CFP Reaction
I ended up agreeing with the committee regarding the top 5. I’ll be really surprised if two of the current top 4 lose this weekend. I had said before last week that I thought Ohio St. would be one of the stronger non-champions were they to lose to Michigan.
Neither Tennessee nor Alabama, who each have two losses, had a non-conference game that was worth very much to compensate for the extra loss. The SEC is better, but it’s not so much better that you don’t need either a very good non-conference game or a ninth conference game.
I did think that LSU would have deserved consideration if they had finished with 2 losses, but the Tigers did get the ninth conference game when they qualified for the SEC Championship Game. This would have given LSU a second win over a team who finished with a winning record in conference.
Anyway, as to who #6 should be, I disagree with those who have Tennessee behind Alabama. Tennessee not only played the #1 team in the country by virtue of playing in the SEC East, but they also beat both of the top teams in the SEC West. Alabama didn’t beat anyone in the top 6 (there are 7 teams per division) of the SEC East, and they also didn’t beat the only team with a winning conference record (LSU) in the SEC West. The Tide did lose two games in the last second, but I think beating more good teams should count for more than how close the losses were. Alabama didn’t have to beat a team like either team who beat Tennessee. Texas was a better non-conference opponent than Pitt, but that doesn’t make up for Alabama playing Vanderbilt as the extra cross-divisional opponent while Tennessee drew LSU, not to mention Georgia and South Carolina.
Ratings and Other Thoughts
I don’t think this technicality matters as far as Playoff arguments but something else that annoys me is if you lose a tiebreaker for the conference championship game, you’re still considered a divisional co-champion. Even though LSU lost after clinching the spot in the championship game, Alabama can now claim they’ve won the SEC West 10 of 11 years (the exception being 2019). I prefer the NFL approach. If you lose the tiebreaker to the team that advances as the winner of the division, you’re not called a champion or co-champion. The previous time the Tide lost it outright was also to LSU, in 2011. Since divisions will cease to exist in about two years, I hope we can get at least one more outright win in the next two years.
Back to my rankings/ratings, you may have noticed the “weighted rank” doesn’t penalize as much for losses anymore. I’ve compensated for that by making it a smaller component of the overall total, but it still does take record into consideration to some extent. For instance, Vanderbilt had to play four of the five best teams by conference record in the SEC and is only #39 in the weighted rankings because the Commodores also have 7 losses. Alabama only played two of those teams and is #15 in the weighted rankings largely because there were no other losses.
So, although when I first introduced the weighted rankings they were meant to stand alone, in no universe did I think LSU was #1 last week or that Oregon St. is #2 this week (after Georgia); but those are the teams (other than Georgia) most deserving of bonus points if you will given a combination of a good record and quality opponents. I also think it’s right that Clemson lost an extra spot (from what they are in the original unweighted formula) because their weighted rank fell to #24. Clemson just barely edged out LSU and Oregon St.
One might come to the conclusion that I don’t give conferences other than the SEC enough of a chance with the weighted component, but there are five Pac-12 teams in the weighted top 10 and only three SEC teams. All things being equal, LSU and Tennessee having such tough conference slates would have caused them to finish lower than Alabama in the standings, but they both beat the Tide and ended up with the same number of conference losses as the Tide.
USC was the only one of those five Pac-12 teams to have a better weighted rank than unweighted rank. This was because the other four all finished with three overall losses. It also helped that the Trojans played Notre Dame. This compensated somewhat for USC not having played Washington and Oregon.
The other teams in the top 10 of the weighted rankings are Texas and Michigan. Michigan is doing well being that they only played two teams in the top 40 in my overall ratings, but of course being undefeated helps. Texas has the opposite situation: a number of top-40 opponents (4) but also a number of losses (4). Texas has also played 5 teams that finished between numbers 41 and 65 with only one opponent (ULM) below #85.
There are only a couple of the lower teams I thought needed a little bit of explanation beyond the results of last week.
It really hurt Florida St. that Clemson and LSU lost because those games were largely responsible for the Seminoles’ having an unweighted ranking of 14 and a weighted ranking of 16 last week. Notre Dame’s loss to USC also had some collateral effect upon the ACC as a whole as well given that the Irish beat both of the ACC title contestants and another team (Syracuse) who went .500 in conference and finished 7-5 going into the bowl game.
The only other team who seems somewhat out of place is Boise St. The win over Utah St. wasn’t the most impressive (although to be fair, the Aggies had won 5 of 6 going into the game), but the three teams who had beaten the Broncos all had “good” weeks. The Broncos’ worst loss, UTEP, is still not a good team; but the Miners improved their strength of schedule considerably by playing UTSA. You probably know what happened with Oregon St. (who beat Boise St. in Week 1) and why their stock improved. Also, BYU improved its strength of schedule with the win over Stanford (who played in a good conference and somehow beat Notre Dame…. Best wishes to departing head coach David Shaw, by the way. How he made it so long is beyond me).
I also noticed there were some games that weren’t included the last time or two I had updated the weighted rankings, so that may have played some role in why Florida St. fell after a loss and why Boise St. rose so far after a win over a now-6-loss opponent. I think that’s also the main reason UCLA fell so much last week and rose so much this week. Without correctly factoring in how good USC was, it made the loss to the Trojans look worse than it should have; and this is now corrected.
Regardless, I like the process I’ve followed this year because it’s been a lot more stable. I don’t like to say a given team is top 10 one week and not in the top 25 the next or that six or seven teams are in this week’s top 25 but weren’t in last week’s. We don’t really find out that much about a team in one game, especially not when it’s 1 of 12 games, so I don’t like to see much volatility later in the year even if there are some adjustments in the methodology.
Top 25
| Rank | Team | Last |
| 1 | Georgia | 1 |
| 2 | Michigan | 4 |
| 3 | Texas Christian | 3 |
| 4 | USC | 7 |
| 5 | Ohio St. | 2 |
| 6 | Tennessee | 8 |
| 7 | Alabama | 9 |
| 8 | Penn St. | 10 |
| 9 | Clemson | 5 |
| 10 | LSU | 6 |
| 11 | Oregon St. | 16 |
| 12 | Texas | 18 |
| 13 | Oregon | 11 |
| 14 | Utah | 12 |
| 15 | Kansas St. | 21 |
| 16 | UCLA | 23 |
| 17 | Tulane | 20 |
| 18 | Florida St. | 13 |
| 19 | Boise St. | — |
| 20 | Washington | 24 |
| 21 | Notre Dame | 15 |
| 22 | Troy | 14 |
| 23 | S Carolina | — |
| 24 | Mississippi St. | — |
| 25 | TX San Antonio | 22 |
| — | N Carolina | 17 |
| — | Ole Miss | 19 |
| — | Coastal Caroliina | 25 |
For the detailed ratings of all 131 teams, see here or follow the link in the heading for “Knights Ratings” at any time while browsing the site.
The Bayou Blogger 
Alabama, Boise St., Clemson, College Football, Florida, Fresno St., Georgia, Illinois, LSU, Michigan, Mississippi St., Notre Dame, Ohio St., Ole Miss, Oregon, Oregon St., Pittsburgh, Purdue, SEC, TCU, Tennessee, Troy, Tulane, USC, Utah, UTSA
Final Pre-Bowl Ratings and Reaction to Major Bowl Selections
In Bowls, College Football, College Football Playoff, High School, History, Post-game, Rankings, Rankings Commentary on December 4, 2022 at 5:29 PMI don’t have that much to say about the LSU game itself. I thought they would lose by single digits if they had a good day, and they basically would have lost by three if you take out two disastrous plays (and leave everything else the same): a blocked field goal from fairly close range that was returned for a touchdown, at least partly because all but a couple of players on the field forgot the rules (a 10-point swing), and an interception deep in LSU territory that resulted from a ball that was falling to the ground that hit an LSU helmet instead (this set up a fairly easy touchdown drive).
I’m not surprised that Alabama and Tennessee went ahead of LSU in bowl consideration given that they each only have two losses. I would argue if LSU had beaten Texas A&M, but my guess is that didn’t matter either. Rightly or wrongly (obviously wrongly in my view), Alabama was seen as the best SEC team after Georgia; and Tennessee’s win over LSU would have been a tie-breaker for a New Year’s Six bowl even if one didn’t punish LSU for the extra loss.
LSU is a superior team to Purdue, but sometimes it can be hard to be enthusiastic about playing such a game. I think the Boilermakers will be relatively excited to play in the game and probably would be to play in any bowl.
I do think Tennessee should have gone to the Sugar Bowl, but I guess we didn’t need another game between Alabama and Clemson to take place in the Orange Bowl. All the other New Year’s Six Bowls were fairly obvious match-ups according to the guidelines. USC vs. Tulane in the Cotton especially made sense as the two westernmost teams not bound to the Rose Bowl. They will play one another in a bowl for the first time since the Trojans won the Rose Bowl after the 1931 season. That game might have helped inspire the creation of the Sugar Bowl a few years later. USC and Tulane also split a home-and-home in the 1940s.
I had said Friday that Ohio St. should move up if another team fell out of the top four. I didn’t realize that TCU and USC were far enough ahead of Tennessee and Alabama that they could afford a loss and stay in the top five. Actually, my first draft of the ratings had USC ahead of Ohio St.; but then I realized that somehow Utah was being counted as a better opponent than they were. Not to bore the reader with the details, but I try not to penalize teams as much for losing a close game on the road, but that wasn’t meant to treat the winner as one of the top teams in the country as the weighted ratings do if not corrected.
The Trojans did beat one more top-25 team than Tennessee did. It hurt the Vols that LSU lost in a way because now the Tigers are not in the highest classification of the weighted ratings. Had LSU won, Georgia would not have fallen out of that classification (which right now is the top 8 teams). In the bigger picture, USC beat 8 Pac-12 teams and Notre Dame whereas Tennessee only beat 6 SEC teams and Pitt. You can think the former is more impressive while still having the SEC as the best conference.
I’ve written about Clemson playing a deceptive number of quality opponents, so that’s why they’re ahead of Alabama. The Tigers only beat one top 25 team (the same number Alabama has beaten), but they’ve beaten five other teams in the top 42 to Alabama’s one. Illinois is #39 and was a missed field goal from beating Michigan, and #37 Pitt took Tennessee to overtime, so I’m not talking about opponents that anyone can take for granted. (For an even better example, Florida is #51 and beat Utah.). Alabama does have better losses, but that doesn’t make up for that volume of decent wins.
I think it’s appropriate that the respective Big XII and Pac-12 champions round out the top 10. I don’t think Tulane, Troy, and UTSA would beat many of the 5 to 10 teams immediately below them, but I don’t mind that in my system teams like that are in the top 20 as long as they’re not in position for the Playoff. I’m glad not to be in New Orleans to hear from the Tulane fans who don’t know anything about national college football listing all the SEC teams they’d beat with their one good team in a generation though. I have mixed feelings about Troy playing UTSA in the Cure Bowl. On the one hand, it’s good that they’re both playing a ranked team; but on the other hand, I wonder how they would do against one of the lower Power-5 bowl teams.
I know the Playoff is going to expand to 12 teams, but one or two of those teams being non-Power-5 champions is fine with me. I will want most Power 5 teams to be eliminated with three or four losses. This isn’t the NFL; I’m not willing to take a team seriously as the potential national champion if they lost 1/3 or more of their regular-season games.
I don’t like Oregon being ahead of Oregon St. even though I do think the Ducks have been the better team overall this year. USC didn’t beat Oregon (both “civil war” teams played Utah), so it doesn’t hurt Oregon for the Trojans to lose. USC did beat Oregon St. It also helps that Oregon’s best non-conference opponent solidified its claim as the best team in the country. Oregon St. played Boise and Fresno, and neither is as good as LSU anyway, so there wasn’t as much of a gain there (there was a slight improvement to strength of schedule though).
My formula did put the Egg Bowl rivalry in the “correct” order (according to head-to-head results) though, with Mississippi St. at #25 and Ole Miss at #26. Of course, it helps that Mississippi St. played Georgia instead of Vanderbilt (all the other conference opponents were the same, and the two teams have the same record).
Some teams moved up or down more than they normally would given how many teams didn’t play. I hadn’t worked on the weighted formula in a few years and it was still new before COVID, so there were still some kinks to iron out. Given that most of the changes still made sense given the results and there was no turnover in the top 25, I don’t think I changed anything too abruptly.
I’ve updated the ratings after the Army-Navy game before, but this year I’ll just treat is as a bowl game since neither will play an actual bowl game.
For the ratings of all 131 teams and all FBS conferences (and independents), see here or click “Knights’ Ratings” above at any time while browsing this site.