The initial College Football Playoff rankings are out for 2016! Everybody lose your minds! From coast-to-coast, people are asking questions as to why their team was slighted or how their team was justly rewarded for their performance.
I’ve spent the past couple of years explaining the methodology of the CFB Selection Committee because their rankings make sense if you view it as a moving target. Because I want to ensure that you too have a giant college football brain, here is a simple way of viewing the CFB Rankings.
- Rankings in Weeks 10 thru 14 are based on the overall resume for each team.
- The Committee weighs who you’ve played (Strength of Schedule), what your results were given your schedule (Strength of Record), and your team’s ability to dominate competition (Game Control).
- Rankings for Week 15 are when the CFB Committee moves the target. As team’s who have won a championship take precedent over teams that haven’t.
For a team like Texas A&M, who shows up 4th this week in the CFB Playoff Rankings, the Aggies have played the 26th ranked schedule in the country and have only lost to #1 Alabama on the road. That puts them significantly ahead of Washington, who has played the 68th ranked schedule in college football.
But by the time we reach Week 15, the Aggies will be passed as they have a very outside chance of reaching the SEC Championship Game. If Alabama wins out and wins the SEC, that essentially ends A&M as a playoff team.
The CFB Committee has yet to give us a playoff participant who was a not a conference champion. The system was designed to ensure that a championship game featuring Alabama versus LSU will never happen again. One would have to believe that a two-loss conference championship would have a better shot than a one-loss team who did not win a championship.
With that in mind, here are a few teams that can win out and reach the playoffs:
Alabama
Clemson
Michigan
Washington
Ohio State
Auburn
Nebraska
Florida
LSU
Oklahoma
Colorado
Baylor
Oklahoma State
Virginia Tech
West Virginia
Washington State