2014 NCAA Playoff Points Rankings: Week 2

Another week of college football is in the books. Everyone should have played at least one game, and a lot of teams have played two now. It's still way too early to be thinking about how to seed the playoffs, despite what some people want to do. But it's enough information now that I can start sharing some more of my numbers.

In last week's Playoff Points post, I explained basically how this metric works, so you can refer back to that one if need be. But after one week, everyone remained at zero playoff points, both in First and Second Degree forms. This week, some separation is starting to take place, but it's pretty miniscule.

Nonetheless, because I like this metric in terms of telling how good some teams are, I'm going to go by conference and take a look at the average number of wins in addition to the average number of both First Degree and Second Degree Playoff Points. The idea here is to determine with a little more accuracy which conferences are better than others. This will help when it comes time to determine playoff seeds if two teams are just about even based solely on their own resume.

Since I'm ranking three different things, I'll list each conference alphabetically, put in those averages and include how they rank among the 10 conferences. Independents will be included as their own "conference" for the purpose of these metrics. Just so you know what the abbreviations below mean, PP1 is First Degree Playoff Points, and PP2 is Second Degree Playoff Points.



American Athletic
Wins: 0.32 (11th)
PP1: 0.00 (11th)
PP2: 0.00 (T-8th)

ACC
Wins: 1.57 (T-2nd)
PP1: 0.50 (T-3rd)
PP2: 0.04 (7th)**

Big 10
Wins: 1.43 (5th)
PP1: 0.50 (T-3rd)
PP2: 0.11 (2nd)

Big XII
Wins: 1.30 (6th)
PP1: 0.40 (6th)
PP2: 0.05 (5th)

Conference USA
Wins: 0.92 (8th)*
PP1: 0.23 (8th)
PP2: 0.00 (T-8th)

Independents
Wins: 1.50 (4th)
PP1: 1.25 (1st)
PP2: 0.25 (1st)

MAC
Wins: 0.85 (10th)
PP1: 0.08 (10th)
PP2: 0.00 (T-8th)

Mountain West
Wins: 0.92 (9th)*
PP1: 0.25 (7th)
PP2: 0.08 (3rd)

Pac 12
Wins: 1.67 (1st)
PP1: 0.50 (T-3rd)
PP2: 0.04 (6th)**

SEC
Wins: 1.57 (T-2nd)
PP1: 1.00 (2nd)
PP2: 0.07 (4th)

Sun Belt
Wins: 1.00 (7th)
PP1: 0.18 (9th)
PP2: 0.00 (T-8th)

*Conference USA averages 0.923 wins, Mountain West averages 0.916 wins.
**Pac 12 averages 0.042 PP2, ACC averages 0.036 PP2.

Photo by Matt Cashore (USA TODAY Sports)

It's tempting to jump to conclusions with this data, but I still think two weeks isn't a big enough sample size to do so. A whopping 45 teams are 2-0 through two weeks of play, and we only have a minimal amount of conference play underway. Of those 2-0 teams, eight have a theoretically "perfect" 2 First Degree Playoff Points: Arizona, Auburn, BYU, Mississippi State, NC State, Oklahoma, Tennessee and UCLA. Meanwhile, there are a few conferences I could name "champions" of with this small sample size, other conferences have log jams at the top, and there obviously aren't enough wild cards to go around.

I have the link to my spreadsheet available up near the top right corner of the COAS web page, but you can also view it here. You can view this data to draw your own conclusions about who you think should make the playoff (even though I still think it's too early). You may notice when you're looking at the Playoff Points spreadsheet that some zeros are red. These mark wins over FCS opponents. I figured this early in the season, it would be good to mark those. Especially for First Degree Playoff Points, I want to be able to differentiate between wins against winless FBS teams and wins against FCS teams, which add no Playoff Points whatsoever.

Week 3 officially begins Thursday night, and tomorrow morning I'll have a look at the schedule for the upcoming week. Hope your team is doing well so far!