College Football Playoff - Baggaley Version - After Championship Week

Here's the Week 15 Update:

If the Baggaley Rankings were used to determine the seedings of the CFP...

(Now that the championship games have been played, we are using the winner of each game as the conference champion, of course.)

Game 1 #12 Clemson Tigers @ #5 Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Game 2 #11 SMU Mustangs @ #6 Ohio State Buckeyes

Game 3 #10 Ole Miss Rebels @ #7 Texas Longhorns

Game 4 #9 Penn State Nittany Lions @ #8 Indiana Hoosiers

Game 5 Winner of Game 1 vs. #4 Army Black Knights

Game 6 Winner of Game 2 vs. #3 Georgia Bulldogs

Game 7 Winner of Game 3 vs. #2 Boise State Broncos

Game 8 Winner of Game 4 vs. #1 Oregon Ducks

Note that no Big 12 teams play in the playoff at all at this point the way our evaluation works out. The highest rank Big 12 team is still the BYU Cougars at #16 even though the Big 12 Conference Champion is #19 Arizona State Sun Devils. The ACC Conference Champion (#15 Clemson Tigers) is the fifth automatic bid. They are still ranked lower than the #11 SMU Mustangs.

Conference representation: Big Ten - 4 teams, SEC - 3 teams, ACC - 2 teams, MWC - 1 team, AAC - 1 team, Independent - 1 team.

First four teams outside the CFP: Miami Hurricanes, Alabama Crimson Tide, South Carolina Gamecocks, and BYU Cougars.

These results can be considered how things would shake out if "most deserving" were the criteria for selection, as these are the teams with the best resume when you take all games into account. Of course, that is not the selection criteria. The selection criteria is the poorly defined and very subjective "best team" which allows for brands and biases to come into play in the committee's decisions.

It is also interesting to note that the Army Black Knights still have a game remaining - against Navy. The results of that game will not affect the CFP Committee's decision, but we will explore how it affects our results next week anyway.