Revisionist playoffs

Yesterday, I proposed a new way of ranking college football teams:

Sum up the total number of wins of the opponents that a team defeats, then subtract the total number of losses of the opponents the team loses to.

For example, beating an 11-win team will help, but losing to an 11-loss team would be disastrous.

Rank the teams by their totals.

Because the 2020 football season was exceptional due to Covid-19, I checked 2019, the last “normal” season, to see how my rankings would have played out in the 4-team college football playoffs.

Three teams that year were virtually automatic due to their undefeated records and membership in Power 5 conferences: Ohio State, LSU, and Clemson. They were, indeed, the teams with with the highest totals. Under my system, Ohio State would have been seeded #1 and LSU #2; the Playoff Committee had them reversed.

Two main reasons Ohio State was ahead of LSU are that the Buckeyes faced unusually strong “Group of 5” opponents in their non-conference schedule, whereas LSU played a non-FBS school, which I don’t count. The Committee and I both had Clemson #3.

But who should have taken the fourth spot?

The Committee chose Big 12 champ Oklahoma. I had Mountain West champ Boise State and American Athletic champ Memphis ahead of the Sooners. Boise State, however, got shellacked in the Las Vegas Bowl, and Memphis lost the Cotton Bowl. Oklahoma itself got crushed by LSU in the…