CFP Rankings Explained!

This is my explanation as to why the CFP rankings are beginning to make perfect sense.

Every Tuesday evening college football fans across the country gather around their televisions awaiting the release of the week’s latest College Football Playoff rankings. And every Tuesday evening those same fans are left scratching their heads and arguing amongst themselves about how the committee came up with the latest and greatest ranking order. Television’s talking heads are given another week’s worth of fodder, the weeks’ football games are played, and the following Tuesday the cycle repeats itself. I offer you my take and explanation on why you see things being done the way they are.

You are being conditioned, and rightfully so. The college football landscape is changing rapidly. With Texas and Oklahoma moving to the SEC and conference expansion happening across the board you can see that we are quickly moving toward 4 “Super Conferences”. These new “Super Conferences” are going to provide much stronger competition and better games throughout the regular season. It is also going to make it practically impossible for teams to go undefeated throughout the regular season. I can even envision scenarios where every team in the country has at least two losses. This is exactly why you see a one loss Alabama ranked where they are today and an undefeated Oklahoma stuck where they are. You are being conditioned to accept the opinion of the playoff committee. Quality losses are beginning to mean more than cupcake wins and bad losses count more than head to head wins (see Michigan and Michigan State this week). Under the new expansion taking place this is the way things HAVE to be. Get used to it now.

Change is hard! I understand that. But change is coming and it’s coming rapidly. Conference chairmen are scrambling to try and keep up with this quickly evolving landscape and the ones who aren’t will be left behind. This change isn’t going to wait for anyone. This change is all about money and you better get on board because the SEC and the BIG, and their wallets, will not be waiting on you.

Let me be the one to say it; if Auburn is going to have to play Alabama, LSU, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M, Georgia, Ole Miss, etc every year then there is no way they will go undefeated. There is also no way that schedule can be compared equally to a PAC-12 schedule. I could make an argument that a 2-loss Auburn in this scenario is better than an undefeated PAC-12 team. I am simply using Auburn as an example here. In this scenario, you can replace them with any other team name in the SEC and you can replace the PAC-12 with the BIG-12 or ACC this year. This is EXACTLY why you are seeing the CFP committee doing what it’s doing this year and this is going to become the new normal. Get used to it.

I have been watching all of the talking heads try to explain what the CFP committee is thinking and I have listened to a multitude of arguments but I have yet to hear anyone discuss what is actually happening. I’m not sure if they just don’t want to come out and say it or if they are under pressure behind the scenes to try and keep this quiet in order to squash the backlash as much as possible. Regardless of the reason, let me be the first to explain it to you so you can begin to prepare yourselves. In my next article I will go further into detail and explain scenarios that I think could alleviate some of the confusion such as CFP expansion and CFP committee transparency. In the meantime, keep the future in mind when you watch the ranking show and you will begin to understand why things appear much differently this year than they have in the past few years. You may not like it, but at least now you will understand it.