College Football Chase Final

Do I agree with the Committee?

My schedule prevented me from providing the final MVP Chase in the wee hours of the morning before the Selection Committee made their selections for the 12-team playoffs. For the most part, however, I was able to avoid news about the Selection results when I got a chance to finalize my Playoff Chase tabulations in the afternoon after the announcement. Even as I write this part of the newsletter, I don’t know all the teams the Committee selected.

The playoff chase was based on four categories: number of wins, strength of wins, strength of losses, and number of points/possessions away from going undefeated. In short, you had to win a lot, beat good teams, avoid losing to bad teams, and avoid getting blown out.

Here are my initial results, ranking all 30 teams with three losses or fewer and accounting for the five conference champions. (“CC” means Conference Champion, “AL” means at-large).

The results were… incorrect. Specifically, Army doesn’t belong in the playoffs because the Black Knights were uncompetitive in their one loss and had a weak schedule otherwise. Although my formula took blowout losses…