There was very little movement in Tuesday night’s College Football Playoff rankings reveal heading into the final week of the regular season. With no teams in the top 14 losing, there were only minor adjustments, and the bubble remained largely unchanged.
Oklahoma at No. 8, Notre Dame at No. 9, Alabama at No. 10, BYU at No. 11, and Miami at No. 12, up one spot after jumping a Utah team that allowed over 400 rushing yards in a win over Kansas State. The primary argument surrounding these rankings, and all the rankings from the committee this season, is the dispute between Notre Dame and Miami, and it’s one that Alabama is caught up in.
Miami beat Notre Dame 27-24 at Hard Rock Stadium in Week 1. Yet, the committee has repeatedly placed the two-loss Fighting Irish ahead of the two-loss Hurricanes, and with just one week left in the regular season, that doesn’t appear likely to change. It’s a symptom of two of the committee's biggest problems, both of which affect the Crimson Tide.
None of us, least of all the CFP committee, is as smart as we think
First, and this is less applicable to Alabama as the Tide are, rightly, behind Oklahoma, which delivered the Tide their second loss. Head-to-head results have to matter, even if they happened in Week 1. They can’t be the end-all be-all. Of course, Alabama is better than Florida State. But when it’s close, and it is close between the two teams, that result should have a huge bearing on the rankings because the reality is, you, me, and the committee don’t know what we’re talking about. Stick with me, I’ll explain.
I’ve watched just about every meaningful college football game this season, just as (hopefully) the CFP committee has. Yet, predicting outcomes and picking games against the spread is still incredibly difficult, and not just for me. Even professional gamblers hit at best a 60 percent clip over a volume of bets to remain profitable. That’s how hard it is to know who is going to be the better team. Obviously, picking games straight up is easier, but none of us would go 100 percent. That’ why they play the games.
It’s really hard to know which team is better until you get them on the same field. Luckily, in the case of Notre Dame and Miami, we did. Yet, the hubris of the committee members demands that they know Notre Dame is the better team. I actually don’t disagree, but as we've established, I, and they, aren't as smart as we think.
I think Notre Dame is better than Miami right now. I think the Irish would probably win a rematch, and you know what, that opinion should be utterly meaningless when held up against the result of the game that happened on the field. Or else, why do we play the games at all? And just because that game happened in August doesn’t make it less important.
Eye test and advanced metrics can help us differentiate between similar teams that haven't played and don't share many or any common opponents (even playing the common opponent game gets dicey). To weight them more heavily than a game that was played, is levels of hubris not seen since Icarus.
The fallacy of the "good loss"
The second problem is the one that has Alabama stuck at No. 10, behind the Fighting Irish and at risk of a doomsday scenario of winning the Iron Bowl, then taking a third loss in the SEC Championship, on a week when Notre Dame doesn’t have to play because it refuses to join a conference, and falling out of the CFP altogether. It’s not likely, but it’s possible. The problem is, the committee is obsessed with losses.
I’m not saying to ignore losses altogether, obviously, we can’t have a four-loss team crashing the party. But the way losses are indexed so much more heavily than wins is maddening. Alabama has the best win of the entire season, beating Georgia, now ranked No. 4 at 9-1, in Athens.
Notre Dame’s best case for being above Miami is its impressive collection of losses, if you’re willing to believe that such a thing exists. And no, all losses are not created equal; a loss to Florida State is significantly worse than a loss to Miami. A win over Georgia, though, is much better than any win on Notre Dame’s resume, as is a win over Vanderbilt. To me, that should be more important when comparing teams with similar resumes.
You know what else is a better win than anything on Notre Dame’s resume, a win over Notre Dame.
Had Alabama beaten Florida State and lost to Georgia, in the eyes of the committee, it would almost certainly be viewed as a better team by the committee for its stellar collection of losses, which the committee views as a badge of honor.
Take Tennessee for example. Let's make a list of the teams with a winning record that No. 19 Tennessee has beaten: Eastern Tennessee State. That's the list. Wisconsin has two more impressive wins than anything on Tennessee's resume in the last two weeks, yet because the Vols lost to Georgia, Alabama, and Oklahoma, they're still inside the top 20. That's preposterous.
There isn’t one perfect formula for sorting college football teams. They tried to build it with the BCS, and that was terribly flawed and easily manipulated. So, they brought back the humans, and their flaws have inevitably shown through. It’s far from perfect, but at least now, with 12 teams, the absolute best teams in the country are no longer at the whims of the committee.
I think Miami should get in over Notre Dame. But I’m not going to lose any sleep over it because I recognize that all Miami had to do was not lose to Louisville or SMU, and this would be a non-issue. With automatic qualifiers for the five highest-ranked conference champions, Miami had a path to take the argument out of it, and it seems that the Hurricanes squandered it.
Alabama still has that path, and if the Crimson Tide want to be safe, they’d better see it through to the end.