College Football Playoff Eliminator: Preseason Edition
August 23, 2019 | Sports,
By Justin Parmer
Welcome back to the wonderful world of college football. As the College Football Playoff enters its sixth season, teams all across the country will look to make the most exclusive playoffs in all of sports. Only four out of the 129 eligible teams will play have a shot at the national title Dec. 28.
Before the season even begins, we can already eliminate teams from making the College Football playoffs. How so? Allow us to elaborate.
Preaseason Elimination Method
Over the past five years, the College Football playoff committee has shown extreme levels of bias towards the non-power-five conferences: the American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid American Conference, Mountain West, and Sun Belt. No teams from these five have been able to crack into the top four when the final selections are made.
The closest a team has come to cracking the top four was Central Florida in 2018, going 12-0 in the regular season and beating Memphis in the AAC championship game. The committees however didn’t see UCF worthy of a spot in the final 4 and put one loss programs Ohio State, and No. 4 Oklahoma, ahead of the Knights in the final rankings. To add insult to injury the committee placed two loss Michigan at No. 7 ahead of UCF who finished 8th. This was also coming off UCF’s 2017-2018 season where UCF went undefeated and declared themselves national champions.
Let’s also not forget about the 2016 Western Michigan, where the Broncos ran the table in the regular season, only to get as high as 15th in the college football power rankings.- behind four power-five schools with three losses on the season, and an Auburn team with a whooping four.
Safe to say the College Football Playoff committee is not a fan of these non-group of five programs, but is it safe to “Thanos-snap” half of the field out of existence? Yes and no.
The committee has made it explicitly clear that going undefeated in a group of five conference will not be enough to make the four-team field, but the teams that have gone undefeated haven’t really brought much to the table. This is where strength of schedule comes into play.
When the final selections were made back in 2016 Western Michigan’s best win on the season came arguably against a 7-6 Northwestern team week one. The 2017 UCF Knights faired much better scoring two victories against top 25 opponents before going on to play in the Peach Bowl, but the team ranked 69th in strength of schedule. In 2018, the Knights only one top-25 opponent prior to their bowl game 72nd in Strength of schedule.
The only team to make the college football playoffs outside of the Top-25 in strength of schedule was the 201 4 Florida State Seminoles who were undefeated at the time and ranked 27th in strength of schedule. Even with a subpar strength of schedule for a power-five school, the Seminoles had to go through three different top 25 opponents. If you want your team to make it to the college football playoffs, you need to have the strength of schedule to back it up. And based off of the committee’s previous rulings we can assume that no team with three or less ranked opponents on its schedule will make the college football playoffs and at least two of those top 25 opponents, must come in the regular season.
Regular Season Elimination Method
Group of five Method (and any Independent not named Notre Dame)
- Suffering a single loss on the season
Power Five Method (and Notre Dame)
- Losing two games
- Losing to a Group of Five school
- Losing to an FCS school or lower
- Losing a game by 30 or more points.
Eliminated
(Note: the number next to the eliminated team represents the number of opponents this team will face inside the top 25 AP poll)
AAC (6)
Memphis, SMU- 0, UCF, East Carolina, Connecticut, Temple– 1
ACC (0)
No teams qualify for elimination.
Big Ten (0)
No teams qualify for elimination.
Big 12 (0)
No teams qualify for elimination.
Conference USA (12)
Alabama-Birmingham, Florida International, Marshall, Western Kentucky, North Texas– 0, Louisiana Tech, Southern Mississippi, Texas San-Antonio, Charlotte, Rice 1
MAC (8)
Toledo, Eastern Michigan, Ball State, Akron, Ohio-0, Central Michigan, Buffalo, Bowling Green– 1
Mountain West (12)
Boise State, Colorado State, Nevada, UNLV, Hawai’i, San Jose State, Air Force, Fresno State, Wyoming– 0, Utah State, New Mexico State-1.
PAC Twelve (0)
No teams qualify for elimination
SEC (1)
Missouri (Bowl Ineligible- currently appealing NCAA ruling).
Sun Belt (10)
Louisiana, Appalachian State, Georgia State, Coastal Carolina Troy, Texas State– 0, Louisiana Monroe, South Alabama, Georgia Southern, Arkansas State 1
Independents (5)
UMass 0, Army, Liberty– 1, New Mexico State, BYU 2
Teams eliminated: 56
Teams remaining: 74 (listed below)
AAC (6)Houston, Navy, Tulane, Tulsa, Cincinnati, South Florida
ACC (14)
All teams remain.
Big Ten (14)
All teams remain.
Big 12 (10)
All teams remain.
Conference USA (2)
FAU, Middle Tennessee
MAC (4)
Northern Illinois, Western Michigan, Miami (OH), Kent State
Mountain West (0)
PAC Twelve (12)
All teams remain.
SEC (13)
Alabama, LSU, Texas A&M, Auburn, Mississippi State, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Vanderbilt
Sun Belt (0)
Independents (1)
Notre Dame
Edited by Garrett Jones | gcjh23@mail.missouri.edu