2015 NCAA Playoff Points: Week 5

We're getting closer to the point where I can start making mock brackets. Five weeks into the college football season, just 19 teams remain undefeated. It might be a while yet still, because most of these unbeatens are concentrated in the major conferences and haven't played each other yet. Once we get to a point where I can set up the 16-team bracket and not drop any undefeated teams out of the bracket, I'll start working on the mocks.

It was an intriguing week overall in college football though as the cream of the crop starts to emerge. With conference play underway, odds are most of the Week 4 rankings will remain constant into this week, at least in terms of win totals because everyone is beating up on everyone else. Playoff Points are probably where we'll start to see some change.

If you need a refresher on how the Playoff Points system works, you can look back to my Week 1 post. Here are the updated rankings.

American Athletic
Wins: 2.58 (7th)
PP1: 3.42 (7th)
PP2: 0.97 (7th)

ACC
Wins: 2.93 (5th)
PP1: 4.00 (6th)
PP2: 1.14 (6th)

Big Ten
Wins: 3.50 (1st)
PP1: 6.43 (2nd)
PP2: 1.81 (3rd)

Big XII
Wins: 3.00 (4th)
PP1: 4.60 (5th)
PP2: 1.36 (5th)

Conference USA
Wins: 2.17 (8th)
PP1: 1.92 (9th)
PP2: 0.25 (10th)

Independents
Wins: 2.67 (6th)
PP1: 4.67 (4th)
PP2: 1.83 (2nd)

MAC
Wins: 2.08 (9th)
PP1: 2.31 (8th)
PP2: 0.51 (9th)

Mountain West
Wins: 2.00 (10th)
PP1: 1.58 (10th)
PP2: 0.52 (8th)

Pac-12
Wins: 3.17 (3rd)
PP1: 5.25 (3rd)
PP2: 1.80 (4th)

SEC
Wins: 3.43 (2nd)
PP1: 6.64 (1st)
PP2: 2.43 (1st)

Sun Belt
Wins: 1.64 (11th)
PP1: 0.82 (11th)
PP2: 0.06 (11th)

Photo by Mike Granse (USA TODAY Sports)

If you want to see exact numbers for each team and conference, you can view my spreadsheet here. I did do a quick fix to get rid of the divide-by-zero errors and put in a blank zero for the Second Degree Playoff Points numbers for winless teams. It's an easy enough fix when they win their first game, and it makes the math easier.

In terms of your national leaders, we have six teams so far with more at least ten First Degree Playoff Points. Northwestern (!!) leads the nation with 13 PP1, Ohio State is in second with 11, and four other teams have 10. PP2 are a little more interesting, though Northwestern leads the nation in that category as well with 4.8. BYU, Florida and Texas A&M are in a three-way tie for second with four PP2.

On the whole, these numbers will only go up, especially the PP1, since that cannot go down. Averages might drop a bit for individual teams in terms of PP2, but the overall scores will just keep going up since PP2 grow based off of continuously growing PP1.

I'll be back tomorrow, where we will take a look at the Week 6 schedule.