Well, that one too, but the one I’m talking about is the first College Football Playoff Rankings of the 2024 season.
The rankings used for that standard are the previous week’s CFP Rankings.
It is possible that none of the other conference teams on their schedule finish the season with more than seven total wins.
Once the CFP Rankings are released, I will be using those for reference going forward.
College Football Playoff Rankings prediction
Now is the time to make a decision. No—not that choice. Yes, that one as well, but the one I’m referring to is the 2024 season’s first College Football Playoff Rankings. Since this season is the start of the 12-team era, more teams in the rankings will be important to the playoff conversation, but the committee’s procedure remains the same as always.
With -200 odds to qualify for the 12-team CFP field, Indiana is the team I am most interested in on Tuesday, according to DraftKings Sportsbook. The selection committee typically faces non-Power Four teams with garish records and awful schedules, and this season, Army fits that description. The Hoosiers’ schedule is awful by Power Four standards. A Power Four team with a strength of schedule ranking close to 100 this late in the season is a major drawback, and I can’t recall the committee having to assess it.
But, as we know the committee enjoys dominance, Indiana has dominated its opponents, winning none of them by less than 14 points. This season, the Hoosiers have the largest average scoring margin against FBS opponents.
The main thing we will discover on Tuesday night will be how the committee weighs those factors against the rest of the field.
Conference champions ranked in the top five automatically qualify for the CFP, while the top four are given first-round byes. At-large teams will be assigned to the top seven remaining teams in the rankings.
Before we begin, the CFP takes into account a number of factors in addition to a team’s performance history.
Championships in conferences.
face-to-face.
Timetable strength.
games with regular opponents.
outcomes when compared to other ranked opponents.
Fortunately, the committee does not use the term “ranked opponents” as you may be accustomed to hearing. The CFP Rankings from the previous week are the rankings used for that standard. They don’t use any polls or their own rankings from when the game was played.
As a matter of fact, the committee expressly prohibits the use of any poll that has a preseason starting point, like the Coaches Poll and the AP Top 25. They don’t even use those polls, let alone attempt to imitate them.
The committee will have a harder time organizing schedules this season than in previous years. They will have an SOS metric to utilize, of course, but delving into the specifics could be problematic. With 16 or more teams in each of the four major conferences, teams in these conferences now play a wide range of schedules.
For instance, Ole Miss has already lost both its home game against Georgia and its game against LSU in the SEC. It’s possible that none of the other conference teams on their schedule will have more than seven wins overall at the end of the season. On the other hand, Georgia’s schedule includes home games against Tennessee as well as trips to Ole Miss, Texas, and Alabama.
Additionally, take note that “game control” is not one of the requirements. Although it has never been used, the committee chairman frequently uses that phrase when discussing the reasons behind a team’s ranking. The chairman finds other ways to describe it even if he doesn’t use that term specifically.
Additionally, the committee prefers dominance, which is also a result of game control, even though scoring margin is not a specific factor.
Ultimately, this is a subjective process that is informed by some objective information. Each member of the 13-member committee may have a different value for the data points than their peers.
In light of everything mentioned above, this is how I believe this week’s rankings will appear. Big Ten and SEC teams are dominant, but that’s just where the power is in college football. Become accustomed to it, as the gap will probably widen over time.
This week’s AP Top 25 is referred to as “rankings” for curiosity’s sake; I’m not using it to assess the teams. The CFP Rankings will be my future point of reference once they are made public.
Please take note that this forecast is solely based on current results. It doesn’t represent the final playoff forecast. Here are the full bowl projections for the playoffs and bowls through the end of the season.
Forecast for the College Football Playoff Rankings.
