Via @CFBPlayof

Last night, the first College Football Playoff Rankings were released and Notre Dame landed, much to everyone’s surprise, number 10 in the nation. Notre Dame wasn’t the only oddity in the committee’s top 25. The coveted spots in the top four raised many eyebrows when Ole Miss, fresh off their loss to LSU, landed in the #4 slot behind a top three of Mississippi State, Florida State, and Auburn respectively.

That’s right, three SEC West teams in the top four. The SEC is awesome indeed.

Comments from the committee didn’t really lend too much insight into their thought process and stated that everyone’s “success and failures” were compared. The rankings varied so much from what just about everyone expected and it was like a splinter in my mind. So of course, like any good football blogging nerd, I did a complete breakdown (link opens in new window) of the rankings and noted every team’s wins and losses. Further, I broke each win and loss down into further categories noting which opponents were in the top 25 (according to the committee), the power five conferences, non-power five teams, and FCS teams.

After I did this, I noticed that a pattern emerged. If there is one takeaway from the rankings, it’s that the logic they applied remained consistent throughout their top 25. I’m not sure I agree with it and I’ll state why later. For now, let’s take a look at the pattern and logic used to ascertain what playoff hopes, if any, Notre Dame has left.

Losses count, but mostly in number

The first thing that should jump off the page is the nice grouping of teams by the number of losses. The only exception to this rule comes in at #23 and #24 with East Carolina and Duke, and we will get to that soon.

The main message however is clear: win your games. There is no bigger penalty in their rankings than losing a game no matter what the reason. That isn’t to say the committee considers all losses equal, it’s quite clear in my opinion that isn’t the case. There is a clear grouping between teams that lost to a top 25 team and another that has a loss to anyone else.

It’s all about quality wins

And more specifically, it’s about wins within the top 25. Next to the number of losses, this appears to be the biggest factor that the committee looks at.

If you examine the rankings, you will see yet another grouping, especially in the one-loss group, of teams with two top 25 wins, one top 25 win, and zero. Again, there are exceptions to this rule and the first one seen is Oregon at #5 who has two top 25 wins yet is jumped by Ole Miss who has only one.

The difference between those two teams? One of Oregon’s wins came against a FCS team and Ole Miss hasn’t played an FCS school (yet). It appears that there is an FCS penalty in play here and you can even see that in Mississippi State taking the top spot from Florida State for seemingly the same reason.

This same logic is also why ECU and Duke manage to fall out of the clean one-loss grouping. They have no top 25 quality wins, they have FCS schools on their schedule, and they also lost to teams outside the top 25. It appears that there is a strength of schedule element in play to some degree.

Speaking of strength of schedule…

Strength of Schedule doesn’t mean what you think it does

Notre Dame is a good example to demonstrate this point. They are the only top ten team with zero top 25 wins. However, they are the only 6 win team who has had 5 wins come power five schools. This, in conjunction with not having any FCS schools on the schedule, appears to have allowed the Irish to secure a top ten slot.

We’ve heard quite a bit this season about Irish opponents being terrible, especially in regards to their record against other power five teams. All of that doesn’t seem to matter all too much for the committee. In fact, more often than not, it appears that the committee uses SOS as a very, very subjective tie-breaker that appears more concerned about whether or not the opponents are in the power five, rather than how well each of those teams preformed.

This is where I have my biggest issue with the rankings. By grouping strictly on losses as their main criteria, the entire process appears to be terribly over-simplified and uses damn near circular logic. Wins within these simply defined groups all of a sudden become quality wins  simply because they fit into the committee’s simple grouping rules. The SOS nuance that we are used to looking at appears to be missing.

It’s the same problem that the SEC is Awesome Theory demonstrates. This, however, is just in a different, slightly less conference bias form. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So does Notre Dame even have a chance?

I still believe the answer to this question is “yes”. There is still lots of football left to be played and if you look at everyone’s remaining games left you will see that all of these one loss teams will start playing each other almost immediately. Further, Notre Dame has a chance to increase their quality win mark as the season progresses with Arizona State, Louisville, and Southern Cal still left to play and I would wager each of those teams could land in a top 25 spot when the dust settles in late November.

There is still one large unknown left: will the committee start from scratch with this method every week or will the typical glass ceilings of initial poll bias remain in place? As of now, all signs point to this logic remaining in place as I don’t think such clear patterns would exist otherwise. Further, as ND fans, you want this logic to remain in place.

If “quality losses” are barely a thing, then this removes much of the conference bias that permeates through the polls. There are no “good losses” (remember, that’s just a subjective tie-breaker now) that would allow something like two losses equaling one loss in the top of the standings. So when all of the conferences finish cannibalizing each other, there should be a very clear path for the Irish to ascend the ranks.

The good news is that we can also stop worrying about whether or not we need to hope Florida State wins out. The only reason to keep hoping for that is to set up an eventual rematch in the playoffs. If FSU, for some reason, drops their next two games, we can all sit and laugh as the Irish rise above them. That same logic, however, doesn’t apply to any team below us or out of the rankings. As an Irish fan, you would need to hope those teams finish on a huge run and crack the rankings so the Irish can boast additional quality wins.

Still, even with all of this, the main objective for the remainder of ND’s season hasn’t changed: just win, baby.

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Ryan Ritter

Editor-in-Chief
Texan by birth, Irish by choice.

First-generation Domer and a former student manager, HLS podcast host, HLS Sim creator, Extra Life streamer, and technical problem haver. You can find more non-Notre Dame related writing on his Patreon.

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