What immediately sticks out is that the notable trend from last week is gone. Last week, we pointed out that the CFP selection committee seemed to value record most of all. They cared about how many losses a team avoided first and then went on to other criteria, mainly SOS, to decide where to rank teams.
This week, the glaring exception to that rule was Ole Miss. Ole Miss lost their second game of the season–a tight absolute heartbreaker to Auburn–yet only dropped seven spots, ahead of several power conference teams that only have one loss.
What the CFP Selection Committee Taught Us in Week 10
At first this seems to be a clear indication that the committee has reverted to the poll logic of just sliding teams down after losses and maybe up for big wins. Then again, maybe not. Last week, Duke and Marshall were well behind what their records deserved due to their very poor strengths of schedule. The committee showed that number of losses could be trumped by strength of resume. Ole Miss still has a very superior SOS to Baylor, Nebraska, and Ohio State and clearly has a better resume at the moment as well. Baylor has the big win over TCU but has an absolutely abysmal schedule so far. Between Ohio State and Nebraska, their best win has come over Miami (Fl). So it is quite understandable that Ole Miss, with a win over Alabama and two losses to Top 20 teams (and solid non-conference wins over Boise State and Memphis), stayed ahead of that trio of 1-loss teams.
The other thing we learned at the top is that the committee does not have a uniform way of doing things. When asked to explain how and why the trio of Oregon, Alabama, and TCU was put in that order, the answers seemed to contradict each other. Oregon was put at #4 because of their resume. On the other hand, Alabama got the #5 spot over TCU because they “broke out the tape” and watched the teams play. In other words, the eye test put Alabama in front of TCU.
There is nothing inherently wrong with comparing resumes to the eye test. The “eye test” is harder to prove–and therefore easier to defend than actually looking at resumes. Because, judging by resumes, there is very little reason for Alabama to be ahead of TCU. Alabama’s best win is over West Virginia, who also happens to be TCU’s second-best win. Their losses are basically even, as both came on the road against teams ranked one spot away from each other. As long as the committee can say that Oregon’s resume was good enough to trump Alabama’s eye test and that Alabama’s eye test was good enough to trump TCU’s resume, there is nothing inconsistent about doing it. The danger is that this can very easily lead to not putting the requisite work into ranking teams and just sliding them into position based on some sort of subjective resume/eye test/guesswork decision. (By the way, the eye test is the only possible way that ranking Wisconsin can be justified at this point in the season.)
There is one other team I would like to focus on that really shows us something from the committee: Utah. The Utes lost a tough overtime game against Arizona State and stayed at their exact same ranking of #17. This shows a clear deviation from the poll attitude of sliding down teams for a loss. The fact is, Utah had one of the weaker resumes of 1-loss power conference teams last week. When compared to 2-loss teams, though, they are sitting exactly where they belong–ahead of everyone other than Ole Miss, LSU, and Oklahoma.
Also, we can see a clear use of head-to-head as a tiebreaker in the Utah-UCLA-Arizona trio. The three have more or less similar resumes (Utah has a worse loss that stands out) but Utah beat UCLA, who beat Arizona State. Also, head-to-head is probably the only advantage that Georgia has over Clemson’s resume, yet the Bulldogs fell right ahead of Clemson in the rankings. Presumably this is because the committee felt that Clemson’s resume was not superior enough to justify ignoring a fairly lopsided head-to-head result.
There is one other important observation, which was first made by Samuel Chi of BleacherReport (he is definitely worth following on Twitter @ThePlayoffGuru). Every single Pac-12 team ranked by the committee is equal to or above their rating in the major polls. And with five Pac-12 teams in the Top 20, that is a significant stat. It leads to two possibilities: either the major polls have some sort of bias* against the Pac-12 or the committee has a bias in their favor.
There is no obvious reason to assume that the committee would have any favoritism towards the Pac-12. Rather, this seems to show the often-mentioned “East Coast Bias.” Because so many Pac-12 games occur long after voters on the East coast have gone to sleep, they don’t notice those teams as much–especially when they need their rankings in within a few hours of waking up on Sunday morning. Since the committee has until Tuesday to discuss their rankings, though, they have a full two days to check out replays, highlights, and analysis of Pac-12 games and therefore see almost as many West coast games as they do East coast games.
* Please note: Bias does not mean something malicious or intentional. It just means that, for whatever reason, there is a consistent factor that benefits or hurts a team/group of teams.
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