2015 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Week 9 Mock Bracket

Now we get to the fun part.

There are currently 11 undefeated teams left in the Football Bowl Subdivision, and at this stage, that is enough to finally start putting together a mock bracket for the Death to the BCS Playoffs.

If you are a regular reader of Confessions of a Sportscaster, you know that I have a disdain for the elitism rampant in big time college football (so much so that it is the topic of my final project in my master's class this fall). Even the College Football Playoff isn't good enough. It's a good start... but we need more. You can't have a true national champion if everyone doesn't have a chance to compete for it. That is why for years I have advocated for the playoff format laid out by Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter and Jeff Passan in their 2010 book Death to the BCS.

The system is simple: 16 teams. The 10 conference champions get automatic bids into the playoffs, while the rest of the field is filled in with at-large teams. These teams are seeded 1-16, and home field advantage goes to the higher seeds for the first three rounds, incentivizing the regular season. The title game, after I've moved it around a little bit, in a recent re-reading of the book reminded me of the true location of the title game: Pasadena, in the Rose Bowl. How could it be anywhere else?

Now, how do I fill out the field and seed everyone? To decide on this, I use a little bit of the eye test, but I also have a few metrics to help me out. I start with taking a look at the NCSS scores that I've been compiling since Week 1. While imperfect, this helps read into how much of a challenge teams are taking with their non-conference schedule. To get a good look at resumes, I also grab a glance at First and Second Degree Playoff Points, which I have been compiling as well since Week 1. This helps determine the differences between teams with similar records and how good their vanquished foes are. All of these scores can be found on my Google Sheet.

To balance out any potential biases I may have, I then also use a pair of computer rankings that take margin of victory into account, because a narrow win and a 30 points win mean different things. Jeff Sagarin did one of the old BCS computer rankings, but I take his ranking that includes margin of victory instead of his old BCS one that did not. His "rating" is the one that is used for Death to the BCS purposes. Also, the late David Rothman did computer rankings on his own, but was not allowed to use it for the BCS because, again, it included margin of victory. Before he died, he made his formula public, and a UCLA faculty member computes the rankings using that formula.

These factors will be combined somewhat organically to produce the 16 team field. Here is our first one of the season.

1. Clemson (8-0, ACC "Champion")- NCSS: 1, PP1: 34, PP2: 11.75, SAG: 2, ROTH: 3.
2. LSU (7-0, SEC "Champion")- NCSS: 5, PP1: 31, PP2: 14.71, SAG: 11, ROTH: 2.
3. Ohio State (8-0, Big 10 "Champion)- NCSS: 6, PP1: 32, PP2: 10.00, SAG: 6, ROTH: 11.
4. Alabama (7-1, At Large)- NCSS: 4, PP1: 30, PP2: 12.00, SAG: 1, ROTH: 5.
5. Michigan State (8-0, At Large)- NCSS: 6, PP1: 35, PP2: 11.63, SAG: 20, ROTH: 15.
6. Iowa (8-0, At Large)- NCSS: 5, PP1: 29, PP2: 9.13, SAG: 15, ROTH: 9.
7. TCU (8-0, Big 12 "Champion")- NCSS: 3, PP1: 22, PP2: 7.00, SAG: 4, ROTH: 4.
8. Baylor (7-0, At Large)- NCSS: 2, PP1: 16, PP2: 8.00, SAG: 3, ROTH: 1.
9. Oklahoma State (8-0, At Large)- NCSS: 2, PP1: 20, PP2: 7.13, SAG: 14, ROTH: 10.
10. Memphis (8-0, American Athletic "Champion")- NCSS: 6, PP1: 28, PP2: 8.00, SAG: 27, ROTH: 7.
11. Stanford (7-1, Pac-12 "Champion")- NCSS: 4, PP1: 27, PP2: 13.57, SAG: 10, ROTH:18.
12. Houston (8-0, At Large)- NCSS: 5, PP1: 16, PP2: 3.75, SAG: 25, ROTH: 24.
13. Toledo (7-0, MAC "Champion")- NCSS: 6, PP1: 20, PP2: 4.86, SAG: 34, ROTH: 14.
14. Appalachian State (7-1, Sun Belt "Champion")- NCSS: 5, PP1: 15, PP2: 3.43, SAG: 56, ROTH: 41. 
15. Marshall (8-1, Conference USA "Champion")- NCSS: 5, PP1: 19, PP2: 3.25, SAG: 74, ROTH: 75.
16. San Diego State (6-3, Mountain West "Champion")- NCSS: 6, PP1: 16, PP2: 5.50, SAG: 60, ROTH: 79.

Photo by Kent Gidley (Southeast Sun)

Filling the field was probably the easiest part. The 11 undefeated teams all deserve to be in were the season to have ended today, and there are four conference champions with at least one loss who would also get automatic bids. That leaves one berth for every other team in the country. I thought for sure it would be tough to fill the hole, but the numbers left one conclusion: Alabama. They're top-five in both computer rankings and in PP1, and a top-ten in PP2. It's really not that close. Your biggest snub with this is probably Notre Dame, though Utah and Florida probably both have good arguments to be right behind them.

Photo by Rob Kinnan (USA TODAY Sports)

Clemson's biggest argument against being seeded number one is their low NCSS, but they have a big win over a playoff team (Appalachian State) and another win against our first team out (Notre Dame). They edge out an LSU team that is ranked highly in every metric, with Sagarin's ranking being the lowest (probably due to their one fewer game). I've got Ohio State third based on some high scores, and then a fairly controversial decision to place a one-loss team in Alabama ahead of eight undefeated teams and get a second home game. To me though, the computers favor Alabama way more than Playoff Points favor Michigan State or Iowa, so Bama gets the 4 seed. Michigan State immediately follows just ahead of Iowa due to MSU's better NCSS and Playoff Points. We then have our run of Big 12 teams. TCU is the "champion" at this stage, so they get the higher seed, but Baylor beats out Oklahoma State based on the computer love.

I've got undefeated Memphis in at the 10 seed, but they could easily be higher (and probably will be depending on how things play out next week and onward). Stanford follows, with their one loss to a pretty good Northwestern team and strong computer rankings boosting them pretty high. Houston's extra win gives them the 12 seed over also unbeaten Toledo, but it's close. Then we round out with conference "champs" with losses on their resume. San Diego State with three losses gets the 16 seed over the usual suspect in Appalachian State, as App State has better computer rankings. That also gave them the edge over one-loss Marshall for the 14 seed.

It's obviously not a perfect bracket, but I had to fit in all the unbeatens in my first mock. Many of these undefeated teams will fall from the rankings; at the most, we could end up with six, which would make some things easier while at the same time opening up the playoff field to some of these other teams that have losses on their resume. We'll look back into this next week. For now, I'll have an update on the Non-Conference Schedule Strength numbers tomorrow morning.