2014 NCAA Playoff Points Rankings: Week 5

September football is in the books in the college ranks. Several undefeated teams still stand, as is the norm at this level, but a few fell this week. That will mean some major movement in the playoff points rankings for the week.

As a refresher, the Death to the BCS Playoffs are built in the form of a seeded 16-team bracket, where the ten conference champions automatically given berths, and the rest of the field is filled out with at-large berths. At present, 17 teams remain undefeated, so we're just a hair over the threshold. However, the Power conferences all have at least one unbeaten foe, and Marshall out of Conference USA is also undefeated, which means four bids automatically have to go to teams that have already lost games. That means four teams get screwed. I want to minimize the chances of that happening. So hopefully, next week's edition can see the first version of a potential bracket.

For the purposes of most of this post however, I'm going by conference to see how they are doing in relation to each other in terms of wins and Playoff Points. At the end I'll try to look through who the best teams are, plus you can look over the information yourself as well. For reference, here's last week's rankings. Let's see how the weekend changed the conference landscape. All numbers are rounded to the nearest hundredth.


American Athletic
Wins: 1.63 (10th; LW: 10th)
PP1: 1.45 (9th; LW: 9th)
PP2: 0.58 (9th; LW: 10th)

ACC
Wins: 3.07 (4th; LW: 3rd)
PP1: 4.57 (5th; LW: 4th)
PP2: 1.65 (5th; LW: 4th)

Big 10
Wins: 3.21 (2nd; LW: 4th)
PP1: 4.93 (4th; LW: 5th)
PP2: 1.85 (3rd; LW: 5th)

Big XII
Wins: 2.60 (6th; LW: 6th)
PP1: 3.70 (6th; LW: 6th)
PP2: 2.22 (1st; LW: 1st)

Conference USA
Wins: 2.15 (7th; LW: 7th)
PP1: 2.46 (7th; LW: 7th)
PP2: 0.94 (7th; LW: 7th)

Independents
Wins: 2.75 (5th; LW: 5th)
PP1: 5.75 (2nd; LW: 2nd)
PP2: 1.38 (6th; LW: 3rd)

MAC
Wins: 1.77 (9th; LW: 9th)
PP1: 1.00 (10th; LW: 11th)
PP2: 0.53 (10th; LW: 9th)

Mountain West
Wins: 2.08 (8th; LW: 8th)
PP1: 2.33 (8th; LW: 8th)
PP2: 0.85 (8th; LW: 8th)

Pac 12
Wins: 3.17 (3rd; LW: 2nd)
PP1: 5.17 (3rd; LW: 3rd)
PP2: 1.78 (4th; LW: 6th)

SEC
Wins: 3.29 (1st; LW: 1st)
PP1: 6.00 (1st; LW: 1st)
PP2: 1.98 (2nd; LW: 2nd)

Sun Belt
Wins: 1.55 (11th; LW: 11th)
PP1: 0.82 (11th; LW: 10th)
PP2: 0.17 (11th; LW: 11th)

Photo by Gene J. Puskar (AP)

If you looked at last week's post, you saw the teams I've already eliminated from contention. I haven't eliminated anyone else through this week, thankfully. Though in full disclosure, I took great pleasure in Penn State getting trounced by Northwestern. I have no dog in the Big Ten despite the fact that it's geographically the closest conference (other than maybe the MAC, not sure how far NIU is from my house compared to Northwestern). Either way, more Penn State losses make my decision to ban them from the postseason easier. The lesson, as always: don't harbor a child predator for a decade after knowledge of his crimes comes to light twice.

Photo by Gerry Broome (AP)

If you want to see the actual numbers and the raw math that goes into it, you can view the spreadsheet that contains both my NCSS and Playoff Points data here. Looking at teams, we had three of them reach ten First Degree Playoff Points this week: UCLA and Nebraska got there with wins on Saturday, and idle Mississippi State saw teams it beat win games, getting them to double figures as well. Last year's top two seeds, Florida State and Auburn, both hit nine, and seven teams are sitting on eight First Degree Playoff Points. As for Second Degree Playoff Points, we see how this system can be a little fluky early; Iowa State leads with six, even though they have only one win. With more data, these numbers will either come back down to earth, or Iowa State's total will pale in comparison to other conferences. We'll see.

Tomorrow I'll look at the schedule for Week 6 of the season. And hopefully next Monday, I'll be able to build a bracket for the first time.