2014 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Week 11 Edition

Wow, that was a tough one to build.

Eleven weeks of football are in the books, and I'm back with a new bracket with updated information. Obviously, this is just a mock bracket, but it's a fun exercise to see how the season is progressing.

The Selection Committee did a good job last week with their second batch of findings, with the top four teams matching, and eleven of the sixteen Death to the BCS Playoff teams were in the rankings. The five missing? The "champions" of the other conferences. Because I'm a champion for college football equality, I set the playoffs up such that every team has a chance to compete for the national title. Win your conference? Congratulations, you're in. Don't win it? You need a good enough resume to earn an at large spot.

So how do I decide the field and how they're seeded? I use a variety of metrics. To a small degree, I check everyone's non-conference slate using Non-Conference Schedule Strength (NCSS), which isn't perfect, but rewards road non-conference games and scheduling Power Conference opponents, while penalizing scheduling cupcakes. To a greater degree, I use First Degree (PP1) and Second Degree (PP2) Playoff Points to see how successful each team has been over the course of the season. In an effort to keep from monopolizing the process with my own thoughts, I also use computer rankings developed by Jeff Sagarin (SAG) and the late David Rothman (ROTH) to balance it out, factoring in margin of victory... which is kind of important, and something the BCS refused to consider out of a misguided view of sportsmanship.

So with all this in mind... here's how the new playoff field would look if the season ended today.

1. Mississippi State (9-0, SEC "Champion"): NCSS- 3, PP1- 43, PP2- 16.9, ROTH- 1, SAG- 7 (LW: 1) 
2. Florida State (9-0, ACC "Champion"): NCSS- 2, PP1- 40, PP2- 14.8, ROTH- 9, SAG- 14 (LW: 3) 
3. Oregon (9-1, Pac 12 "Champion"): NCSS- 2, PP1- 44, PP2- 18.3, ROTH- 8, SAG- 8 (LW: 4)
4. Alabama (8-1, At Large): NCSS- 4, PP1- 39, PP2- 18.4, ROTH- 2, SAG- 1 (LW: 6)
5. UCLA (8-2, At Large): NCSS- 6, PP1- 43, PP2- 17.5, ROTH- 15, SAG- 20 (LW: 9)
6. Auburn (7-2, At Large): NCSS- 5, PP1- 40, PP2- 23.1, ROTH- 3, SAG- 2 (LW: 2)
7. Ole Miss (8-2, At Large): NCSS- 2, PP1- 41, PP2- 19.6, ROTH- 4, SAG- 3 (LW: 5) 
8. Marshall (9-0, Conference USA "Champion"): NCSS- 4, PP1- 29, PP2- 7.8, ROTH- 21, SAG- 34 (LW: 10) 
9. Ohio State (8-1, Big Ten "Champion"): NCSS- 6, PP1- 37, PP2- 16.1, ROTH- 17, SAG- 11 (LW: NR)
10. Colorado State (9-1, Mountain West "Champion"): NCSS- 5, PP1- 32, PP2- 10.0, ROTH- 36, SAG- 50 (LW- 11)
11. Baylor (8-1, Big 12 "Champion"): NCSS- 2, PP1- 27, PP2- 12.4, ROTH- 6, SAG- 4 (LW: NR)
12. TCU (8-1, At Large): NCSS- 3, PP1- 34, PP2- 15.0, ROTH- 5, SAG- 5 (LW: NR)
13. Arizona State (8-1, At Large): NCSS- 2, PP1- 35, PP2- 15.3, ROTH- 13, SAG- 19 (LW: NR)
14. Memphis (6-3, American Athletic "Champion"): NCSS- 6, PP1- 17, PP2- 7.7, ROTH- 49, SAG- 44 (LW: NR)
15. Toledo (6-3, MAC "Champion"): NCSS- 6, PP1- 18, PP2- 8.8, ROTH- 78, SAG- 71 (LW: 15)
16. Georgia Southern (8-2, Sun Belt "Champion"): NCSS- 5, PP1- 20, PP2- 3.6, ROTH- 72, SAG- 74 (LW: 16) 

Out of the playoffs: Michigan State (7), Notre Dame (8), Nebraska (12), Kansas State (13), Central Florida (14)

Photo by Joe Robbins (Getty Images)

That's a big amount of changes this late in the year. For some teams, it wasn't their fault they fell. Nebraska and Central Florida were both off this week. In UCF's case, they fell out because Memphis has a better in-conference record to take the automatic bid. Michigan State and Kansas State both lost their leads in their respective conferences. With Michigan State's loss, Ohio State now has the only unblemished Big Ten record, giving them the temporary bid. In the Big 12, I had to go to their official tiebreaker. Kansas State's earlier loss to Auburn pushed them out, and Baylor beat TCU, so they get the auto bid.

Photo from Getty Images (Photographer uncredited)

We lost a couple at large teams as well. For Notre Dame, that second loss was a killer, and Arizona State, with just one loss, was chosen to take their place. Nebraska, despite their bye, loses their spot to a TCU team I've been looking at for a few weeks now. Their 35 PP1 is one of the highest totals in FBS football, and that win over Kansas State is probably their biggest win to date. Even though they have more PP1 and PP2 than Baylor, the Bears get a higher seed because of their auto-bid (which came because of the head to head win). Other than that, the field remains the same.

This brings a lot of two-loss teams into the field. UCLA was already there, as was Ole Miss, but I decided to keep Auburn in as well, despite their tough loss. They're one of the few teams that has at least 40 PP1, and they have the win over Ole Miss (hence, them being seeded higher). Nebraska has the biggest argument to make the playoffs out of the rest of the teams in the nation, as they're one of only two one-loss teams not in the field (Duke is the other, but they only have 27 PP1, which is way too low at this stage of the season).

Seeding-wise, I like how this was set up and didn't have to make any changes after the fact. There are no first round rematches this time, and some interesting matchups between at large teams. I also wanted to correct last week's one thing I disliked in making sure I gave undefeated Marshall at least one home game, but were they to beat Ohio State, they'd then have to go to Mississippi State in the Quarterfinals. The other two unbeatens (Mississippi State and Florida State) are the obvious 1-2 (and I wanted to move FSU up to the top spot to spite MSU's cupcake this past week, but couldn't justify it). Oregon has the best PP1 in the nation, so they get the best spot of all the teams with blemishes on their records (and they get a rarity: the GIF above that was a great moment in the game yesterday that turned the tide). Alabama has the best mark of anyone who isn't a conference leader, so they get the last guarantee of a second home game, and my vote as the fourth team that would make the College Football Playoff.

If you want to take a peek at the overall numbers for either NCSS or Playoff Points, you can view my spreadsheet here. I'll be back next week with an updated look at the Death to the BCS Playoffs, which will see some changes given some of the matchups forthcoming. Tomorrow, I will go over the upcoming week's schedule as a whole, focusing primarily on the non-conference matchups.