It just feels right to get rid of that mid-week newsletter. Everyone might need a refresher on how the latest Playoff Committee rankings look, how accurate the model was in predicting the rankings, and reset their basis for the upcoming week of games.
Rankings Recap
Here is the head to head recap of the Week 13 Playoff Committee rankings vs the Rankings Right Now machine learning algorithm.
Overall, not too bad! The first eight are all in green, and then the rest is a mixture of green and yellows. However, let’s talk about the worst prediction which was Georgia being ranked #10, but the algorithm predicting they would be up to #6. I understand that Georgia has lost to Alabama and Ole Miss, who were ranked ahead of UGA, but Georgia had a great win against Tennessee when Bama and Ole Miss had the week off (Alabama played Mercer, might as well have been a bye week), and UGA handed Texas their only L on the year. I don’t fault the algorithm on it’s prediction. You could argue it a lot of different ways. However, when the model adjusts, it will take this new data point into account for improved future predictions.
The model was also accurate for predicting where BYU would fall, and predicting teams like Arizona State coming into the scene. Those are important for surprises.
A really great starting point for year one. This thing being even more accurate will hopefully be a great tool for all college football fans.
Week 14 Current Ranking Forecasts
Here is the current forecast for the Week 14 rankings. As a reminder, here is how the Rankings Right Now algorithm figures out how to rank each team before, during, and after the games have completed.
For games that have not yet been played, it takes the Las Vegas spread for each game to identify an “expected” score
For games in progress, it uses the same “expected” score until the start of the second half, when it then references the live game score
For games that have completed, it uses the final score of the game
We’re All Going To Learn
The biggest game by far is #5 Indiana vs #2 Ohio State. All the people who like to shake their fist in the air and say Indiana shouldn’t be ranked this high due to their strength of schedule will finally get to see if they are right or not. Indiana is currently a 10 point favorite, which has the algorithm predicting they would have enough to move up to #1. I think that is a slight stretch given we know who the winner was between Oregon and OSU, but what would it look like if Indiana can pull off the upset in Columbus?
Using the What If simulation tool, we can see how things adjust if Indiana would win 27-24. That would send Ohio State down to #6, but Indiana would only climb up to #4. Personally, I’d think they would move up past Penn State since IU would just have beaten a team that beat Penn State. I think
However, the smart folks over here at Rankings Right Now are always tweaking and playing around with new algorithms. Here is the latest and greatest one to come out (still in Beta, not released to the public yet) and it makes a LOT more sense.
Oregon beat OSU, they’re ranked ahead
Indiana beats OSU, they’re ranked ahead
OSU beat Penn State, they’re ranked ahead
Logic makes sense to me! Ohio State’s only losses would be to #1 and #2.
A G5 Threat
Right now, there is supposed to be a Group of Five (G5) included in the college football playoff. For the last few weeks, everyone has assumed that Boise State could be the team to hold that title.
However, there is still one more lurking around the corner with a great chance of making a huge case for their playoff resume, and that is Army. Army squares off against Notre Dame this weekend, which will be the last tough game of Notre Dame’s schedule (depending on how you view USC), and Army’s last big chance to play a highly ranked team. Both should be firing everything they have.
Currently, Notre Dame is a two touchdown favorite against Army. What happens if Army can run a stealth operation against the Fighting Irish? With the assumption that all other predicted outcomes come true (specifically Indiana losing to Ohio State), Army is predicted to jump to #14 while Notre Dame will fall to #11.
This is EXTREMELY significant because in this scenario, Boise State would be the highest ranked team of the top four ranked conferences. This would mean SMU would actually be out of the playoff and Army would be the G5 candidate for the playoff. Notre Dame doesn’t belong to a conference, so they would be right on the edge of falling out of the playoff as well.
This game should be watched closer than the Indiana and Ohio State game in my opinion.
Simulations
The image below shows the schools who had at least a 0.1% chance of cracking into the top 15 according to the Rankings Right Now machine learning model after simulating Week 13 10,000 times.
Windows are starting to close up for which teams have a chance to move around in the rankings.
Oregon has a 77% chance of hanging onto the #1 ranking on their bye week
Texas, Penn State, and Indiana all have shots at the #2 ranking with an Ohio State loss
Back to back weeks where Colorado doesn’t have a ton of room to move up in the rankings, even with a win
Arizona State with approximately an 8% chance of being a top 15 team after being unranked last week, which is crazy for this late in the year
College Rank Em
A known champ and future College Rank Em Hall of Fame inductee asorensen89 was the winner of the Week 12 College Rank Em competition. I thought it was fun to look at the winner’s submission last time, so I included it again this time to show people what a winning submission looks like.
Reminder for everyone to get their picks in for the College Rank Em Challenge! Deadline closes at noon ET kickoff.
Never heard of this before? Check out this video that walks through the fun competition!
What’s Next?
Watch football all day Saturday
Newsletter Sunday morning going through everything we watched over the weekend and the final Rankings Right Now predictions for the Week 14 Playoff Committee Poll
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Access the What If simulation tool to see how your predicted outcomes will affect the projected rankings
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