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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/Hey_Its_Roomie on 2023-11-15 15:44:51.
Disclaimer: There is no “right” answer in rankings for CFB. There is never enough data to determine with such certainty that such-and-such team is better than so-and-so when they are comparatively equal in certain respects. It largely depends on what you as an individual value. This post isn’t to say that Florida State over Washington is right or or wrong; the post is simply meant to provide perspective.
This morning when I was thinking about it, I decided to check the most consolidated list of polls I know, the Massey Composite. A brief primer: The Massey Composite is simply an average of 88 different polls, with this average provided by Ken Massey, a pollster of their own. To my mild surprise, Florida State was ranked ahead of Washington on the composite. This means that on average, FSU leads UW, but I wanted to know a little more information. Most specifically, I wanted to know the occurrence of each in certain ways.
Here is some data from the Massey Composite. For those afraid of numbers, the results in favor of FSU break down in this manner.
- FSU’s average rank across all polls is about half a position higher than UW’s
- FSU is ahead of UW in 47 of the 88 polls
- When FSU is ahead of UW, it is by an average of about 3 positions
- When UW is ahead of FSU, it is by an average of about 2.5 positions
So, what type of polls have FSU ahead of UW? I wanted to take a look at the ones that created the most disparity (5 positions or higher) in favor of FSU and found these polls:
- Team Rankings
- Dokter Entropy
- Football Power Index
- Harville
- Kambour
- Kelly Ford
- Lawler
- Logan
- PerformanZ
- Round Table
The running pattern? The polls that produced the highest separation for FSU were all power ratings which are predictive, analytic, or simulated material. Likely, this suggests that the majority of polls in favor of UW are purely resume-based, such as the Colley Matrix.
Does this mean the CFP committee is a power-favoring system? Absolutely not. The fact that there are teams like Penn State, at 8-2, up around 5th in power ratings but much lower in the CFP rankings demonstrates that resume has a very heavy, and likely the heaviest, influence. But, the committee also establishes power ranking considerations, which is why you see a team like Liberty completely unranked when resume and strength of record supports them being about a teens-ranked team.