2014 NCAA Playoff Points Rankings: Week 3

Wow, what a week this past week has been. Most of the chaos has been at the NFL level of course, but you all know how I feel about the whole Penn State under-the-radar reinstatement. At the moment, I still refuse to reinstate them for the Death to the BCS Playoffs. There's a culture problem there, and I address it in the above post. But enough about stupid fans.

We've played three weeks of football, so the Playoff Points metric is starting to gain a little bit more credibility in terms of separating the haves from the have-nots. It's a metric that builds upon itself as the season goes on, which is why I like it so much. What seems like a great win early in the season based on biased polls can mean more of what it's supposed to mean in this system.

If you want to refer back to last week's rankings, you can view them here (or click the link to the post on the sidebar). An explanation of how the Playoff Points system works can be found back at the Week 1 post. But let's see how this weekend's action impacts each conference. All scores are rounded to the nearest hundredth for the sake of space, but any rounded ties will be unrounded to determine which is higher, then rerounded for the blog post.


American Athletic
Wins: 0.68 (11th; LW: 11th)
PP1: 0.45 (9th; LW: 11th)
PP2: 0.09 (8th; LW: T-8th)

ACC
Wins: 2.14 (4th; LW: T-2nd)
PP1: 1.71 (3rd; LW: T-3rd)
PP2: 0.39 (3rd; LW: 7th)

Big 10
Wins: 1.71 (6th; LW: 5th)
PP1: 1.00 (6th; LW: T-3rd)
PP2: 0.23 (7th; LW: 2nd)

Big XII
Wins: 1.90 (5th; LW: 6th)
PP1: 1.70 (4th; LW: 6th)
PP2: 0.70 (1st; LW: 5th)

Conference USA
Wins: 1.46 (7th; LW: 8th)
PP1: 0.85 (7th; LW: 8th)
PP2: 0.27 (6th; LW: T-8th)

Independents
Wins: 2.25 (T-2nd; LW: 4th)
PP1: 2.25 (2nd; LW: 1st)
PP2: 0.38 (4th; LW: 1st)

MAC
Wins: 1.08 (9th; LW: 10th)
PP1: 0.23 (10th; LW: 10th)
PP2: 0.04 (10th; LW: T-8th)

Mountain West
Wins: 1.33 (8th; LW: 9th)
PP1: 0.75 (8th; LW: 7th)
PP2: 0.08 (9th; LW: 3rd)

Pac 12
Wins: 2.25 (T-2nd; LW: 1st)
PP1: 1.58 (5th; LW: T-3rd)
PP2: 0.31 (5th; LW: 6th)

SEC
Wins: 2.29 (1st; LW: T-2nd)
PP1: 2.29 (1st; LW: 2nd)
PP2: 0.56 (2nd; LW: 4th)

Sun Belt
Wins: 1.00 (10th; LW: 7th)
PP1: 0.18 (11th; LW: 9th)
PP2: 0.00 (11th; LW: T-8th)

Photo by Steven Savoia (AP)

Fun fact this week as I was compiling the data: with the exception of Appalachian State, who was on a bye, the entirety of the Sun Belt lost on Saturday. I don't know that something like that has ever happened before. That includes a Troy team that was facing Southland Conference (DI-AA) opponent Abilene Christian.

The updated stats by conference are listed above. If you want to look by team, you can view the spreadsheet I use for all this data compilation here, or click the Google Docs logo on the side panel.

I'm not sure how many people know about this, but some time back I did set up a page for COAS specifically for tournaments. This does include the Death to the BCS Playoffs, so all of my weekly posts analyzing the schedules and tabulating playoff points can be referenced there. That is also in the sidebar, but you can also go directly to that page from here. That page contains links to all of this year's posts, plus the past two years' worth. And if you get bored of college football I also have the NBA and NFL Tournaments of Champions there as well.

We went from 45 undefeated squads (listed as 2-0) down to 34 total unbeatens ranging from a strange 1-0 (Cincinnati) to 23 teams that have played every week so far and have yet to fall on the gridiron. As tempting as it is to build a playoff field, it's still too soon. Oklahoma has the most First Degree Playoff Points with five, and a handful of teams have four. The Sooners also lead the nation in Second Degree Playoff Points with two. Yet with so many games left, these numbers are only going to climb higher.

Tomorrow I'll have a peek at the schedule for Week 4. Can next week match the excitement this week had? Only time will tell.