After the big losses from #3 Georgia and #4 Miami, there was going to be a lot of natural movement within the top 25 rankings for the Playoff Committee to sort out. They released their latest round of rankings on Tuesday night. How close was the Rankings Right Now machine learning model to predicting the outcome?
Head To Head
Here are the results of the Rankings Right Now forecasts of the top 25 rankings compared to the Playoff Committee. As a reminder, the way to view this grid is to look at it from the perspective from the Playoff Committee.
For example:
BYU was ranked #6 by the Playoff Committee
Rankings Right Now predicted BYU would be #8
Therefore, in the #6 ranking row, the BYU prediction was off by two
Initial Reactions
I am in line with the Rankings Right Now predictions. Typically, I critique the algorithm a little bit, but the way the rankings shaped up, I could see why the algorithm was good up top, good from #12-#17, but struggled from #5-#11.
Tennessee Falls
Yes, Tennessee technically did not move from their ranking, but it actually means they dropped due to Miami and Georgia moving below the Vols. Indiana and BYU were below Tennessee at the beginning of the week and all three teams won their games. However, Indiana struggled against Michigan, and BYU won in controversial fashion. Tennessee blew out Mississippi State who is having a horrible year.
Why did Indiana and BYU jump Tennessee all of the sudden? From my perspective, nothing really changed between the three teams. Did BYU and Indiana just deserve to be higher and this was an over-correction? Did Tennessee need to win by 60 in order to make a big enough statement?
This three team enigma was one of the reasons the algorithm had a tough time predicting the results in the upper middle rankings.
The Math Is Not Mathing
Let me just throw out a scenario real quick.
Team A is ranked #3. They lose to #16 on the road
Team B is ranked #4. They lose to an unranked team on the road
Who should be ranked higher? Probably Team A, right? They were already ranked higher and lost to a tougher opponent.
Welp, that’s not what ended up happening. Team A was Georgia, and Team B was Miami. Miami dropped five spots to #9, while Georgia dropped nine spots to #12. Why? How does that make any sense?
If the argument is that Miami only has one loss, then why weren’t they ahead of Georgia in the first place? Georgia ran through Texas a short while ago, and now they’re nine spots behind them?
Strange. Very strange.
A Damn Good Prediction
Congrats to this week’s winner of the College Football Pick Em challenge, DaBerm. This challenge is extremely hard given that you make your rankings predictions BEFORE the start of Saturday’s games. As a reminder, here is how the point system works.
10 points for a correctly predicted team
3 points for a team who was 1 rank spot off
0 points otherwise
Here is the winning submission. With this output, this means they correctly predicted Miami and Georgia would lose this weekend! Had to give props for the bold predictions. Nice work, I’ll get you some Rankings Right Now swag in the future.
I plan on making this a part of the website during the offseason where you can see your results and don’t have to just see the top winner in the newsletter.
We do this challenge each week. Make sure you get your picks in by noon (ET) kickoff on Saturday to risk nothing it all for being crowned the King of Rankings.
What’s Next
Another good round of high profile matchups that can have big ranking implications
#1 Oregon vs Wisconsin
#3 Texas vs Arkansas
Kansas vs #6 BYU
#7 Tennessee vs #12 Georgia
#20 Clemson vs Pittsburgh
Utah vs #17 Colorado
#23 Missouri vs #21 South Carolina
Newsletter Friday morning going over all of the huge matchups and how the rankings might look once it is all said and done
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