2024 NCAA Football Objective Ranks — Week 14
The CFP miss on more teams this week. Who did they get wrong?
Opinion polls are just that: opinions, subjective value carrying little worth. Each week, this system identifies the Top 25 FBS college 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 compare these objective ranks against the biased opinions of the College Football Playoff committee. And Follow me over at BlueSky!
Happy Thanksgiving! I’m thankful for a wild football season and an expanded playoff that’s likely to be as chaos-filled as the weeks that have preceded it. I’m also thankful to be having a cozy family meal in a few short hours, so this entry will be brief.
The PASS Top 25
This now marks nine straight weeks of the leader handing off to a new team. The teams performing at the highest level right now are Ohio State and Notre Dame (Sorry, Oregon fans), as both schools are the first this season to crest above a PASS rating of 60. Alabama, despite their three losses, remain the 3rd most dangerous opponent in the landscape.
In terms of choosing the best performing teams in the nation, here’s what the committee got right and wrong:
The committee remains committed to overvaluing teams like Clemson, Illinois, and Missouri. The other big miss is for Tulane, who is the best Group of 7 team eligible to win a conference championship. Notre Dame is easily deserving of a bye, but the current clandestine nature of the CFP ensures that they’ll never reap that benefit as an Independent.
The tWin% Top 25
Some want to scream from the rooftops that Alabama doesn’t deserve to be in the playoff with 3 losses. Even Nick Saban seems to agree. That’s why we have tWin%, to select the teams with the most wins with performance as a mere tiebreaker.
How did the committee fare when compared to an objectively fair method of choosing teams? Slightly better than with PASS rankings, it turns out, but with a slight slip in accuracy from last week. While the placement of top teams was much closer this week the committee still omitted 6 of the winningest FBS teams in the nation. The most glaring is Army, who were written off after a single loss to top contender Notre Dame. The Black Knights still carry a top 25 PASS rating and a top 10 sTem rating, as we’ll get to shortly.
Highest Rise
#41 Louisville (From #55). It’s the Cardinals second appearance as the highest-flyer, also appearing here in Week 5. UL has had a rough season, performing well while acccruing four losses, and managing to carry the #13 performance rating despite them. Crushing a formerly contending Pitt team 37–9 is good enough for the biggest boost of the week.
Biggest Fall
#79 Virginia Tech (From #64). The Hokies lost a close one to Duke and it was their third straight loss. This week that was good enough to tie for the biggest drop (Alongside San Jose State). A little honor and some bowl eligibility could be salvaged with a win over the in-state UVA on Saturday.
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.
Notre Dame’s romp over Army and Indiana’s brutal loss to Ohio State sees a slight shuffle atop the rankings, with the Irish taking the crown. In the Group of 7, Tulane is also outpacing Boise State by a solid margin as the objectively best non-power conference team.
Week 14 Games to Watch
The 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 3:00PM EST on Nov. 28.
#42 Missouri (-3.5) VS #40 Arkansas / PASS rank
The closest power conference game of the week is an SEC battle where the overall PASS rating gap is less than half a point. Arkansas holds a narrow edge in tempo ranking as well, #58 over #62. Could this spell disaster for a CFP darling, or will the Tigers put in a strong enough performance to show they’re deserving of their opinion poll rank?
#22 Kansas State @ #24 Iowa State (-3.0) / PASS rank
Another matchup between closely ranked conference foes, and another matchup where the Vegas favorite carries the slightly lower PASS rating. K-State (#34) also outranks the Cyclones (#37) in tempo. Will home advantage be enough of an edge to overcome these minor differences?
#11 South Carolina @ #25 Clemson (-3.0) / PASS rank
South Carolina is a significantly better performing team than Clemson to this point, with the Gamecocks at nearly double Clemson’s PASS rating. It’s the second game of the week with playoff implications for Tigers trying to prove they deserve a level of praise that has been suspect to this point.
Enjoy the games! I hope you’re able to have a wonderful holiday week filled with as much or as little family as you’d like, and all the football fun (And chaos) we could ever hope for.
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