Indiana Holds at #5 in CFP Rankings - What Did We learn?

The Hoosiers held steady at #5 during Tuesday’s college football playoffs rankings show, rounding out a top five that has three other Big Ten teams amongst it (Oregon, Ohio State, Penn State). Although IU was idle this past weekend, the rankings did reveal a bit more about how the committee is looking at the Hoosiers and the rest of the field so far. Let’s dive in to what we learned.

SEC Twitter Bros aren’t on the Committee

The committee isn’t consuming every piece of crap on Twitter right now like we all are, but instead are evaluating teams based on full bodies of work and how they are playing instead of just going off of strength of schedule. They cited Texas with a weak resume so far as a team they are impressed with how they’re playing as a unit, despite getting blown out at home by Georgia: “Well, obviously Georgia has a very good win at Texas, but as the committee analyzed the body of work of Texas versus where Georgia is at the present time with two losses, even to top-25 teams, we came out that Texas was still a very strong team deserving of a 3 seed. They have a top-5 defense. Quinn Ewers is leading one of the top passing offenses in the country.”

Close Wins + Bad Loss = BYU Punished

After getting up to #6 last week before falling at home to a then 3-6 Kansas team, BYU now finds themselves all the way down at #14, with a tough game this coming weekend against Arizona State. BYU had escaped danger a few times this season with razor-thin wins before Kansas knocked them off, and that was something that the committee took note of.

“They had a close win against SMU. They had a great win against Kansas State but then a close win over Utah, a close win over Oklahoma State, and then they had a tough loss against Kansas at home. It was just something the committee had been monitoring all along.

Look, we give a lot of credit when teams win, and so we don't penalize teams for winning close or winning too big in other words, but we do value wins, so that's where we saw BYU. But given some of those games that they played and the close wins that they had, it just was an indicator that some of the teams that were below them in the rankings last week should move ahead of them is how the committee assessed BYU.”

The good news for IU here? The specific mention of “we give a lot of credit when teams win”. Winning should matter, and so far the committee has given IU credit for being unbeaten still.

There is more to a season than strength of schedule!

Ask anyone on Twitter, and we should have just picked our bracket in August and been done with it. All hail the mighty SEC for playing their grueling schedules, as that means nobody else can be considered good.

“Yeah, I mean, it's hard as we look at all of these teams. They're playing different schedules. It's not the fault of one team who doesn't have a stronger schedule who they're playing in their conference opponents. These conferences have increased in size, and so there are less match-ups where you are matching the top teams in the league each weekend. So it does make it difficult to assess the teams even with the strength of schedule.

We have to rely on how the teams are playing and who they're playing as well as how the other teams, regardless of strength of schedule, are playing their opponents. We take a look at it holistically. Strength of schedule is a component. It's an important data point to us and for us. But it is not the only assessment that we make.”

CFP Selection Committee Chair Warde Manuel continued by saying:

“Well, it is a part of the discussion, and if you're in the room, you would see that that is a considerable aspect of the discussion about how to evaluate each team, given that they're playing different schedules and who's in front of them in any given week.

There's a lot of discussion about the variables, strength of schedule, who they're playing, where teams are ranked, where they're playing; are they home, are they away. There's all kind of things that we talk about and look at and debate and discuss as it relates to that. So it's not cut and dry. If it was about just strength of schedule, the rankings probably would look much different.

But because we have the evaluation process, because we see how teams are playing, and all they can do is play who's in front of them, and then the committee has to deliberate and make a decision based on what we see in the results of the games and how they proceed.

It's not easy. It's not something that we take lightly. It's something that we understand is a key part of the discussion process and something that we value and really take a hard look at in terms of strength of schedule.

We look at who teams play, whether they select them or don't select them, whether they're assigned by the conference or scheduled out. As an athletic director, I can just tell you we're scheduling games out four, five, six years ahead of time, and some of the teams that you put on your schedule at the time you schedule them are not strong teams, some of them are, some of them get stronger, some of them don't perform as well. It's not as easy as saying we choose to look at a team and who they choose versus who's in their conference schedule. We just look at them holistically and who they play and make our decisions at that point in time.”

I am also really sick of the two-loss SEC team conversation. You want to see which teams are the best in your league? Play nine conference games like EVERY other power league in the country.

Overall though, if you cut through the noise on social media and the incoherent rambling of Joey Galloway, most of these comments are good news for IU’s prospects.

All Eyes on Columbus

It’s obviously a huge matchup for a number of reasons, but the national media pundits and the selection committee will all be watching IU very closely on Saturday. It doesn’t seem like IU needs to win to stay in the field, but I think any chance of having a comfortable selection day and the chance of hosting a first round game rest squarely on putting up a good performance in the horseshoe. The powers that be will be very interested in how IU matches up against a roster that is considered to be great, and matching the production and skillset on the field will go a long way (regardless of the final score) towards locking IU into a spot in the inaugural 12-team playoff.

All in all, during a week where IU didn’t play, I think we learned that the committee values IU’s body of work so far and think they are certainly deserving of a chance to prove themselves in the CFP field.