2015 NCAA Playoff Points: Week 1

Labor Day having a game pushed this post back a day later than it normally would have been. Today, we catch up on it.

Every week, I will be doing a minimum of two college-football related posts with regards to the Death to the BCS Playoffs coming up. Last week I previewed the schedule for the opening week of the season, and today brings the other side of that coin.

I touched on this a little bit before the season, but I wanted to go on an in-depth look at how the Playoff Points system works for the playoff system. It's based on the IHSA model, though I added a degree to it. For First Degree Playoff Points, or PP1, the score is a cumulative total of the number of wins from each team a given school beat during the season. For example, a 3-9 team that beat a 6-6 team, a 1-11 team, and another 6-6 team would have 10 First Degree Playoff Points. This number will take some time to grow over the course of the season, but it will serve as a good value to see just how good a team is beyond its record.

On top of that, I also use Second Degree Playoff Points, or PP2, which is an average per win of the First Degree Playoff Points of each team beaten over the course of the season. As an example, take South Florida's 2014 season: they had four wins over an FCS team, Connecticut, Tulsa and SMU. The FCS team netted no PP1, UConn had nine PP1, Tulsa four, and SMU two. That's a sum of 15 points, divided by the four wins gives USF a PP2 of 3.75.

Every week I'm going to run through the Playoff Points totals as an average for each conference, though I will link to my spreadsheet where I'm keeping track of all of this. I also want to note again so the example isn't an exception: wins over FCS teams are worth no Playoff Points whatsoever, and will be represented int he spreadsheet by a red zero.

Hopefully that's an explanation that makes sense. Either way, let's take a look at the scores for this week. For each conference, I will share the average win total, PP1 and PP2.

American Athletic
Wins: 0.75 (4th)
PP1: 0.00 (T-1st)
PP2: 0.00 (T-1st)

ACC
Wins: 0.71 (5th)
PP1: 0.00 (T-1st)
PP2: 0.00 (T-1st)

Big Ten
Wins: 0.58 (T-7th)
PP1: 0.00 (T-1st)
PP2: 0.00 (T-1st)

Big XII
Wins: 0.80 (3rd)
PP1: 0.00 (T-1st)
PP2: 0.00 (T-1st)

Conference USA
Wins: 0.50 (9th)
PP1: 0.00 (T-1st)
PP2: 0.00 (T-1st)

Independents
Wins: 0.67 (6th)
PP1: 0.00 (T-1st)
PP2: 0.00 (T-1st)

MAC
Wins: 0.38 (10th)
PP1: 0.00 (T-1st)
PP2: 0.00 (T-1st)

Mountain West
Wins: 0.83 (2nd)
PP1: 0.00 (T-1st)
PP2: 0.00 (T-1st)
Pac-12
Wins: 0.58 (T-7th)
PP1: 0.00 (T-1st)
PP2: 0.00 (T-1st)

SEC
Wins: 0.86 (1st)
PP1: 0.00 (T-1st)
PP2: 0.00 (T-1st)
Sun Belt
Wins: 0.18 (11th)
PP1: 0.00 (T-1st)
PP2: 0.00 (T-1st)

Photo by Eric Gregory (Lincoln Journal Star)

To take a look at the spreadsheet to see a team-by-team breakdown, click here. Note that all red zeroes indicate a win over an FCS team, which counts as a win for the purpose of standings, but does not count for any Playoff Points for the team that beat an FCS foe.

You'll note that every conference is currently tied in average Playoff Points. Mathematically, this will always be the case after Week 1. With one game under their belts, the teams that won will have wins over 0-1 teams, while the teams that lost obviously have no wins to gather any Playoff Points.

We have one week in the books, but there is a lot of football left to play. I'll be back tomorrow with a look at the Week 2 schedule, and some changes from the Week 1 schedule due to a couple weather cancellations.