This is a response to David Hale's rundown of which teams should be ranked higher by the Committee. I made my own anti-Committee post here, this is about his complaints which are...unusual in that he switches metrics to suit his argument.
Here's his list of teams that were slighted by the Committee:
- BYU - agreed, BYU should be higher, they have the 2nd best résumé of any team. And Hale points out that BYU's detractors point to things like FPI and SP+, which point to future performance (or really, tell how good a team has really been outside of the Win-Loss column). Keep a note of this, because in a few bullet points the idea of the résumé goes out the window in Hale's analysis.
- SMU - agreed, to a point. SMU probably has a better résumé than Notre Dame, but a week ago it wasn't close. Notre Dame a few spots ahead of SMU isn't going to matter much in the long run
- Mississippi - disagree strongly. Here's where Hale suddenly embraces FPI and SP+ noting that Ole Miss ranks in the top five! And then he introduces the "explosiveness" stats to show that...they've played well despite losing 2 games. So how dare the Committee demote the Rebels for having no wins over the rest of the top 25! They're explosive!! He then cherry-picks some stats to make Ole Miss look deserving of a higher ranking than Alabama (who beat Georgia, and Missouri 34-0), by expanding the field to the SP+ top 40:
Yeah, that's not convincing. Bad cherry pick, but makes a good tweet maybe? But like he said, they have a shot at Georgia which will give them their first top 25 win. After beating Georgia, their résumé actually WILL look like Alabama's, and then we can talk about who should be ranked higher. Right now it's clearly Alabama; the Committee got that right 100%. - Army - now we're just getting stupid. Army at #25 is a gift, plain and simple. Yes, they've played very well, that's why they got in at #25 with no wins over any decent team. Army has zero right to complain about being ranked too low. Hale's gripe?
Last season, when Liberty waltzed through its weakest-in-the-nation schedule, the committee had no objections to giving the Flames enough love to make a New Year's Six bowl.
Last year undefeated Liberty wasn't even ranked at #25 until the FOURTH Committee poll. Yes, for the first 3 weeks the Flames were not on the list at all. So Army is three weeks ahead of where Liberty was.
And that's the point. Liberty eventually made the New Year's bowl because they kept winning and the other candidates lost. Army is already #25, has a big game vs. Notre Dame that will give them an actual team to play, and every chance to pass Boise State if indeed they should.
Suddenly Hale is silent on SP+ and FPI, which ranks Army an abysmal #34 and #52 in the nation.
Maybe they're "explosive" ? - He lists Florida State as a joke but lists 4 more teams that were snubbed:
- South Carolina - Agree! And I said so in my post
- Vanderbilt - Disagree! Because South Carolina should have replaced Missouri, and without Missouri in, Vanderbilt (who lost to GEORGIA STATE) should not be in, because Missouri beat Vanderbilt. Simple math.
- Georgia - Maybe? I will say I am puzzled why the Committee moved Ohio State ahead of Georgia given that the rest of their exercise was simply to repeat the AP top 25, but there's no major reason Georgia has to be ahead. They do have more good wins, I suppose.
- Louisville - They're fairly rated by the Committee, who even made sure they're ahead of Clemson. They have 3 losses. They want a higher rank? They should win some games. Clemson was a good start.
Bottom line, if you're going to criticize the Committee (and we should) then be consistent on whether you think résumé or performance metrics are more important. For the Committee's job it should be almost all résumé. At this point teams don't have enough of one to make that the sole judgement, but it works already in most cases.
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