Texas A&M fans will be watching closely tonight as the final CFP committee rankings before Selection Sunday are set to be revealed. This is the most uncertain that the Maroon and White faithful have been since the initial rankings came out: once the Aggies were set at three, there were some faint hopes for a move up, but things have been pretty static.
That third overall ranking, of course, was itself a flashing warning light for the way the committee was going about this process. Despite promises that Strength of Record measures would be taken into account by the committee after this past offseason, the committee has not followed any accepted SOR metric— nor, indeed, any accepted SOS metric— in their evaluations of A&M vs the teams above them.
For tonight, that's a pretty bad sign. The Aggies, now at 11-1, will fall to the next tier of teams below where they were: the comparison is now against Texas Tech, Oregon, Georgia, and Ole Miss rather than Indiana and Ohio State— and if previous behavior is any indication, that means the Aggies are about to get the short end of the stick again.
Texas A&M fans have little confidence in CFP Committee to do the right thing
If there's one thing that every fan knows about college football, it's that not all win/loss records are created the same— hence, the fact that A&M, Tech, Oregon, Georgia, and Ole Miss will not all be tied for the third spot. Naively, though, the committee is apparently using a strength of schedule model that ignores that very principle: the way that SOS is calculated is based on opponent win-loss record, as well as the win-loss record of those opponents.
That works in things like basketball and baseball RPI thanks to the much larger sample size from each team, as well as the far more extensive non-conference schedules. In football, though, it is nothing short of completely foolish to use: each team plays only three to four non-conference games, and especially with the overly-inflated conference size we now see, this kind of SOS calculation is less reliable than ever.
The advanced metrics that judge this kind of thing have the Aggies in a great spot, even after the loss. Parker Fleming of CFB-Graphs has their resume as the third-best in the nation (even above Georgia!), Kelley Ford of KFordRatings has their resume as the fourth-best in the nation (again ahead of Georgia), Bill Connelly of SP+ has their resume as the fifth-best in the nation, and Brian Fremeau of the FEI ratings has their resume as the 4th/3rd/1st most impressive based on three different evaluative criteria.
It's important to note that some of these are based on how hard it would be to achieve the Aggies' current win/loss record by itself, and others are based on how hard it would be to achieve the Aggies' current win/loss record with statistical performances in the games taken into account. In other words, no matter which way you slice it, the Aggies should be no lower than fifth in tonight's rankings.
That's not what will happen, of course. The committee is more than likely going to put the Aggies down at 7th, at the bottom of the group of one-loss teams, based on an archaic and completely flawed strength of schedule metric. Especially considering the departure of Lane Kiffin from Ole Miss, there is absolutely no way to justify the Aggies being that low— and yet, they'll find some way to do it.
The reason falling to 7 is so impactful is that the level of competition in round one of the playoff ratchets up by a huge amount. Right now, the 7 seed would play 10-seed Alabama in round one, while the 6-seed would play either Virginia or Duke. The 5-seed would draw James Madison, North Texas, or Tulane, depending on who the highest-rated G5 champion is.
That's a massive difference. The Aggies have earned their way to a top-5 seed if not higher, even with an 11-1 record— but this committee has shown, time and time again, that they are committed to shortchanging Texas A&M.