I spent the weekend explaining multiple times how Georgia could reach the College Football Playoff at the conclusion of this regular season. Despite my best efforts, the biggest difficulty I’ve experienced is that you can’t un-teach decades of a learned practice.
What I mean by that statement is that this is no longer a poll-driven sport. Forget what you have experienced over all of your years of watching college football. It used to be that the 5th ranked team in the country needed multiple teams in front of them to lose in order to reach their goal. That is no longer the case. What you must now do is think of each team in terms of resume.
While we get rankings each Tuesday evening, the complete resume is what will eventually be judged. Because no team has won a conference championship as of yet, the biggest component of the ranking has not been factored in.
This is good for Georgia, trust me.
The Committee is provided a wealth of statistics by Atlanta-based Sports Source Analytics, who can help in providing clarity for a comparison between two teams. The use of strength of schedule has been very big with the Committee thus far. Let’s take a look at a few teams at the top of the rankings and how they compare:
Strength of Schedule = schedule difficulty based on what an average team would do against the teams already played.
Strength of Record = measures the amount of wins accumulated by a team’s opponents on their schedule.
Game Control = put simply, measures how much control a team had over a football game. The measure helps eliminate bias in margin of victory or piling on points late in a game.
Top 10 = record vs opponents with a top 10 ranking in strength of schedule.
Top 30 = record vs opponents with a top 30 ranking in strength of schedule played against.
Team A
(SOS) = 38
(SOR) = 2
(GC) = 34
(Top 10 = 0-0)
(Top 30 = 3-0)
Team B
(SOS) = 3
(SOR) = 1
(GC) = 1
(Top 10 = 1-1)
(Top 30 = 7-1)
Team C
(SOS) = 16
(SOR) = 4
(GC) = 4
(Top 10 = 0-0)
(Top 30 = 3-0)
Team D
(SOS) = 34
(SOR) = 3
(GC) = 2
(Top 10 = 1-1)
(Top 30 = 4-1)
Team E
(SOS) = 5
(SOR) = 10
(GC) = 3
(Top 10 = 1-0)
(Top 30 = 5-1)
I left the team names off so that you could see a purely statistical ranking view for each team. For instance, Team A has played some above average teams, who have good records, but they have failed to control the outcome of the games regularly. Team D is similar, but they have been more dominant in controlling the outcomes of their games.
Team E has a top tier strength of schedule, strength of opponent’s records, and have largely been in control of most of their games. They have also played well against stronger competition. Team E is Georgia.
Here are the other teams:
Team A: Florida State
Team B: Alabama
Team C: Oregon
Team D: Mississppi State
The most important aspect of this entire exercise is to realize that Georgia has to find their way to the Georgia Dome in order to have any chance at making the playoffs. But if they did, and they won, their resume would be as strong as any in the country. With the most important component, a championship won, being their final resume line.
Projected Top 4 for 11/18/14
1. Alabama
2. Oregon
3. Florida State
4. Mississippi State