2017 NCAA Playoff Points Rankings: Week 2

On this somber Monday, given the natural disasters in Florida and the anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks, hopefully looking over some results from the college football weekend will provide a welcome distraction. To any of you reading from the areas devastated by Irma, know we are with you in spirit and pulling for you.

There may be weeks where I'll push this back a day, but most likely every Monday I will be here with a look into what happened over the weekend in college football. In particular, I'm interested in results: wins and losses. I will then take these wins and losses and crunch some numbers.

This weekly post will go through and measure conference averages of four different numbers: win total, First Degree Playoff Points (PP1), Second Degree Playoff Points (PP2), and Adjusted Playoff Points (aPP). You can view a primer on those in my season preview post. In a nutshell though, these metrics dig deeper beyond just wins and losses. Playoff Points take into account records of teams played so we can find the difference between the several 2-0 teams that we have at this juncture.

Below, I will go conference by conference with a look at the aforementioned averages and where they rank. For the purposes of this post (unlike the NCSS rankings), the independent teams are grouped together as their own conference.


American Athletic
Wins: 1.17 (T-6th)
PP1: 0.50 (5th)
PP2: 0.00 (T-7th)
aPP: 0.33 (6th)

ACC
Wins: 1.21 (5th)
PP1: 0.57 (4th)
PP2: 0.17 (2nd)
aPP: 0.43 (4th)

Big Ten
Wins: 1.50 (3rd)
PP1: 0.93 (2nd)
PP2: 0.15 (3rd)
aPP: 0.86 (2nd)

Big XII
Wins: 1.30 (4th)
PP1: 0.40 (6th)
PP2: 0.11 (5th)
aPP: 0.40 (5th)

Conference USA
Wins: 0.86 (11th)
PP1: 0.14 (10th)
PP2: 0.00 (T-7th)
aPP: -0.14 (10th)

Independents
Wins: 1.00 (T-9th)
PP1: 0.25 (8th)
PP2: 0.00 (T-7th)
aPP: 0.00 (7th)

MAC
Wins: 1.00 (T-9th)
PP1: 0.17 (9th)
PP2: 0.00 (T-7th)
aPP: -0.08 (T-8th)

Mountain West
Wins: 1.17 (T-6th)
PP1: 0.33 (7th)
PP2: 0.05 (6th)
aPP: -0.08 (T-8th)

Pac-12
Wins: 1.67 (1st)
PP1: 1.00 (1st)
PP2: 0.21 (1st)
aPP: 0.92 (1st)

SEC
Wins: 1.57 (2nd)
PP1: 0.71 (3rd)
PP2: 0.12 (4th)
aPP: 0.71 (3rd)

Sun Belt
Wins: 1.08 (8th)
PP1: 0.08 (11th)
PP2: 0.00 (T-7th)
aPP: -0.42 (11th)


To see the updated spreadsheet, click here.


The Pac 12 is the only conference where every team has at least one win, and that helped propel them to the top spot in all four rankings. The top spots are also dominated by the Power Five conferences, which has been the pattern since I started doing these rankings. You'll also note that the Adjusted Playoff Points rankings include some negative scores for conferences, which is a part of the formula, and the disparity between the top and bottom is only going to get larger as the season goes on.

Photo by Ron Chenoy (USA TODAY Sports)

Looking at individual teams, Colorado has the best score in terms of PP1 with three points (and as an unbeaten, they hold that score in aPP as well), though their mark of 0.50 places them behind Arizona State, NC State, and Ohio State, who all have 1.00 points in PP2. There are a dozen other teams tied with Colorado in PP2, and everyone else still has zero points in that category. I include the winless teams in that who currently show a "divide by zero" error in that category just based on how the formula is set up, but once those teams win their first game, that error will be fixed. It does make finding the conference PP2 averages a little harder, because it won't show the scores for that same "divide by zero" error rationale.


That's it for this week! I'll be back tomorrow with a look at the Week 3 NCSS rankings.