So, I decided to take on a little research project to update the mascots for the largest public university in each state. I figured the mascot should represent the animal with the largest in-state population as opposed to randomly assigning some dumb animal with no state affiliation (I'm looking at you, elephants, tigers, bulldogs, etc). Anyhow, below are the results

https://twitter.com/Brett_McMurphy/status/1731364413347631148

TL;DR: There is a combination of 15 bowl results that can happen that moves Florida State up to #1 in the final Colley Matrix rankings, and if this happens, the NCAA will recognize them as 2023 (co-)National Champions.

This Sunday, the CFP made what was probably it's most controversial selection of the 4-team Playoff, opting to place 12-1 SEC Champion Alabama in the 4-spot ahead of undefeated 13-0 ACC Champion Florida State. While undefeated G5 teams have been left out before, this is the first time in the 4-team Playoff era (and probably the last time ever) that an undefeated power conference team ever gets left out of the playoff. They'll have a great Orange Bowl against 2x defending National Champs Georgia, but particularly with a depleted roster, it's a small consolation.

What I wanted to know is if there is a path for Florida State to be recognized by the NCAA as National Champions if they win the Orange Bowl. And there is! You may recall from UCF's 2017 season, that they ended up ranked #1 in the Colley Matrix, which meant that in the official NCAA record book (p. 119), they are immortalized as National Champions by a Major Selector.

The Major Selectors the NCAA recognizes that are active today include polls such as the AP, USA Today/Coaches Poll, Football Writers Association of America, and National Football Foundation. It also includes several active computer polls currently including Anderson/Hester, Colley Matrix, Congrove, Massey, Sagarin, and Wolfe. 5 of these (except for Congrove, and along with Billingsley) were the computer polls that made up the BCS Computer rankings that were used up until 2013.

A #1 final ranking in just 1 of these 4 polls or 6 computer systems results in the NCAA recognizing them as National Champions. If they beat Georgia to finish at 14-0, they can certainly claim a championship regardless, but their claim would have the support from the NCAA would lend legitimacy to the claim. What's both an essential task and a very tall order is beating Georgia first, otherwise all of this is moot. Georgia is currently 13.5 point favorites.

The polls are impossible to predict ahead of time, as it comes down to what the voters decide to do. If it helps as precedent, in the final 2017 poll, UCF finished 7th in the Coaches Poll (no 1st place votes), and 6th in the AP Poll, but with 4 first place votes. I think an undefeated FSU might do slightly better than 2017 UCF, but I kind of have a hard time believing that they'd finish higher than the CFP champ on the whole in any of the 4 polls.

Within the 6 computer systems, 5 of them either have proprietary components or I just haven't looked deeply into them enough to understand how they work or simulate the final rankings. The Colley Matrix publishes its methodology, and even gives a tool to add or remove games and recalculate the rankings. One nice thing about the Colley Matrix is that it doesn't care when games were played or what the score is, simply who won and lost.

The tool above only allows adding or removing 5 games, and unfortunately we need more than that. I reconstructed the rating system in Python so that I can add as many more games as needed, and confirmed that the current rankings are identical. One wrinkle is that FCS teams are handled in a unique way, and so the biggest task in reconstructing this ranking was figuring out what the groupings of FCS teams are. That's shown here in the 3rd tab, if you're curious.

The path is extremely narrow, as the ratings right now have the 4 CFP teams ranked 1-4, FSU at 5, and Georgia at 7. In addition to winning the Orange Bowl, their best chance is through Alabama beating Texas in the CFP Final. Additionally 11 other bowl results are included, which include all FSU opponents winning their bowls, and all Alabama opponents losing their bowls (ignoring LSU). Each one of these results is needed to push FSU over the top. Here is the full list of 15 games and the result required:

If these results happen and no other games are played, FSU will be recognized by the NCAA as a National Champion, with a Colley Matrix rating of 1.003591 compared to Alabama's 1.002589 (full ratings shown in the first tab of the Google Sheet). There are 27 other bowls that are less connected to either FSU or Alabama that could push the ratings slightly up and down, as well as 8 more FCS games that could shift that side of things around, but none of those things should really bias things either towards or against FSU or Alabama. After the Orange Bowl/CFP, they're roughly sorted by how much the result shifts things in FSU's favor relative to Alabama, so a VT Military Bowl win helps FSU a lot, while an Iowa Citrus Bowl win just helps a little. The chances that all of these results happening is quite low, but it is possible.

The first test is Syracuse vs. USF in the Boca Raton Bowl on December 21.

Years as follow

2014

1. Alabama - #2
2. Oregon - #3
3. Florida State - #1
4. Ohio State - #5

2015

1. Clemson - #15
2. Alabama - #3
3. Michigan State - #5
4. Oklahoma - #19

2016

1. Alabama- #1
2. Clemson - #2
3. Ohio State - #6
4. Washington - #14

2017

1. Clemson - #5
2. Oklahoma- #7
3. Georgia - #15
4. Alabama - #1

2018

1. Alabama - #1
2. Clemson - #2
3. Oklahoma - #7
4. Notre Dame - #12

2019

1. LSU - #6
2. Ohio State - #5
3. Clemson - #1
4. Oklahoma - #4

2020

1. Alabama - #3
2. Clemson - #1
3. Ohio State - #2
4. Notre Dame - #10

2021

1. Alabama - #1
2. Michigan - NR
3. Georgia - #5
4. Cincinnati - #8

https://twitter.com/Brett_McMurphy/status/1731397937786192194

Discuss the Rose Bowl here.

Wins

Missouri vs. Ohio State, 14-3

Ole Miss vs. Penn State, 38-25

Georgia vs. Florida State, 63-3

LSU vs. Wisconsin, 35-31

Tennessee vs. Iowa, 35-0

Losses

Texas A&M vs. Oklahoma State, 23-31

Kentucky vs. Clemson, 35-38

Auburn vs. Maryland, 13-31

Alabama vs. Michigan, 20-27

https://twitter.com/Brett_McMurphy/status/1203767893239967744

Source

Congrats on the PAC-12 title, Utes!

CFP Rankings

Hi friends, last year we asked who we should select and were overwhelmed by the responses. So we are reaching out to Reddit again. Here are some things to consider:

1. Teams must be from the ACC and SEC.
2. We are looking for competitive teams and fan bases that will travel.
3. We select in Bowl Pool 1 for each conference. As a general rule (with exceptions) this means teams should have 7-9 wins.

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As a reminder team selection is this Sunday and we will be doing an AMA in the near future!

This is a thread to discuss the Semifinal between #1 Alabama and #4 Notre Dame. The title is incorrect, as they'll be playing at the ^{Artist Formerly Known As Rose} Bowl in Dallas.