this year after year is on the field. Yet we don’t, not like they do in the NFL. There, were a team like Tampa Bay to play 10 semi-pro teams, winning them all…no one would claim a 10-0 Buccaneers team to be the equal of the league’s top teams…and not even equal to the average teams. Why? Because everyone would know that their competition has been poor. Winning those games proves nothing. So, the NFL runs a 16 game schedule that allows for the true top teams to emerge, and then has a playoff that brings the best 12 teams forward.
College can’t do that easily with 64 teams, let alone the other 50+ teams like UCF and Boise St who argue that they are the equal of the others…and certainly are better than the Texas Techs or Colorados of the Power Five. If the playoff expanded to a 16 team playoff, that would get closer. It would allow the supposedly superior Ohio St or TCU into the mix, but also open the door to bring in a team like Ole Miss or even Auburn who played the most superior teams all year and ended well. Few supporters of those on the outside, the 17th or 18th best team, would really have a complaint worth listening to. Yes, this year Auburn would have gotten an unfair deal, ending with a ranking from the committee of 19 while the “we puffed up our resume with weak conference teams” like Baylor, TCU, Arizona St and Wisconsin would be in. Still, I would know that we gave away two games, and at 8-4, probably didn’t deserve the playoffs.
Until such time as we either create a new league that only has the most powerful teams, a super conference of maybe 20-30 teams…sort of a college NFL—and we all know that isn’t going to happen—then the only way to truly be fair is to use a playoff system that allows enough teams in to counterbalance the unfair reality that some conferences are very strong and the others are very weak.