They aren’t supposed to manipulate the rankings to avoid rematches.

I think that it would be a good rule to add to the 12 team playoff

you rank teams 1-4

then you rank teams 5-8
5 plays 4, unless that's a rematch. if so, they play 3. then you take 6, match them up with 4 instead, and so forth.

then you take teams 9-12 and do the same thing, 9 plays 8 unless it's a rematch, and so forth.

The rankings are approximate enough that the diff in power between seeds is pretty close to random and there are three basic tiers of 4 that you care about - 4 get byes, 4 have home games, 4 play road games. so allowing yourself flex within each tier is pretty important.

and then starting with the initial ranking of 1-2-3-4 is important since a lot of the seasons you have 2 runaway favorites, and it's important to have them not meet before the final.

Did most have Oklahoma St over ND?

It's the Brian Kelly effect

There was a 100% chance Ok State jumped ND if they beat OU and Baylor, so it didn't really matter if it was this week or next week... bad news for cincy though.

Not surprised it happened this week. Wisconsin lost, de-valuing ND's only top-25 win, and they now have zero.

Ok State now has wins over #9 #12 #14 and four other good bowl teams (Boise, Iowa State, K State, WVU).

ND has five solid wins (Purdue, Wisconsin, VT, UNC, UVA) and zero wins over ranked teams.

ND's loss was at home by double digits, OSU's was on the road by 3.

Resumes aren't close

I think it's gonna come down to style points.

If Ok State and Cincy wins, Ok State is PROBABLY ahead of Cincy, but if Ok State wins by 1 and Cincy whomps Houston by like 40, that might be enough.

If Bama loses by 17+, they're toast, but if they lose by 1 they'll probably stay ahead of ND

If Baylor wins by 1, they probably don't jump ND and/or 2-loss Bama, but if they win big they could jump both

Heck, I think if Michigan loses by 1, they might stay ahead of ND



Edit: I actually don't think that there is an amount Cincy and Ok State can win by that will prevent Ok State from jumping them. Their resume is just too good.

MoV probably only matters for ND/Bama, ND/Michigan and ND/Baylor. I'm sure they are less likely to select ND now that BK has left too, which is a dagger in the back on the way out

The PC:

Sorts by losses. (your words)
P5 conf champs get an extra win.
G5s get an extra loss.
If they don't have a 12-1 for #4, they pick the best 1-loss helmet.

Has this ever not happened? Maybe the rankings are switched but this has always identified the final four.

I remember that Iowa game like it was yesterday weirdly. The game wasn't on any TV stations I got so I listened to it on the radio. They scored 24 points, which I'll grant you, was a ton of points against that defense.

But to say that everyone else since has had to earn it kind of forgetting what the BCS was. There were still years after 97 where more than one team finished undefeated and some of those teams never got a real chance to earn it. Boise State, Utah, I think Auburn one year. Talk about lame, that's lame. Can't wait for the expanded playoff.

I'd argue that it happened in 2018 where they picked 12-1 champ Oklahoma over 12-1 champ Ohio State even though I'd argue that Ohio State is a better helmet

Also, if you go by my preferred method of "do some weighted average of resume rank and power rank, then give a boost for winning a conf championship and then swap teams within 2 spots where one of them has a h2h win," you often get basically the same thing.

Like just b/c you basically outlined the formula they use doesn't mean that other formulae would often lead you to different results.


The only year that I think they really, clearly made a mistake was the very first year, 2014-2015, where they put Ohio State at 4 instead of Baylor or TCU, where as I've outlined before, I am pretty sure their thinking (whether they knew it or not) was "Baylor is obviously more deserving than Ohio State, and TCU is obviously more deserving than Ohio State, but it's impossible to choose between TCU and Baylor so we'll just take Ohio State instead." And of course, Ohio State went on to win the title so everybody forgot about it.

I'd say even the eye test 'formula' gets you mostly the same results as the best ways. Famously the PC has always corresponded with the BCS proxy although we don't know if they even glance at the computers It's usually not in doubt who is #1-2. The fun is in 4th place, and they have always gone helmet.

OSU vs OU is apples to apples with blue bloods. I'll revise if either gets passed over for Utah.