No Season Left Behind: 2014

2014 was filled with a ridiculous number of celebrity deaths. Honestly, when I started looking I was amazed I had forgotten so many:

• Joan "Dot Matrix" Rivers
• Mork from Ork
• Lauren Bacall
• John Hammond (of Jurassic Park fame)
• Dr. Egon "Don't Cross the Beams" Spengler
• Sid Caesar
• Curly Top
• Maya Angelou
• Alice Nelson (best housekeeper EVER)
• Casey "Top 40" Kasem
• Tommy, the last Ramone.
• Bret Maverick/Jim Rockford
• The Professor
• Jaws (if you're into Bond)
• Mr. Oleson (if Little House is more your speed)
• James Brian Hellwig. Wrestlemania VI. Look it up.

I'll spare you the list of movies...ok, no I won't!

1. Transformers: Age of Extinction - this is why we can't have nice things
2. The Hobbit: Battle of the 5 Armies - so is this
3. Guardians of the Galaxy - 'nuff said
4. Maleficent - who knew?
5. X-Men: Days of Future Past - did a great job of fixing the holes
6. Captain America: the Winter Soldier - wasn't a Cap fan until his movies
7. Hunger Games: Mockingjay 1 - my daughter loves Katniss
8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - I don't care what you say, Garfield > Holland
9. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - I really liked the first one, this one was meh
10. Interstellar - loved it, kids loved it, we still watch it, love the music, Kip Thorne made real science cool 

OK, enough non-football stuff. I just like to set the stage and remind us of what was going on, sort of.

2014 saw its fair share of awesome football happenings. 

Maybe you remember the first week of Oct? #2 Oregon loses to unranked Zona, #3 Bama loses to #11 Ole Miss, #4 Oklahoma loses to #25 TCU, #6 A&M loses to #12 Miss St, and #8 UCLA loses to unranked Utah. I love weekends full of carnage!

The week after, Mississippi State makes it to #1 in the AP poll. It'll be interesting to play with my sheet to see if they make it using an unbiased system.

Records were broken and tied: Wazzu's Connor Halliday set a new FBS record by throwing for 734 yards in a single game (they lost to Cal and Jared Goff 60-59). Wisconsin's Melvin Gordon rushed for 408 yards in a single game, breaking LaDanian Tomlinson's record. Gerod Holliman of Louisville had 14 interceptions, tying the single season FBS record held by UW's Al Worley (of course, Worley did it in 10 games while Holliman needed 12). 

There were plenty of top 10 (AP) matchups, too:

• Early season OOC, week 2 #3 Oregon beats #7 Michigan State
• Week 7 #5 Baylor over #9 TCU and #3 Miss St over #2 Auburn
• Week 8 #2 FSU over #5 Notre Dame
• Week 10 #4Auburn defeats #7 Ole Miss
• Week 11 #11 ASU beats #8 Notre Dame (in South Bend!) and #6 TCU over #9 K-State
• Week 12 #4 Bama defeats #1 Miss St
• Conf championships #3 Oregon beats #8 Arizona and #5 Baylor beats #9 K-State

Here's a quick reminder of the rules:

• I stop all data at the conference championships. No bowl games are included, as the idea is to provide us with a top 25 that we would have selected playoff teams from.
• All calculations are exactly the same as the current Ray's Rankings calculations.
• I will introduce the top 25 in reverse order
• I will compare RR/CFP/AP rankings
• I will provide 3 different playoff scenarios 
• 4 team seeded
• 8 team with conference champions and 2 at large, seeded
• 16 team seeded
• We can all have a good laugh at how different things would have been. Or we can all stare slack-jawed in amazement at how closely Ray's Rankings matches human polls.

25	Duke	9-3
24	Missouri	10-3
23	Auburn	8-4
22	LSU	8-4
21	Nebraska	9-3

Duke. OK. Not really sure what to say about that. The ACC wasn't a complete disaster apparently, as the conference was 3rd toughest behind the Pac12 and SEC (and ahead of the B1G and Big12). The rest are the usual suspects. 

20	Oklahoma	8-4
19	Louisville	9-3
18	Mississippi State	10-2
17	UCLA	9-3
16	Arizona	10-3

So the AP had Miss St at #1 at some point during the season. I can tell you that in my system it is highly unlikely that a team at #1 in week 9 falls all the way to #18 after only 2 losses. That said, I have not actually messed around with my sheet to prove that. Yet.

15	Arizona State	9-3
14	Clemson	9-3
13	Georgia Tech	10-3
12	Mississippi	9-3
11	Wisconsin	10-3

Georgia Tech. I had kind of forgotten how weird this season was. To be honest I wasn't paying super close attention to teams outside the B1G at the time. GaTech beat UGA in OT and just barely lost to FSU in the ACC championship game. 

10

USC

8-4

I have to admit that I am somewhat baffled by this one. I mean, of course I know how my system works. It's just surprising that USC seems to be able to play the exact right schedule to move them up the rankings even with only 8 wins. It's weird.

9

Kansas State

9-3

K-State had what has to be considered "good" losses, even though I have shown before that a loss is a loss. They had a great conference run, beating OU and OkSt and only losing to Baylor and TCU, 2 teams that ended up in serious playoff contention.

8

Michigan State

10-2

Sparty had a great season, only losing to 2 CFP playoff teams. Beyond that, they basically steamrolled everyone. 

7

Georgia

9-3

Another year, another top 10 finish for UGA. You will never hear me say that the SEC isn't a tough conference, and Georgia had some solid wins with Auburn topping that list.

6

Florida State

13-0

First major break from CFP/AP. The Noles had great 1st and 2nd level points, but lacked the dominance of a season before. With the 49th ranked D, it's kind of hard to be surprised by this. And I'm sure we all remember what happened in the semifinal.

5

Baylor

11-1

In the first year of the CFP, the Big12 got the crap end of the stick. Baylor (and TCU) had stellar seasons, but voters kept them out of the playoff. As we see, the voters were probably correct about the Bears, though if there'd been a Big12 championship game who knows?

4

Alabama

12-1

But, the committee had Bama #1 when the Tide should have been #4. So we see with FSU, Baylor, and Alabama that the committee allows its feelings to affect results. Yes, Bama had a hell of a season, but again they were rewarded for having a bye week right before the Iron Bowl.

3

Texas Christian

11-1

It seems that Gary Patterson was right: TCU deserved to be there. Their loss to Baylor was early, and after that they pretty much crushed everyone they saw. Again we come back to no championship game, so they're missing those extra points. If they win a 12th game, they're probably #1.

2

Ohio State

12-1

OK, we all know what happened here. Braxton Miller to JT to Cardale. I was at the VaTech game, it was ugly. But what happened after was ridiculous. There wasn't a close game to be found. Coach Meyer knew what needed doing in the CCG vs Wisky and did it. And once you check the full numbers, you'll see that only 0.002 separates #2 from #1. This was not the #4 team, and it was not a gift to put them into the playoff.

1

Oregon

12-1

Hard to argue with numbers. The Ducks with Mariota were scoring a bajillion points per game and outside of that weird loss to Zona were basically untouchable. The question is: does Oregon score 59 vs Bama?

So how did Ray's Rankings stack up against the first year of the CFP?

	CFP		RR	Diff
1	Alabama	SEC	4	3
2	Oregon	Pac-12	1	-1
3	Florida State	ACC	6	3
4	Ohio State	Big Ten	2	-2
5	Baylor	Big 12	5	0
6	TCU	Big 12	3	-3
7	Mississippi State	SEC	18	11
8	Michigan State	Big Ten	8	0
9	Ole Miss	SEC	12	3
10	Arizona	Pac-12	16	6
11	Kansas State	Big 12	9	-2
12	Georgia Tech	ACC	13	1
13	Georgia	SEC	7	-6
14	UCLA	Pac-12	17	3
15	Arizona State	Pac-12	15	0
16	Missouri	SEC	24	8
17	Clemson	ACC	14	-3
18	Wisconsin	Big Ten	11	-7
19	Auburn	SEC	23	4
20	Boise State	Mountain West	26	6
21	Louisville	ACC	19	-2
22	Utah	Pac-12	27	5
23	LSU	SEC	22	-1
24	USC	Pac-12	10	-14
25	Minnesota	Big Ten	33	8

I think over the past several weeks we've shown that the top 10 are usually fairly close. This season is not much different except for Miss St (but that one is a whopper). Also, Zona, UGA, Mizzou, Wisky, Boise, and USC all have pretty large variances.

Do we have evidence of bias? I think so:

SEC	3.14
Big Ten	-0.25
Pac-12	-0.17
Big 12	-1.67
ACC	-0.25

SEC teams were voted 3.14 places higher than they should be, on average, while Big12 teams were voted 1.67 spots lower. Hangover from the BCS? Possibly. And maybe you're thinking "3 spots isn't all that much." It's 3 spots on average for the entire conference, plus the difference between that and whatever conference you're comparing. So for the Big12, it would be 4.81 places. That's pretty much the difference between being #5 and being #1.

Let's check out the AP:

	AP		RR	Diff
1	Alabama	SEC	4	3
2	Florida State	ACC	6	4
3	Oregon	Pac-12	1	-2
4	Baylor	Big 12	5	1
5	Ohio State	Big Ten	2	-3
6	TCU	Big 12	3	-3
7	Michigan State	Big Ten	8	1
8	Mississippi State	SEC	18	10
9	Ole Miss	SEC	12	3
10	Georgia Tech	ACC	13	3
11	Kansas State	Big 12	9	-2
12	Arizona	Pac-12	16	4
13	Georgia	SEC	7	-6
14	UCLA	Pac-12	17	3
15	Arizona State	Pac-12	15	0
16	Missouri	SEC	24	8
17	Wisconsin	Big Ten	11	-6
18	Clemson	ACC	14	-4
19	Auburn	SEC	23	4
20	Louisville	ACC	19	-1
21	Boise State	Mountain West	26	5
22	LSU	SEC	22	0
23	Utah	Pac-12	27	4
24	USC	Pac-12	10	-14
25	Nebraska	Big Ten	21	-4

Again the top 10 looks ok except for Miss St. But is it really ok?

SEC	3.14
Big Ten	-3.00
Pac-12	-0.83
Big 12	-1.33
ACC	0.50

No, it is not ok. The SEC received the same positive bias from AP voters that it did from the CFP committee. But look at the huge 3 place negative bias against the B1G and 1.33 place against the Big12. This right here is why we need my system (or one like it) to select our teams for a playoff.

So, what does the Ray's Rankings playoff picture show? First, a different 4 team. TCU replaces the Seminoles, and knowing what we know now, that seems like a good trade. 

8 Teams with the P5 conference champs, top G5 team, and 2 at large (only no G5 teams made the top 25, so none get selected and we go to 3 at large):

Now we're talking! There's not a bad matchup in the bunch, and it's a decent representation of the conferences. But 8 is never enough, right?

I had to switch Arizona and Clemson to keep away from an in-conference first round. You cannot tell me that this would not be a better set of games than bowl games attended only by folks who had nothing better to do. And every single one of these games matter.

This is the playoff we deserve, with teams selected by my system. 100% objective. 100% transparent. No hidden agendas, no closed door meetings, no human biases.

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