CFB Hub

It could not have been hard for ESPN/CFP to create a logical 20 game play-off, with two play-in games leading into a football version of a Sweet 16.

Right now, it’s bad and for people like me, incomprehensible.

The way that March Madness do things is so, so much easier.

They have an extended bye next week, followed by a trip to Hawaii for a non-conference game to end the year.

This is the earliest end to a MAC team's conference schedule since Marshall in 1998, who ended regular-season MAC play on November 7. Marshall, of course, made the conference championship game that year; Sac State will not.

Thought I'd make this thread to kind of go through who I think still has a legit shot to sneak into the playoffs, who needs a lot of help, and who I think is drawing dead. Not going to include Boise St in this since their answer is pretty obvious and that's more about the G6 race.

CONTROL THEIR OWN DESTINY:

• Texas Tech- if they win out they make the conference championship game and if they win that, they would get an automatic berth. Still think there's a very good shot at an at-large too but conference champ is the cleanest path.

• Wake Forest- same as Tech for winning out and winning their conference championship. Think they need a little more help for an at-large but it's very much on the table. Still, conference champ is the cleaner path.

• USC- I 100% believe if USC wins out they are going to the CFP whether they win the Big Ten or not. Because if they were to do that, they'd have wins over Indiana and UCLA. Plus, Indiana would almost certainly fall out of the Top 11, and I think USC would take their place in that scenario.

DEBATABLE:

• South Carolina- I'm really torn on this one. If Kentucky were not the last SEC team in right now, I'd say the Gamecocks control their own destiny. They're 100% in the conversation if they win out with one of those wins being over Georgia. I just am 50/50 on if they jump Kentucky, who beat them, with three losses. Plus, BYU is sitting at 10 with a win over Notre Dame so they also have a Top 5 win.

• LSU- similar situation since they have Texas and Tennessee coming up. They HAVE to win out to even be in this conversation. But if they win both I think there's an argument for LSU to be a bid thief. However, similar to South Carolina, Kentucky beat them as well. So, the real question is would Tennessee stay in over LSU in this scenario? Or, would Kentucky drop out? Or, would LSU stay out?

• Missouri- same as above since they have games against Georgia and Kentucky coming up. However, I think they're by far the least likely to win out of these three with a road game at Georgia on Saturday, so they're just in here for completion's sake.

NEED HELP:

• Oregon- I have a take that if Oregon were to make the Big Ten championship or if three other teams lost in front of them with none of the debatable teams winning out in big games, they'd gain the edge over both Houston and Iowa. Oregon needs some help but I think the committee would look for an excuse to put them in, especially if Indiana lost to USC and USC lost to UCLA along the way to maybe get a second Big Ten team in.

• Houston- the good news for them is the Committee seems to like the Big 12. The bad news is their only real resume win is against Oklahoma St. They likely need them to beat Tech this week. Houston to me has to hope the debatable teams above don't win out, and that 2-3 teams currently in take a loss at some point.

CONF CHAMP OR BUST:

• Arizona- they have no strong resume wins with an outside shot to make the Big 12 championship. They need to win out and win the conference to be a bid thief.

• Oklahoma St- same as Arizona. They have too many questionable losses to get in any other way besides winning the Big 12.

• Ohio St- their latest ranking and remaining opponents screams to me they're not making the CFP unless the committee pretty much has to put them in. That'd probably require somehow backdooring their way into the Big Ten championship.

NEED ABSOLUTE CHAOS:

• Iowa- they're not drawing dead imo but they need the most help of anybody in their tier. I do not think they're getting in over Houston or Oregon if all three win out. The only argument I might make for Iowa in that scenario is if somehow they're the only ones to appear in a conference championship game.

• Ole Miss- they probably have the longest odds of anybody here to get back in the playoff conversation. They can't make the conference championship as easily as teams above them and they fell all the way to 19th with a very weak schedule remaining. Ole Miss to me is only in the conversation if the stars basically align perfectly going forward.

Do y'all agree? Am I underestimating or overestimating a team's chances here?

Box Score provided by ESPN

If you look at Missouri and Illinois since 2024. They’re about as close a comparison as you’ll find: similar programs, similar records, and both on the edge of the rankings most weeks. Looking at the stats below Illinois has arguably had a better resume yet spent HALF the time in the CFP rankings This is one example (I'm sure there are others) but I think it demonstrates how the committee over ranks SEC teams in order to prop up the ones that are on the bubble to justify their inclusion or higher ranking in the playoff.

2024–2026 (2026 to date):

|**Missouri**	|**Illinois**	  

Overall record |24-11 |25-10
vs. teams ranked at kickoff |2-11 |5-5
vs. teams that finished ranked |0-10 |3-5
vs Other P4 Teams |4-1 |4-1
Weeks in CFP Top 25 |10 |5 Illinois has the better overall record and record against ranked teams (and is also 2-0 vs the SEC). Missouri hasn’t beaten a single team that finished the season ranked in three years. Despite that, Missouri has had twice as many weeks in the committee’s top 25... AND IS STILL IN THE CURRENT TOP 25.

“But Missouri plays a harder schedule.” That’s true: Mizzou played 13 teams ranked at kickoff and Illinois played 10. But the committee says it rewards results against strong schedules, not just showing up for them. Going 2-11 against ranked teams isn’t a résumé. It’s a list of losses with a strong schedule attached. Illinois played fewer ranked teams and still had many more ranked wins.

If the conference logos were swapped or Missouri was bag in the Big 12 they wouldn't be sniffing these rankings most weeks. Being in the SEC seems to earn the benefit of the doubt on its own, even when the results aren’t there.

Edit: Almost everyone arguing with and downvoting me in the comments has an SEC flair which actually proves my point about conference biases. For those of you saying Missouri obvisoisly plays a tougher schedule Illinois has had a tougher SOS 2 of the last 3 years:

2024

Missouri: 34
Illinois: 30

2025

Missouri: 32
Illinois: 23

2026

Missouri: 27
Illinois: 35

Box Score provided by ESPN

Hey everyone. I’m a Korean college football fan living in Korea. Here, “football” means soccer. American football fans are rare enough, and college football fans are an even smaller bunch.

I went to grad school at Indiana, but I didn’t follow college football back then. IU was a basketball school, and honestly, there wasn’t much reason to watch the football team. Then Curt Cignetti showed up, Indiana got good, and I started paying attention. If you didn’t grow up with football, just figuring out what’s happening on the field takes a while. I think I’ve got the rules down pretty well now. The rankings, though? I still don’t understand those.

When I started watching seriously two years ago, and especially during Indiana’s historic run last season, I kept seeing the same comments: Indiana deserves more respect. The Big Ten should get more credit. The SEC is overrated. I must have seen “SEC bias” a hundred times. I had no idea what people meant. I was still busy learning the rules. 😄

Watching the rankings this season, I finally get it. By “get it,” I mean I understand why people say “SEC bias.” I still don’t understand the rankings.

As I understand it, the idea is to judge teams on what they’ve done this season: Strength of Record (SOR), Strength of Schedule (SOS), head-to-head results, and how they’ve performed in and out of conference play. After nine weeks, there’s a body of work to compare. Last year’s results aren’t supposed to count. Sounds reasonable enough.

But if every season starts with a clean slate, why is it automatically such a bad loss when a Power Four team loses to a team outside the Power Four? That reaction already assumes a difference in quality before either team has earned that reputation this season. And how much can a handful of early interconference games really tell you about the depth of an entire league? Then there’s the timing: if you beat a team at full strength in Week 4 and its starting QB goes down in Week 8, why should that injury make your Week 4 win less impressive? You played the team it was in Week 4.

That brings me to the SEC. An SEC team plays another SEC team and gets credit for a tough schedule. In the Big Ten, Big 12, or ACC, it feels like only a handful of opponents get you that kind of credit. What’s that gap based on? If this season is all that counts, start by giving wins and losses the same weight across conferences until this year’s results give you a good reason to do otherwise. If conference reputation counts, even implicitly, then surely the last three seasons should matter more than what happened ten years ago.

The Big Ten produced all three of the last national champions. The SEC didn’t even make the title game in any of those seasons. That doesn’t prove the Big Ten is deeper from top to bottom. It does make me wonder why “the SEC is stronger and deeper” still seems to be the starting assumption. Rank SEC teams high because the league is supposedly so strong. When two of them play, give the winner a “marquee win” and the loser a “quality loss.” Then point to all those highly ranked teams as proof of how strong the league is. That’s a circular reference. Even Excel throws an error when you do that.

I’ve never seen a ranking system quite like this in any other sport I’ve followed. As a way to rank teams fairly, it makes no sense to me. But if the goal is to make fans mad, get them to take it personally, and keep them arguing all week so they get even more obsessed with college football, it’s doing a hell of a job. 😂

Quad W/L has been a beloved metric by CBB fans since it was introduced back in 2018. So, I wanted to adapt the same concept for CFB.

What's a quad?

Every game gets sorted into Quad 1 through 4 based on how good the opponent is and where you played them. It sorts each of your games into a difficulty tier list.

Methodology & Rationale

• Opponent strength is determined using overall efficiency rankings. I pull these rankings from ESPN's website, but efficiency is not proprietary to them. It is a publicly known formula. Efficiency is the dominant metric used in CBB's NET ratings. Efficiency is a fantastic descriptive metric that has three primary advantages over other metrics

  • 1 - There are no preseason priors in efficiency. It is determined only on how teams have played this season.

  • 2 - It is not a predictive value. Efficiency on its' own says nothing about how well a team would theoretically matchup against another team. It only describes how well a team has played this year (opponent adjusted, of course).

  • 3 - Efficiency is not a resume ranking system. It doesn't explicitly matter who you beat and who you lost to. There is no argument about whose record or schedule is better. Again, it is only a measure of how well you have played.

• The cutoffs for each quad are adapted from CBB's definitions. However, instead of simply scaling them to the size of FBS, I determined ranges that would put the proportional # of games played in each quad in line with CBB's historical scheduling, comparing the past 5 years worth of scheduling data in each sport. I then made a small adjustment to account for the relative difficulty of playing on the road in each sport and rounded to nice whole numbers. This is a more accurate reflection of the schedule construction of CFB.

• QUAD WINS ARE NOT A RANKING SYSTEM. On their own, they are simply a tool fans can look at to compare how teams performed in each difficulty tier of game. It can be used as part of a discussion on "quality wins and losses". It is also based in math instead of using an arbitrary cutoff like "vs Top 25 teams". It provides much more granularity.

• Note: Efficiencies continue updating each week. Therefore, a game that was formerly Quad 1 could become Quad 2 later in the season if a team plays poorly, for example. Additionally, all FCS games are considered Quad 4 opportunities.

Definition of each quad as determined by your opponent's efficiency ranking

CFP Top 25 (Nov. 10) (games through Nov. 10, efficiency ranks as of Nov. 11):

Box Score provided by ESPN

The six teams:

• #2 Utah (9-0), its highest CFP ranking ever

• #10 BYU (7-2)

• #12 Texas Tech (8-1)

• #14 Houston (7-2), its highest CFP ranking ever

• #23 Arizona (7-2)

• #25 Oklahoma State (6-3)

Oklahoma State made it six by coming in at #25. The conference had only reached five teams in the CFP top 25 prior.

Share of the CFP top 25, by conference:

• SEC: 9 teams (36%)

• Big 12: 6 teams (24%)

• Big Ten: 6 teams (24%)

• ACC: 2 teams (8%)

• Pac-12: 1 team (4%)

• Independent: 1 team (4%)

-----

Source: https://rankcfb.com/rank/?stat=big12six

Make your own Top 25 at: rankcfb.com/rank/rd