Yeah, I shouldn’t have used the word ‘prove’. Perhaps ‘demonstrate’ would have been a better choice.
I don’t disagree, and I haven’t found any stats that don’t show that Bama isn’t a top four team right now. My (old) eye test tells me that they are certainly worthy of being in the CFP, but a loss to Georgia would almost certainly knock them out of the playoffs. Unless 2 of Michigan, Cincy, and Okie State also lose.
I wasn’t trying to bash Alabama specifically, just point out that the rankings are generally bullshit because they’re so subjective and so much emphasis is put on wins/losses to the detriment of other statistics and metrics.
If you want a good example of it, look at the F+ ratings for Texas A&M (my alma mater). They’re 7th nationally by that metric, but IIRC, they’re 24th in the AP poll this week. That’s a pretty crazy spread- I think they’re likely better than a lot of higher ranked teams, but 7th? I don’t know about that.
It’s not about a won-loss record. Strength of schedule plays a significant role.
With that in mind, Cinncy doesn’t belong at all.
Interestingly, in this and Sagarin’s rankings, Ohio State is still ranked higher than the Michigan after this weekend.
Weird stuff happens when you break transitivity: Michigan beat Ohio State, Ohio State beat Michigan State, Michigan State beat Michigan.
According to these rankings, Notre Dame has the 16th-toughest Strength of Schedule, and Cincy is at 49. Cincy is unbeaten; Notre Dame lost once, to Cincy.
Should Dame be ranked higher than Cincy?
Therein lies the rub though, right? How to balance wins versus SOS, style points, etc.
My suggestion would be to use the football selection criteria that the NCAA already uses. SOS is determined by the winning percentage of your opponents and their opponents but is given equal weight to results vs common opponents and head to head matchups. The performance in game is only considered as a second level tie breaker for inclusion in the tournament.
The committee lost whatever shred of credibility it had remaining when it refused to put Cincinnati in the initial top 4, despite being convincingly undefeated in a conference that is essentially indistinguishable from the lower G5 conferences.
As a UCF fan, I was initially upset about the Big XII expansion, but once Cincy showed that the committee needle still hadn’t moved, I realized the AAC was never going to get a fair shake.