2024 NCAA Football Objective Ranks — Week 11
The CFP rankings are here. How wrong are they?
Opinion polls are just that: opinions, subjective value carrying little worth. Each week, this system identifies the Top 25 FBS football programs in terms of objective performance against strength of schedule (PASS), scoring tempo (sTem), and a true win percentage (tWin%). To learn more, check out the season kickoff, and last year’s primer. As the 2024 season progresses I’ll visualize how top teams are trending, as well as each conference’s total value.
The CFP has a new task before them this year in choosing twelve college football teams for the playoff, instead of the previous four. Will that make them any more likely to choose the right teams? Last year, objectively-ranked #7 Texas made the top four and were promptly outclassed while a deserving and undefeated Florida State team was left out entirely.
It’s a messy business when humans get together to decide upon which teams are the most deserving to engage in the playoff. It’s even messier when those humans are actively employed by universities and conferences that have a financial stake in bowl games, media deals, and playoffs. The committee members who have more defensible stakes (Or perhaps less crooked, depending on your view) still carry inherent bias for their alma mater and conference. This is very far from being an impartial or fair panel of experts. At best, these playoff decisions are completely subjective; at worst they’re absolutely corrupt.
Let’s see how far off the CFP committee is from an objectively statistical reality. Spoiler: it’s off by more than this time last year.
The PASS Top 25
I’ll cut the committee slack in one area — the parity of teams this year creates a greater challenge than last year, when four clear teams led the nation (When they still couldn’t get it right). First we’ll look at the current top 25 performing teams in the FBS.
For a sixth straight week, we’ve seen the #1 position change hands. With upsets occurring across all the power conferences no clear leader has been able to emerge from the pack. This week Indiana reclaimed the crown with the narrowest of margins over Alabama. Notre Dame lost the top spot after the best of their opponents, Texas A&M, was trounced for the 2nd largest dip in top-25 PASS rank after Pitt. Here’s a look at how performance versus strength of schedule stacks up against the CFP selections.
The committee got twenty teams right from the PASS objective top 25. They did not get the actual ranking of any of those twenty teams correct. Tulane, Iowa, UNLV, Navy, and Vanderbilt all have a legitimate axe to grind, while Clemson should feel luckiest of all to be a classic football darling. Of teams who belong, Army was the most slighted: The Black Knights are 13th in performance right now, but the CFP only just included them at #25. Penn State is the most overvalued team, piling up the bulk of its resume against weaker competition and doing so in less convincing fashion than several of their Big Ten counterparts.
Week 11
The tWin% Top 25
Some members of the CFP in the past have echoed the narrative that wins matter above all else. So for tWin%, wins over FBS teams are everything, with PASS used as the tie-breaker. Wins over the FCS are worth less than a full-value FBS game. If you prefer a system that gives all teams and all conferences equal footing, this table represents a playoff race that does so.
With the recent dethroning of Penn State up top, the CFP was able to correctly rank the #1 winning-percentage team, Oregon. That’s about all they can congratulate themselves on, as the next 11 teams are all out of place, with #2 Army repeating as the largest snub (And still holding a higher performance grade than teams like Penn State and Tennessee). And because of their losses, teams like Georgia and Alabama find themselves outside the top 12, sitting alongside other comparable win-compilers like the Ragin Cajuns and Sun Devils.
Last year, the CFP was off by less cumulative rank than this year’s first edition, where they missed on total ranks by a score of 222 (With total misses counting for 25 apiece).
Highest Rise
#78 South Florida (From #104). There was a lot of movement in the standings this past week, with a larger number of teams on bye and those who were active essentially playing chutes and ladders around them. The Bulls find themselves benefactors of the largest leap after scoring 44 on the road at Florida Atlantic.
Biggest Fall
#43 Clemson (From #12). Sometimes when you lose, you lose bad. And sometimes in those bad losses, the numbers can be even worse, because lesser teams performed more admirably against the same opponent that just squashed you. The Tigers lost 33–21 at home to Louisville, and the numbers they posted in the loss led to one of the most devastating Top 25 plunges of the season. Lucky for them, the CFP committee remains swayed by things like brand, personality, and saccharin TV ratings.
The sTem Top 25
The sTem Top 25 grades teams’ offenses and defenses on a per-play basis, to see how efficiently they score and prevent scoring. As the season wears on, more overlap between the PASS and sTem top 25s is becoming apparent.
Indiana retains the top spot by a solid margin over Army, who are solidifying their grasp upon the title of best team in the Group of 7 (Sorry for now, Boise State). Meanwhile, teams like Georgia and Penn State will need to move the needle in a positive direction here if they hope to be playoff winners and not playoff flubs. #1 Oregon has looked great so far while beating one team ranked above them in sTem. Would they be able to pull it off again without home advantage in the playoff?
Week 11 Games to Watch
These games of the week track some of the best matchups between the top-ranked teams of PASS and sTem, as well as the tightest matchups of the week. Odds are as of 9:00AM EST on Nov. 7.
#25 Vanderbilt VS #28 South Carolina (-3) / PASS rank
This is the closest power conference matchup of the week in PASS rank. The Gamecocks are currently favored by a field goal, which may be warranted as they’ve got the higher sTem rank (#27 to #35). With such narrow differences separating these two teams, this will hopefully live up to the thrilling billing.
#31 Virginia Tech VS #37 Clemson (-6.5) / PASS rank
Clemson is getting the spread here, but the Hokies are at home and have been playing very well, with nearly double the PASS value of the Tigers. Clemson is #28 in sTem, while VT is #30. With numbers this close, betting the full TD could be a risky venture. And if Tech wins, it won’t be an upset by objective terms.
#6 Georgia (-3) @ #10 Mississippi / PASS rank
Top billing of the week goes to this matchup of Top 10 PASS opponents. Will sTem be a predictor of an upset? Mississippi is ranked #3 and at home, while Georgia is back at #20. Mississippi is also on a slightly hotter trajectory in terms of last week’s PASS performance.
Enjoy the games and good luck to your teams, or on any bets you’ll be making. Next week we’ll check back in on the CFP Committee and see if their ballyhooing becomes more accurate or even more wildly off the mark.
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