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David Hale, ESPN editor
The committee released its second place in the top 25, and it’s (almost) all of the Big Ten at the top.
That might seem a little odd in the conference that has the most playoff-caliber teams and the most non-conference wins against other Power 4 leagues, and Paul Finebaum is also there to remind everyone how bad they should be angry at this affront to good judgment.
With that, we’ll take care of a lot of Finebaum’s homework for him. Here is this week’s anger index.
1. The SEC
Eleven weeks into the 2024 season, and one thing seems abundantly clear: The SEC is the best conference in college football. For example, take a look at Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings, where nine of the top 17 teams are from the SEC. Or use ESPN’s FPI metric, where the SEC has places 1, 2, 4, 5 and 9. Consider that the team currently ninth in the SEC standings, South Carolina, has three wins over top 40 SP+ teams and defeats against committee No. . 10 and 22 teams for a combined total of five points.
Yes, the dominance and depth of the SEC seems obvious.
So, sure, four of the top five teams in the committee’s rankings this week are from the SEC.
Wait, no, sorry about that. We belatedly learn that this is actually the Big Ten with teams No. 1, 2, 4 and 5 in this week’s rankings.
It’s not that these four Big Ten teams aren’t good. No. 1 Oregon has chewed up and spit out almost everyone this season. Ohio State (No. 2) is the best team Estonia’s gross domestic product can buy. Penn State (No. 4), well, the Nittany Lions still haven’t beaten Ohio State, but we guess the rest of the resume is OK. Indiana (No. 5) is blowing people’s doors off.
But that’s all. The rest of the Big Ten is a mess. You need a magnifying glass to find Michigan’s QB production. Iowa finally learned how to score, and somehow it got worse. Minnesota appeared to be the second-best team in the conference, and the Gophers lost to North Carolina and Rutgers.
A lack of depth doesn’t automatically mean the teams at the top aren’t elite. This is because other teams in a conference remain independent variables when it comes to setting a team’s cap. If the Kansas City Chiefs joined the Sun Belt, Patrick Mahomes would still be a magician and Andy Reid would still say “Bundle-a-rooskie-doo” in your nightmares.
But the cold, hard facts are these: Indiana’s best win came last week against Michigan (No. 40 in SP+) by 3. Penn State’s best win (by SP+) came by 3 against a sub-.500 USC team that just benched their team. QB. Ohio State is absolutely elite on paper, but on the field, the Buckeyes’ success is entirely supported by a 20-13 win at Penn State, a team we also know very little about.
The SEC is criticized for regularly boasting about its greatness and, of course, this narrative has often supported less-than-elite teams. But this year, all reasonable indicators suggest that the SEC’s production actually matches its ego, and when Ole Miss (No. 11), Georgia (No. 12), Alabama (No. 10) and Texas A&M (No. °15) – all with two losses – are stubborn due to playing in a league where every other team deserves a place in the top 25, this undermines the very point of having a committee that can use its judgment rather than just look at the rankings.
Let’s compare two teams with blind CVs.
Team A: 8-1 record, No. 14 in ESPN’s record strength. Best win came against #20 SP+, loss came against a top 10 team by 3. Has four wins against Power 4 teams with a winning record, by an average of 14 points.
Team B: 8-1 record, No. 11 in ESPN’s record strength. Best win came against #28 SP+, loss came against a top 15 team by 15. Has a win against a Power 4 team with a winning record, by 3.
So which team has the best CV?
This shouldn’t take too long to figure out. Team A is better by almost every metric, right?
Well, Team A is SMU, which ranks 14th in this week’s rankings.
But Team B? That would be the Mustangs’ old friends from the Southwest Conference, the Texas Longhorns. Texas checks in at No. 3.
Maybe you’ve watched enough Texas and SMU to think the eye test favors the Longhorns. That’s right. But should the eye test count for 11 places in the rankings? At some point, results have to matter more.
Or maybe it’s the brand that matters to the committee. If that same resume belonged to a school that hadn’t just bought its way into the Power 4 this year, it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t easily make the top 10.
Let’s look at three different teams that are still hoping for a playoff bid, even though the odds are stacked against them at this point.
Team A: 7-2, 1 victory in the top 40 SP+. No. 28 in the ESPN rankings. Losses of 18 points in total.
Team B: 7-2, 1 victory in the top 40 SP+. No. 25 in ESPN’s record strength. Losses of 13 points in total.
Team C: 7-2, no wins in the top 40 SP+. No. 24 in the ESPN rankings. Losses by a total of 21 points.
You could be splitting hairs here, but ultimately none have a particularly compelling resume and they’re all pretty similar.
So who are they?
The B team is Iowa State, who fell down the rankings after losing two straight. But the committee isn’t supposed to care when you lose your matches. Losing in September is no better than losing in November. At least that’s what they say.
The A team is Arizona State. Its 10-point loss to Cincinnati occurred without starting quarterback Sam Leavitt and was due, at least in part, to a kicking game so traumatic that head coach Kenny Dillingham subsequently called an open tryout. The Sun Devils and Cyclones are two of three unranked two-loss Power 4 teams this week (alongside Pitt), but unlike Iowa State and Pitt, Arizona State isn’t coming off back-to-back losses . The Sun Devils’ absence seems entirely to do with the fact that no one believed this team would be good at the start of the season, and so few people have watched closely enough to change their minds that the committee feels comfortable ignore them.
The team the committee can’t ignore, however, is Team C. That would be Colorado. Coach Prime has convinced the world that the Buffaloes are for real, even though nothing in their resume — a ranking of 77th, worse than 7-2 Western Kentucky — suggests it’s close to a certainty.
The Big 12 remains wide open, but it’s to the committee’s detriment that it so eagerly dismissed two of the best teams simply because they’re not as fun to talk about.
Did Missouri play with fire this year? You bet. Just last week, the Tigers were on the verge of falling to Oklahoma before the Sooners’ sad QB situation reared its ugly head again and the game ended in a 30-23 Tigers victory.
But here’s the thing about playing with fire: as long as you don’t turn your living room into an inferno, it’s actually pretty awesome.
Missouri is 7-2 with wins against SP+ Nos. 26 and 28, and its only losses are against the committee’s No. 10 and No. 15 teams. SP+ puts Missouri at 17th, although we can attribute that to Connelly’s hometown bias. But number 23? After a season in the top 10 in 2023, don’t the Tigers deserve a little benefit of the doubt? They currently trail three three-loss teams (Louisville, South Carolina and LSU) and are behind Boise State, Colorado, Washington State and Clemson, who together have exactly one win over top 40 SP+ teams.
There’s a good chance that, if Brady Cook doesn’t return to the lineup, Missouri will be waxed at South Carolina on Saturday, and the argument will then be moot. But the committee isn’t supposed to look into the future and guess what it thinks might happen (Florida State’s snub last year notwithstanding). He’s supposed to judge based on what’s predicted so far, and putting Missouri this far down the rankings seems more than a little harsh.
The committee threw non-Power 4 schools a big bone this week, with four ranked teams, including the 25th-ranked Tulane Green Wave. This seems deserved, considering Tulane’s recent run. But what exactly puts the Green Wave ahead of UNLV?
UNLV has the No. 31 strength. Tulane is No. 32.
UNLV has strength #98 in playing schedule. Tulane is #96.
Tulane lost a possession to a top 20 team. UNLV lost a possession to a top 20 team.
The main difference between the two is that UNLV has wins against two Power 4 opponents: Houston and Kansas. By the way, Houston just beat Kansas State, a team that beat Tulane.
So maybe the committee should spread a little more love outside of the Power 4.
Also angry: Pittsburgh Panthers (7-2, unranked), Duke Blue Devils (7-3, unranked), Georgia Bulldogs (7-2, No. 12), Utah Utes AD Mark Harlan (Utes would be ranked if commissioner Big 12 Brett Yormark hadn’t rigged the system!) and UConn Huskies (7-3, unranked and thus forbidding Jim Mora Jr. from launching a “You want to talk about the playoffs?!?” speech).