Unlike last year, when the College Football Playoff committee overthought itself into making a very regrettable decision (Alabama over unbeaten Florida State), it kept things rather simple this season, picking the most deserving teams, not the best teams, to play in the 12-team CFP. That's the way things should be.
But according to SP+, a bracket featuring the best teams would have looked awfully different. The CFP will not feature two of the five best teams in the country, and the single best team is the No. 8 seed. Still, in a year in which the main story has been the extreme clustering of the teams at the top -- this week's top eight teams are separated by just 3.1 points -- there are still plenty of elite teams vying to make a title run.
Below are this week's SP+ rankings. What is SP+? In a single sentence, it's a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. I created the system at Football Outsiders in 2008, and as my experience with both college football and its stats has grown, I have made quite a few tweaks to the system.
Now more than ever: SP+ is indeed intended to be predictive and forward-facing. It is not a résumé ranking that gives credit for big wins or particularly brave scheduling -- no good predictive system is. It is simply a measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football. If you're lucky or unimpressive in a win, your rating will probably fall. If you're strong and unlucky in a loss, it will probably rise.
Projecting the College Football Playoff
In Sunday's column, I shared quick title odds based on SP+ projections. I figured I would use this space to break things out a bit further.
First round
Here are the first-round win probabilities:
12 Clemson at 5 Texas: Texas 79.7% win probability
11 SMU at 6 Penn State: Penn State 62.3% win probability
10 Indiana at 7 Notre Dame: Notre Dame 61.8% win probability
9 Tennessee at 8 Ohio State: Ohio State 63.8% win probability
Three of the four games (sans Texas-Clemson) are projected within six points, which is pretty fun. We missed a golden opportunity for an SWC callback game between SMU and Texas, but otherwise these are pretty appealing matchups.
Quarterfinals
Odds of reaching semifinals:
5 Texas 66.6%
2 Georgia 53.8%
1 Oregon 51.9%
6 Penn State 47.2%
8 Ohio State 32.0%
7 Notre Dame 29.8%
11 SMU 26.5%
3 Boise State 26.3%
4 Arizona State 20.1%
10 Indiana 16.4%
9 Tennessee 16.1%
12 Clemson 13.3%
I love that this system rewards conference champions in a measurable way -- namely, with four byes to the quarterfinals (and, evidently, with minimal punishment for title game losses) -- but the one quirk it caused is the No. 5 seed is going to be awfully valuable in most years because the odds are pretty good that the teams earning the No. 4 and 12 seeds (aka the two lowest-ranked conference champs) will be the weakest teams in the field. There could be plenty of exceptions to this, but in the first year of the 12-team playoff we ended up with a pretty extreme version of what we expected: Texas, the top-ranked non-champion and 5-seed, is indeed pitted against what SP+ thinks are the No. 17 and No. 30 teams in the country and therefore has excellent odds of reaching the semifinals.
SP+ is undervaluing Arizona State at the moment because it had the Sun Devils so low before their sudden six-game hot streak. But you'd still probably rather take your chances against ASU than some of the other potential options. That Georgia ends up with a theoretically harder path after beating Texas in Atlanta is certainly the wrong kind of quirk even if I love the intent behind it.
Semifinals
Odds of reaching final:
2 Georgia 34.1%
1 Oregon 33.1%
5 Texas 31.0%
6 Penn State 21.8%
8 Ohio State 20.6%
7 Notre Dame 18.8%
11 SMU 10.4%
10 Indiana 9.4%
9 Tennessee 9.2%
3 Boise State 5.5%
12 Clemson 3.1%
4 Arizona State 2.9%
Of course, one thing about being the No. 5 seed is that you're still in the same part of the field as the No. 1 seed and, according to SP+, the ever-so-slight No. 1 team in the country, Ohio State. Texas falls to just the No. 3 pick to reach the title game.
Final
Odds of winning the title:
1 Oregon 20.4%
5 Texas 17.2%
2 Georgia 16.6%
8 Ohio State 12.5%
7 Notre Dame 9.0%
6 Penn State 8.9%
9 Tennessee 5.1%
10 Indiana 4.1%
11 SMU 3.7%
3 Boise State 1.1%
12 Clemson 0.8%
4 Arizona State 0.6%
An odd setup? Absolutely. But when half the field has between an 8.9% and 20.4% title chance and no one is higher, we're in for some serious chaos. Bring it on.
