Looking at the latest College Football Playoff Committee Top 25, which has Cincinnati at #19 and Boise State at #20, I have to wonder:
My college football ranking system is no respecter of conferences, and I have Boise State at #6 and Cincinnati #9, although that's excluding two-loss teams. If I included them, Wisconsin and Penn State would be #8 and #9 and Cincinnati would be #11.
In any case, I accuse the Committee of having biases toward the "Power Five" conferences of the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, and SEC, and against the "Group of Five" conferences of the AAC, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, and Sun Belt.
But how do we know which are really the better conferences?
The simplest way is to look at their non-conference records. I have posted their "raw" record and then took out FCS games (almost always wins, so I'm assuming they're all wins) for each conference's non-conference winning percentage:
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- Where would Cincinnati be ranked if, instead of losing to Ohio State 42-0, it had scheduled, say, Purdue and won by a field goal?
- Where would Boise State be ranked if it had beaten BYU instead of losing (on the road) by a field goal?
The teams would be undefeated, and the Committee would certainly have them in the Top 10. Going undefeated doesn't make them "better" than, say, 2-loss Oregon (#14), and the one loss each of them has doesn't make them worse.
That goes to the problem with the Selection Committee, and rankings in general. Sometimes the Committee ranks the best teams in terms of talent, and other times it ranks whom it deems is most deserving of entering the playoffs.
Because Cincinnati (and Memphis) are in the AAC, and Boise State is in the Mountain West, they're deemed the big fish in small ponds, leaders of inferior conferences.
My college football ranking system is no respecter of conferences, and I have Boise State at #6 and Cincinnati #9, although that's excluding two-loss teams. If I included them, Wisconsin and Penn State would be #8 and #9 and Cincinnati would be #11.
In any case, I accuse the Committee of having biases toward the "Power Five" conferences of the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, and SEC, and against the "Group of Five" conferences of the AAC, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, and Sun Belt.
But how do we know which are really the better conferences?
The simplest way is to look at their non-conference records. I have posted their "raw" record and then took out FCS games (almost always wins, so I'm assuming they're all wins) for each conference's non-conference winning percentage:
1. Big 10 33-8 .801; 30-8 .789
2. Big 12 24-6 .800; 15-6 .714
3. SEC 40-11 .784; 25-11 .694
4. AAC 33-14 .702; 23-14 .621
5. Pac-12 24-11 .686; 15-11 .578
6. ACC 35-17 .673; FCS 21-17 .553
7. Mountain West 28-18 .609; 16-18 .471
8.Sun Belt 22-18 .550; 12-18 .300
9. C-USA 23-32 .418; 10-32 .238
10. MAC 18-30 .375; 7-30 .189
The AAC is fourth, ahead of two Power 5 conferences, and the Mountain West isn't far behind. They're both clearly a tier ahead of the Sun belt, C-USA, and the MAC, who, I imagine, likely enjoyed their few non-conference wins against each other.
I could see why an defeated team from a bottom-3 conference may not be invited to a four-team playoff; their strength of schedule might be too weak. But that really isn't a reason to neglect the ACC or Mountain West.
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