I have never really been satisfied with the College Football Playoff Rankings. I’m not sure if the voters use analytics or just the eyeball test, but a lot of the time they just don’t make sense. I created my own formula that I believe is more indicative of the cream of the crop in the NCAAFB landscape.
A little about my rankings. I not only place an emphasis on how many wins you have but who you’ve beaten. Ranked wins matter, with a caveat. The ranking at the time of the win doesn’t matter. Remember a few years ago? A Georgia Tech victory of FSU was a huge deal in the first game of the year. As the year went on however, and FSU stumbled to a 2-10 record, that win didn’t mean anything. This year, Oregon for instance has a ranked victory over Boise State. Boise State wasn’t ranked at the beginning of the season, but they are now. Making that a big win. They have two other ranked wins as well. They just don’t meet my other criteria which is that I didn’t calculate any team with three losses or more. I’m using the AP rankings for my data.
Strength of schedule matters. Did you beat a bunch of teams that are .500 or worse? Or were you the one in 7-1? I assigned a number to the amount of wins a team’s opponents had. I also took into account bad losses. A bad loss was any loss to a below .500 team. There were only four such instances, which did not affect any of the top 15 teams. There was Duke that was very close to being a top 15 team, but there loss to a 2-6 Georgia Tech team took some points from them.
Without further ado, here are my rankings of the top fifteen teams in college football.
College Football Playoff Rankings
| Rank | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | USC Trojans | 198 |
| 2 | Texas Longhorns | 197 |
| 3 | Ohio State Buckeyes | 197 |
| 4 | BYU Cougars | 196 |
| 5 | Miami Hurricanes | 190 |
| 6 | Kentucky Wildcats | 188 |
| 7 | Indiana Hoosiers | 186 |
| 8 | Utah Utes | 183 |
| 9 | Georgia Bulldogs | 179 |
| 10 | UCLA Bruins | 178 |
| 11 | Ole Miss Rebels | 177 |
| 12 | LSU Tigers | 174 |
| 13 | Texas Tech Red Raiders | 173 |
| 14 | Tennessee Volunteers | 171 |
| 15 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | 170 |
As you can see, my rankings do not give a crap about being undefeated. So, what are the reasonings for some of the outcomes?
USC is bolstered by the second most wins by opponents and also that huge win versus Ohio State. Texas also has a big victory over Ohio State and tied for the first most wins by opponents. And the reason that OSU is so high up is because of the fact that they are tied with Texas for the first most wins by opponents. Also, OSU has the big win over Indiana.
I forgot to mention, the points you get for a ranked win are tiered. You get different points for a different tiered victory. 1-5 is one tier, 6-10, so on and so forth. I bring this up because the reason that BYU is so high is because of that win over Notre Dame, who still sits at #4 in the AP poll.
Why are the three undefeated teams so low in the rankings? Miami just doesn’t have a big win over a ranked team. The same with UCLA. If Oregon finds themselves in the rankings again and higher than 21, that will be good for the Bruins. Utah has a ranked win over Houston, but the rest of their opponents haven’t won as much. Strength of schedule really means a lot in my formula.
If you have any question or comments, feel free to leave them down below. You can also hit me up at couchpotatosports on Bluesky.