2014 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Week 7 Edition

I've emerged from the cave where my Bracket Machine lies, and I come bearing a new bracket!

We lucked out last week, as I finally had few enough undefeated teams to build a playoff. With four undefeated teams losing this weekend though, we're down to six overall. This has opened the door to some debate, as at-large bids will have to be claimed by teams that have lost at least once.

I will be using the same metrics as I did last week to build the sixteen-team field, compiled from the ten conference champions and six at-large teams. I still only have one computer ranking, as the UCLA staffer who compiles the late David Rothman's formula hasn't done anything for 2014 yet. Jeff Sagarin has been hard at work though, and he updated his rankings from the weekend. I will be using the purple "Ranking" number to help sort through teams, though my own numbers for NCSS and Playoff Points will also be used, which you can refer to here. At the end of each line will be the team's seeding from last week.

Let's look at the playoff picture.

2014 NCAA Playoff Points Rankings: Week 7

After taking a day off in honor of my wife's birthday, COAS is back to look at the weekend's impact on the college football world!

We saw some top teams fall off, and we're down a few undefeated teams after this past weekend. This will have a pretty big impact on the playoff picture, but more on that later.

Most of the action this past week was in-conference, so most of the conferences should be getting relatively equal win total boosts. It's the question of Playoff Points again that will have a bigger impact. We should see a few teams get over the 20 point mark in First Degree Playoff Points, while I'm not quite sure what to expect out of Second Degree Playoff Points.\

If you need a refresher on how the math works, you can view a summary of how it works here. You can also refer back to last week's rankings here. Then, if you want to see how I built the playoff bracket last week, you can view that here. Let's get to the rankings.

COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 6

This week was a little more typical of what you'd expect from the picking coalition.

Adam had a good week, though not to the same degree he's had in previous odd weeks. We also had a much more balanced week in terms of dissenting games; I took three of the five games we disagreed on.

We also had some fluky things happen. If you look at the standings, which includes the scores for each week, I beat Adam out by two points. There was a discrepancy in one of Adam's picks. In the post for Week 5, Adam is on record as picking Pittsburgh (-6.5) over Jacksonville, but on ESPN he had the Jaguars (I guess he changed his mind and forgot to change it there). I'll give him the point for the week, so Adam is actually at 37 for the season so far. He's not the first to mess this up (I did something like this in 2012), and he probably won't be the last.

So in Week 6, Kansas City and New Orleans have byes, so there are 15 games again. There are a lot more home underdogs this week as well, so we see an evening out compared to last week. Adam and I disagree on 6 games, so my lead isn't necessarily safe. Let's get to the picks.

2014 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 7

We're onto another week of college football action! And hopefully, we'll have as much excitement as last week had.

For the most part going forward, NCSS averages for the conferences won't change, because conference play has started in full. There were some swaps last week in positioning, but nothing too major. I imagine this week will be similar. Either way, I need to look over the schedule in preparation for Week 7's Playoff Points numbers as well as version 2 of the Death to the BCS Playoffs bracket.

Let's look at the numbers.

2014 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Week 6 Edition

Finally! I get to play around with brackets!

With the results of Week 6 of the college football season in the books, I finally have the nation whittled down enough that I can build a bracket and not exclude any undefeated teams. Of course, of the ten that remain, at least half will not remain that way.

So in case you need a refresher into how the Death to the BCS Playoffs work, sixteen teams out of the 128 who play FBS-level football make the final field. The champions of all ten conferences make the field automatically, while the remaining spots are filled on an at-large basis. These sixteen teams are then seeded for the purpose of deciding home-field advantage. Obviously, this places a priority on winning your non-conference games in addition to doing well in your league.

The seeding process is somewhat subjective, since I'm deciding this process on my own, though I will take input from readers on how they think the field should be set up. For my role though, I use the stats outlined in the link above. I will use the NCSS rankings I've been compiling for the last month and a half to some degree, though Playoff Points will carry a little more weight. I will also use a couple computer rankings that the BCS deemed unnecessary because they factor in margin of victory. The late David Rothman and Jeff Sagarin both used rankings like this. Currently, the formula Rothman compiled hasn't been applied to the 2014 season yet, though Sagarin has been updating his numbers weekly. These will be combined together in an attempt to rank these teams with as little bias as possible. These rankings are abbreviated below as such: NCSS stands for Non-Conference schedule strength, PP1 and PP2 are First and Second Degree Playoff Points, respectively, while SAG is Sagarin's ranking for each team.

Since none of the conferences have officially been won, the conference "championships" are going to the teams with the in-conference record in each league. This will hopefully explain some of the "Huh?!" teams that will show up (and trust me, there's one that amazed even me). So, without further ado, here's the first edition of the Death to the BCS Playoff bracket.

2014 NCAA Playoff Points Rankings: Week 6

If it's a fall Saturday with a ton of chaos, it's a great Saturday. And boy, was it a great Saturday.

I've called out the various polls of college football to be a general farce, but I do still think it's noteworthy that four of the top six and five of the top eight teams in the polls all lost this past weekend. More importantly, I've reached a milestone. Only ten teams remain undefeated at this stage. And so through six weeks, even though it's probably premature, I can build the playoff field. More on that later.

For now, I want to see what the weekend of chaos did to all the numbers. Since most of the games were in conference this week, a lot of the conferences will get pretty equal win boosts. Playoff points, both First and Second Degree... might be a different story.

If you need a refresher, here's an expanded explanation of how the Playoff Points system works. For reference, you can also view last week's rankings here. Let's see the damage.

COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 5

Adam shared with me a theory about the COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em contest Sunday evening.

Through four weeks, I've been consistently about on pace with a coin flip. It's about what one would expect trying to pick stuff like this, even though last year I paced a 9-7 record every week. Adam, on the other hand, has been on a roller coaster. He posted double digit wins in Weeks 1 and 3, but those have been offset by double digit losses in Weeks 2 and 4. He told me when he sent in his picks, "I am shooting for 13/15 this week as that is how my mini trend is going."

We saw our biggest disparity yet last week, but the streak of sweeps is over. Adam was bailed out by the Chiefs dominating/the Patriots being awful to salvage the final contested pick of the week after only one of our consensus picks panned out. I've moved back into first place overall in the group (with help from a leader forgetting half of the week's games), with Adam in second and the records aligning as though we'd disagreed on every game thus far.

This week, we bump up to 15 games from last week's 13, as Oakland and Miami get a week to recover from the jet lag and time zone disparity from London. It's a weird week overall, because the initial ESPN lines have only two home underdogs. Adam and I disagree on five games this time. Will his pattern repeat into Week 5? Let's find out.