2014 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Official Bracket

It all started with an idea. Three sportswriters hated the Bowl Championship Series and all the corruption it stood for, so they set out to write a book. That book, pictured to the left, inspired a poor North Central College graduate who spent three of his four years in college watching his school's football team make a true playoff to action. After starting a small sports blog using the free system Google provides, a playoff system based on that book came to life. 2011 saw the first Death to the BCS Playoffs come to fruition. In the time since, that blogger found full time employment, got married, and made tweaks to the system, running playoffs in 2012 and 2013. This year, he's at it again.

Okay, I wanted to tell a dramatic third-person story about myself. Sue me. Either way, the book co-written by Wetzel, Peter and Passan left a mark. They never left instruction as to how the teams in the field would be selected and seeded, so I took that responsibility upon myself. Overall, I think I'm happy with how the process took shape this year.

I've spent the last 15 weeks looking at schedules, then looking at results, inputting data into a Google doc, then consulting some computer rankings in an effort to not be totally biased on my own rankings. For the past nine, I've been making some mock brackets. Several teams have fallen from those mocks over the past couple months. If you want to refer back to the entire season's worth of data, you can find it all on the COAS Tournaments page. It also contains posts and brackets from the last two years of playoffs for historical purposes.

So this time, I put everything together for real. The system for it remains the same, however. Sixteen teams make the field: all ten conference champions, plus six at-large teams. These teams are then seeded with the help of a lot of data. The following metrics are all considered, and will be included with the playoff teams:

• Non-Conference Schedule Strength (NCSS): A metric that determines how strong each team's non-conference slate was. Teams are rewarded for playing Power conference foes and/or playing on the road, while being penalized for playing down a division.
• First Degree/Second Degree Playoff Points (PP1/PP2): A metric that determines how good each team really is. Win totals of defeated teams are added together to determine First Degree Playoff Points, and the average PP1 of each team's vanquished foes is calculated to determine Second Degree Playoff Points.
• David Rothman Computer Rankings (ROTH): The late David Rothman created a computer ranking during the BCS days, but wasn't allowed to use it because of the fact that margin of victory was a part of his formula. He made his formula public domain, and a staff member at UCLA calculates the rankings weekly.
• Jeff Sagarin Computer Rankings (SAG): Jeff Sagarin had a computer formula in use for the BCS, but had to change the formula he submitted to take out margin of victory. He still calculated that, however, and released that with his BCS rankings. The margin of victory-included rankings are used here.

With the help of these sets of numbers, I will try to seed this playoff as fairly as I can. If possible, I will try to avoid any rematches throughout the tournament, though this is more important in the early rounds. The other fun factor about the Death to the BCS Playoffs the authors of the book came up with: give home field advantage to the higher seeds through the first three rounds. This puts importance on non-conference scheduling, and makes margin of victory important to a point.

So, enough talk. It's time to unveil the 2014 Death to the BCS Playoff Field.

1. Alabama (12-1, SEC Champion): NCSS- 3, PP1- 64, PP2- 29.5, ROTH- 1, SAG- 1 (LW: 1)  
2. Florida State (13-0, ACC Champion): NCSS- 4, PP1- 68, PP2- 25.7, ROTH- 7, SAG- 15 (LW: 2) 
3. Oregon (12-1, Pac 12 Champion): NCSS- 2, PP1- 61, PP2- 26.5, ROTH- 3, SAG- 3 (LW: 4)
4. Ohio State (12-1, Big Ten Champion): NCSS- 6, PP1- 70, PP2- 30.5, ROTH- 12, SAG- 5 (LW: 3) 
5. Baylor (11-1, Big 12 Champion): NCSS- 2, PP1- 55, PP2- 20.9, ROTH- 5, SAG- 7 (LW: 6)
6. TCU (11-1, At Large): NCSS- 3, PP1- 54, PP2- 21.5, ROTH- 2, SAG- 2 (LW: 7)
7. Boise State (11-2, Mountain West Champion): NCSS- 6, PP1- 65, PP2- 25.6, ROTH- 31, SAG- 33 (LW: 8) 
8. Georgia Tech (10-3, At Large): NCSS- 5, PP1- 60, PP2- 28.8, ROTH- 21, SAG- 18 (LW- 9)
9. Arizona (10-3, At Large): NCSS- 4, PP1- 59, PP2- 25.6, ROTH- 14, SAG- 30 (LW- 10) 
10. Missouri (10-3, At Large): NCSS- 4, PP1- 56, PP2- 25.7, ROTH- 16, SAG- 16 (LW: NR) 
11. Ole Miss (9-3, At Large): NCSS- 2, PP1- 64, PP2- 35.0, ROTH- 6, SAG- 4 (LW- 11)  
12. UCLA (9-3, At Large): NCSS- 6, PP1- 62, PP2- 31.2, ROTH- 17, SAG- 17 (LW: 12)  
13. Marshall (12-1, Conference USA Champion): NCSS- 4, PP1- 48, PP2- 15.5, ROTH- 42, SAG- 32 (LW: 13)  
14. Northern Illinois (11-2, MAC Champion): NCSS- 7, PP1- 40, PP2- 15.1, ROTH- 71, SAG- 69 (LW: 15)
15. Memphis (9-3, American Athletic Champion): NCSS- 6, PP1- 33, PP2- 12.6, ROTH- 49, SAG- 44 (LW: 14)
16. Georgia Southern (9-3, Sun Belt Champion): NCSS- 7, PP1- 31, PP2- 8.7, ROTH- 75, SAG- 67 (LW: 16) 

Out of the Playoffs: Mississippi State (5)

Photo by Rogelio V. Solis (AP)

Sorry, Mississippi State. I opted to drop them out this week because despite the fact that they finished second in the SEC West, they just didn't have as good of a resume as other schools. Ole Miss finished with a worse record but had a head to head win over MSU as well as a win over Alabama. To take their place, I ultimately had to decide between conference championship game losers: Missouri and Wisconsin. Playoff Points disputed this one (Wisconsin had 58 PP1 but only 24.4 PP2), and the computers and NCSS both favored Missouri. Meanwhile, the American Athletic auto bid became a pain in the butt. Both UCF and Cincinnati won to tie Memphis at 9-3, and the Selection Committee ultimately decided on X to represent the conference.

Photo by Kevin Liles (USA TODAY Sports)

Ultimately in terms of seeding, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Alabama doesn't have as high a PP1 as some of the other Power conference champions, but it's Top Five overall, and the computers have them as a unanimous #1, so they get the top seed. Normally, it would be Florida State there, but they've had some struggles (something the computers note). Even so, 13-0 has to mean something, so they get the third home game. Ohio State has better metric numbers than Oregon does in terms of NCSS and Playoff Points, but Oregon has the better computer rankings. Also, the fact that Ohio State's loss was to Virginia Tech has to mean something, so I swapped them this week. The only real difference is in the semifinal travel, where Ohio State now has to prove itself in Tuscaloosa with its third string quarterback.

Photo by Jerry Larson (Waco Herald Tribune/AP)

After I've been keeping them lower, Baylor finally got another signature win, so they get bumped up to the five seed, with Ohio State getting the edge due to a better out of conference schedule and better wins in general. TCU is right there too, but despite the Committee liking TCU better... that Baylor win over TCU has to count for something. Boise State's loss to Ole Miss hurts, but they're a conference champion, and their 65 PP1 (third-highest in the FBS) gets them a home game in Round 1. Finally, three conference championship game participants had to duke it out for the eight seed. Georgia Tech has the best NCSS and PP1/PP2 of all those teams, so they get the edge. The computers probably like Missouri better, but I think I'll take my chances with UNC/Duke losses over an Indiana loss at home.

Photo from Getty Images (Photographer uncredited)

Arizona got the edge over Missouri as well for the nine seed and the right to play Georgia Tech based on those Playoff Point numbers, though Jeff Sagarin's rankings don't like Arizona nearly as much. That puts Missouri at 10, and leaves the 11-12 spots for my last two at large teams, a pair of 9-3 squads that finished with massive PP1 scores. I believe Ole Miss has a better resume than UCLA, so they stay at 11. For full disclosure: I had to do some swapping around with the conference runners-up here, because Ole Miss was originally a 10 seed... which would have sent them to the blue turf at Boise State, and I want to avoid rematches if possible. I think this is a good way of doing that.

Photo by Chris Tilley (AP)

Finally, our bottom four seeds are the champions of the other conferences. Marshall missed out on a chance to host a first round game by losing to Western Kentucky a couple weeks ago, and their weak PP1 hurt their chances to get into that 9-12 range. Meanwhile, NIU dominated their conference championship game, and their numbers are comparable to Memphis out of the American Athletic. Ultimately, that combined with their ten wins give them a slight edge and help them avoid playing Florida State in an Orange Bowl rematch. Memphis, meanwhile, didn't finish in the Top 25 of the Committee, but they seemed to have the best resume according to them, and even though Cincinnati might have had some slightly better numbers, Memphis beat them head to head. That leaves Georgia Southern, who would normally be ineligible for postseason play, with the 16 seed. I'm not bumping them out on a technicality.

Overall, my top four is in a slightly different order from what the Selection Committee decided, but the semifinal matchups would be the same. The field as a whole was decided on Sunday in advance of what the committee did. Ultimately, the committee's decision proves that the sixteen-team field is for the best. We don't have this Baylor-TCU argument because they're both in. The only real controversy was that three-way-tie in the American Athletic conference. In terms of at large teams, Mississippi State probably has the biggest gripe of not being in, but they didn't beat enough quality teams. Other than them, Michigan State and Colorado State are the only other two loss teams that got bumped from the field. Of these, Michigan State might have had the best argument, though it's close between them and Mississippi State.

So with the field set, you can view the official 2014 Death to the BCS Playoffs Bracket here. Dates, times, and sites are set to go. On the day of the game, I'll grab weather conditions from those locales and record them so I can have an accurate simulation to work with. Check back in a couple weeks for the first round results!