2014 NCAA Playoff Points Rankings: Week 7

After taking a day off in honor of my wife's birthday, COAS is back to look at the weekend's impact on the college football world!

We saw some top teams fall off, and we're down a few undefeated teams after this past weekend. This will have a pretty big impact on the playoff picture, but more on that later.

Most of the action this past week was in-conference, so most of the conferences should be getting relatively equal win total boosts. It's the question of Playoff Points again that will have a bigger impact. We should see a few teams get over the 20 point mark in First Degree Playoff Points, while I'm not quite sure what to expect out of Second Degree Playoff Points.\

If you need a refresher on how the math works, you can view a summary of how it works here. You can also refer back to last week's rankings here. Then, if you want to see how I built the playoff bracket last week, you can view that here. Let's get to the rankings.



American Athletic
Wins: 2.36 (10th; LW: 11th)
PP1: 3.55 (9th; LW: 9th)
PP2: 1.90 (9th; LW: 9th)

ACC
Wins: 3.86 (4th; LW: 4th)
PP1: 9.07 (5th; LW: 5th)
PP2: 4.52 (4th; LW: 5th)

Big 10
Wins: 4.00 (2nd; LW: 2nd)
PP1: 9.21 (4th; LW: 4th)
PP2: 4.29 (5th; LW: 4th)

Big XII
Wins: 3.60 (6th; LW: 6th)
PP1: 7.70 (6th; LW: 6th)
PP2: 4.82 (3rd; LW: 3rd)

Conference USA
Wins: 3.00 (8th; LW: 8th)
PP1: 5.85 (7th; LW: 8th)
PP2: 3.19 (6th; LW: 7th)

Independents
Wins: 3.75 (5th; LW: 5th)
PP1: 9.50 (3rd; LW: 2nd)
PP2: 3.02 (8th; LW: 6th)

MAC
Wins: 2.69 (9th; LW: 9th)
PP1: 3.46 (10th; LW: 10th)
PP2: 1.02 (10th; LW: 10th)

Mountain West
Wins: 3.08 (7th; LW: 7th)
PP1: 5.83 (8th; LW: 7th)
PP2: 3.17 (7th; LW: 8th)

Pac 12
Wins: 3.92 (3rd; LW: 3rd)
PP1: 9.75 (2nd; LW: 3rd)
PP2: 5.13 (2nd; LW: 2nd)

SEC
Wins: 4.29 (1st; LW: 1st)
PP1: 12.07 (1st; LW: 1st)
PP2: 5.47 (1st; LW: 1st)

Sun Belt
Wins: 2.27 (11th; LW: 10th)
PP1: 2.09 (11th; LW: 11th)
PP2: 0.60 (11th; LW: 11th)

Photo by Jim Lytle (AP)

All in all, not a lot changes. The win totals stayed mostly the same, other than the American Athletic and Sun Belt conferences swapping places at the bottom. There was a little movement in First Degree Playoff Points, as the SEC is the first conference to reach a double digit average. The Pac 12 isn't far off that mark, and the other Power Conferences are all ranked highly here as well. Second Degree Playoff Points are kind of interesting, with the independents collectively dropping in the standings, while the SEC leads here as well, but not by much. These numbers will really grow as the season goes on and win totals overall go up, thus impacting both Playoff Point scores for each team. If you want to see the math that goes into each individual team, you can view my spreadsheet here.

Photo by Sam Craft (The Eagle)

With six undefeated teams left, that opens the door for one-loss teams to take at-large spots. Ten spots will automatically go to the conference champions, who will be decided this week for the purposes of making a mock bracket, and most of the undefeated teams will take these spots. But what about the rest? Of the teams with blemishes on their schedules already, who do you think deserves a shot to play for a title? Leave your opinions in the comments below, and I'll try to take reader opinion into account, while still focusing on facts to fill out the field. I can tell you right now without doing any bracket work that at least three teams in the first mock bracket will not be in the second one. A little anarchy is always fun.

Check back this afternoon for the second early edition of the Death to the BCS Playoffs!