Well, for once – I got the same Top 4 the Committee likely will. If we’re dealing with a 4-team tournament with some primacy for conference champions (some!) and use the precedents established since 2014, Georgia-Alabama-Michigan-Cincinnati is a clear result. Anyway, here are my rankings – I used a Bradley-Terry model where results are weighted 70% for whether the team won and 30% for margin of victory. I assume a lognormal distribution for the victory margins so larger wins have diminishing marginal return.
| Rank | Team | W | L | Rtg |
| 1 | Georgia | 12 | 1 | 1542.111 |
| 2 | Alabama | 12 | 1 | 1318.792 |
| 3 | Michigan | 12 | 1 | 1275.144 |
| 4 | Cincinnati | 13 | 0 | 989.2348 |
| 5 | Ohio State | 10 | 2 | 947.6711 |
| 6 | Notre Dame | 11 | 1 | 673.616 |
| 7 | Ole Miss | 10 | 2 | 569.9788 |
| 8 | Michigan State | 10 | 2 | 560.2635 |
| 9 | Oklahoma State | 11 | 2 | 510.554 |
| 10 | Pittsburgh | 11 | 2 | 497.515 |
| 11 | Baylor | 11 | 2 | 475.6873 |
| 12 | Wisconsin | 8 | 4 | 440.528 |
| 13 | Penn State | 7 | 5 | 412.945 |
| 14 | Arkansas | 8 | 4 | 397.7318 |
| 15 | Clemson | 9 | 3 | 397.2243 |
| 16 | Iowa | 10 | 3 | 378.8301 |
| 17 | Oklahoma | 10 | 2 | 377.283 |
| 18 | Wake Forest | 10 | 3 | 355.011 |
| 19 | Purdue | 8 | 4 | 352.4661 |
| 20 | Texas A&M | 8 | 4 | 346.7994 |
| 21 | NC State | 9 | 3 | 336.8678 |
| 22 | Utah | 10 | 3 | 331.4708 |
| 23 | Kentucky | 9 | 3 | 291.116 |
| 24 | Auburn | 6 | 6 | 288.5009 |
| 25 | Minnesota | 8 | 4 | 280.3903 |
| 26 | BYU | 10 | 2 | 279.6677 |
| 27 | Mississippi State | 7 | 5 | 276.8592 |
| 28 | Tennessee | 7 | 5 | 257.9229 |
| 29 | Houston | 11 | 2 | 257.566 |
| 30 | Iowa State | 7 | 5 | 245.4181 |
| 31 | Oregon | 10 | 3 | 241.0568 |
| 32 | UTSA | 12 | 1 | 234.8766 |
| 33 | Army | 8 | 3 | 221.0776 |
| 34 | LSU | 6 | 6 | 217.1187 |
| 35 | Appalachian State | 10 | 3 | 213.8836 |
| 36 | Miami-FL | 7 | 5 | 208.4756 |
| 37 | Louisiana | 12 | 1 | 202.975 |
| 38 | Boise State | 7 | 5 | 197.8165 |
| 39 | Air Force | 8 | 3 | 189.4849 |
| 40 | San Diego State | 11 | 2 | 188.8045 |
| 41 | Kansas State | 7 | 5 | 187.6265 |
| 42 | UCLA | 8 | 4 | 172.5549 |
| 43 | Fresno State | 9 | 3 | 172.51 |
| 44 | Maryland | 6 | 6 | 162.156 |
| 45 | Florida | 6 | 6 | 161.1614 |
| 46 | Western Kentucky | 8 | 5 | 160.2666 |
| 47 | Virginia | 6 | 6 | 157.9867 |
| 48 | Nevada | 8 | 4 | 156.9019 |
| 49 | North Carolina | 6 | 6 | 155.8882 |
| 50 | Louisville | 6 | 6 | 155.5281 |
| 51 | SMU | 8 | 4 | 154.9408 |
| 52 | Texas | 5 | 7 | 151.7687 |
| 53 | Nebraska | 3 | 9 | 151.4617 |
| 54 | West Virginia | 6 | 6 | 148.4782 |
| 55 | Arizona State | 8 | 4 | 143.506 |
| 56 | Utah State | 10 | 3 | 142.7469 |
| 57 | Illinois | 5 | 7 | 141.1069 |
| 58 | Oregon State | 7 | 5 | 132.4185 |
| 59 | Coastal Carolina | 10 | 2 | 131.7849 |
| 60 | South Carolina | 6 | 6 | 126.7897 |
| 61 | Washington State | 7 | 5 | 125.5055 |
| 62 | Texas Tech | 6 | 6 | 122.7546 |
| 63 | Virginia Tech | 6 | 6 | 122.6132 |
| 64 | Northern Illinois | 10 | 3 | 122.268 |
| 65 | UAB | 8 | 4 | 116.8458 |
| 66 | UCF | 8 | 4 | 116.7661 |
| 67 | Florida State | 5 | 7 | 114.714 |
| 68 | Central Michigan | 8 | 4 | 114.0551 |
| 69 | Rutgers | 5 | 7 | 113.8425 |
| 70 | Liberty | 7 | 5 | 113.2017 |
| 71 | Missouri | 6 | 6 | 112.2654 |
| 72 | East Carolina | 7 | 5 | 111.4839 |
| 73 | Syracuse | 5 | 7 | 107.0232 |
| 74 | Boston College | 6 | 6 | 100 |
| 75 | Marshall | 7 | 5 | 99.11268 |
| 76 | Western Michigan | 7 | 5 | 98.18761 |
| 77 | Toledo | 7 | 5 | 93.81419 |
| 78 | TCU | 5 | 7 | 88.86969 |
| 79 | Miami-OH | 6 | 6 | 88.80395 |
| 80 | Georgia State | 7 | 5 | 88.19083 |
| 81 | Tulsa | 6 | 6 | 84.08245 |
| 82 | Memphis | 6 | 6 | 78.41362 |
| 83 | Georgia Tech | 3 | 9 | 71.75781 |
| 84 | Ball State | 6 | 6 | 70.67079 |
| 85 | Indiana | 2 | 10 | 69.40019 |
| 86 | Eastern Michigan | 7 | 5 | 68.12039 |
| 87 | Kent State | 7 | 6 | 67.51779 |
| 88 | California | 5 | 7 | 66.70162 |
| 89 | USC | 4 | 8 | 61.90411 |
| 90 | Navy | 3 | 8 | 61.30318 |
| 91 | UTEP | 7 | 5 | 55.47675 |
| 92 | North Texas | 6 | 6 | 55.30717 |
| 93 | Northwestern | 3 | 9 | 53.70231 |
| 94 | Old Dominion | 6 | 6 | 51.31552 |
| 95 | MTSU | 6 | 6 | 51.13045 |
| 96 | Hawaii | 6 | 7 | 48.32948 |
| 97 | Colorado | 4 | 8 | 47.88856 |
| 98 | Stanford | 3 | 9 | 47.60946 |
| 99 | Washington | 4 | 8 | 47.25645 |
| 100 | Tulane | 2 | 10 | 45.51491 |
| 101 | Florida Atlantic | 5 | 7 | 43.21701 |
| 102 | Wyoming | 5 | 7 | 42.92941 |
| 103 | Troy | 5 | 7 | 39.28554 |
| 104 | San Jose State | 5 | 7 | 38.79852 |
| 105 | South Alabama | 5 | 7 | 38.15858 |
| 106 | South Florida | 2 | 10 | 34.14912 |
| 107 | Colorado State | 3 | 9 | 33.55807 |
| 108 | LA Monroe | 4 | 8 | 33.24233 |
| 109 | Buffalo | 4 | 8 | 32.97645 |
| 110 | Rice | 4 | 8 | 32.21217 |
| 111 | Duke | 3 | 9 | 31.23477 |
| 112 | Louisiana Tech | 3 | 9 | 30.8129 |
| 113 | UNLV | 2 | 10 | 30.24657 |
| 114 | Bowling Green | 4 | 8 | 29.34802 |
| 115 | Charlotte | 5 | 7 | 28.39174 |
| 116 | Kansas | 2 | 10 | 28.33853 |
| 117 | Ohio | 3 | 9 | 25.82674 |
| 118 | Georgia Southern | 3 | 9 | 24.98595 |
| 119 | Texas State | 4 | 8 | 21.64887 |
| 120 | Temple | 3 | 9 | 21.56373 |
| 121 | Arizona | 1 | 11 | 20.39626 |
| 122 | New Mexico | 3 | 9 | 20.33918 |
| 123 | Southern Miss | 3 | 9 | 19.23054 |
| 124 | Arkansas State | 2 | 10 | 18.15005 |
| 125 | Vanderbilt | 2 | 10 | 17.36088 |
| 126 | Akron | 2 | 10 | 14.00195 |
| 127 | Other | 12 | 104 | 13.7638 |
| 128 | New Mexico State | 2 | 10 | 12.67793 |
| 129 | FIU | 1 | 11 | 8.541504 |
| 130 | Connecticut | 1 | 11 | 6.797627 |
| 131 | Massachusetts | 1 | 11 | 5.237565 |
Michigan interestingly falls from #2 to #3 despite a 42-3 win over Iowa. But Alabama beating the #1 team decisively will do that. Georgia had a huge lead in rating entering the weekend so they stay at the top.
Musings About a 16 Team Tournament
Honestly, a “just” 16 team tournament is hard to do. The rankings above are mathematically sound – the model converges after all – but there is a lot of error. This makes sense, college football has so much less interconference competition than basketball, on top just a smaller population of games. What I’ve settled on for the committee of one is using a framework similar to the UEFA Champions League.
With the Champions’ League – countries get various numbers of guaranteed slots based on previous performance. What I did was look at my own rankings from 2008-2019 (I skipped 2020 since the pandemic season had almost no interconference play) and gave the team that was #1 50 points, #2 49 points and so on for the Top 50. Then I used the team’s 3-year performance on a rolling basis and their current conference affiliation. So the slots for 2021 are based on the performance of the conferences’ 2017-2019 performance. I aggregated the non-Power 5 teams into one category “Other”. This allows us to handle the independents as well. Additionally, if we used this framework – most of the lower conferences on their own would not merit a bid.
An obvious alrernative is to just give 10 automatic bids and 6 at-large. But this goes into my own feelings about what sort of tournament do we actually want. Do we really want a first round of matchups which would have been “guarantee games” in September? The aforementioned method I think balances the interests of entertainment with Group of 5 schools having a real shot to prove themselves.
The 16 Team Tournament from the Committee of One
Looking at 2017-2019 performance of the teams in conferences this year – the allocation of teams looks like. The conference champ automatically gets one of the bids:
- ACC (2 teams): Pittsburgh (10), Clemson (15)
- Big 12 (2 teams): Oklahoma State (9), Baylor (11)
- Big Ten (3 teams): Michigan (3), Ohio State (5), Michigan State (8)
- Pac 12 (2 teams): Utah (22), Oregon (31)
- SEC (4 teams): Georgia (1), Alabama (2), Ole Miss (7), Arkansas (14)
- Other (3 teams): Cincinnati (4), Notre Dame (6), BYU (26)
Now, in the 16-team field, I’d definitely do home field for the first round before going to bowl games. Also, we’ll tweak seeds a bit to make sure that 1) the top 4 seeds go to conference champs or independents, 2) teams in the same conference cannot meet in the first round. Controlling for that, the bracket looks like:
- (16) Oregon at (1) Alabama
- (9) Oklahoma State at (8) Michigan State
- (12) Baylor at (5) Georgia
- (13) Clemson at (4) Notre Dame
- (14) Utah at (3) Cincinnati
- (11) Arkansas at (6) Ohio State
- (10) Pittsburgh at (7) Ole Miss
- (15) BYU at (2) Michigan
Wow, I did a good job!
Meadow Muffins of the Mind 
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