What does it Take to Make, and Win, the College Football Playoff?

J.D. Hall October 18, 2024

Hey there, sports fans! We are now 10 years into the College Football Playoff Era in college football and I wanted to take a look at the offensive and defensive rankings for the teams to make it and to win. We’ve all seen similar things done with the NCAA tournament and the KenPom ratings, so I thought it would be a fun little exercise for football as well to see if we can maybe project the possible teams for the CFP this season. Admittedly, things are going to change for teams making it now with the 12-team playoff, but I would imagine the winner’s stats will hold pretty close to what we’ve seen the last 10 seasons.

First, let’s talk about the KenPom numbers as a little refresher. For the previous 19 NCAA Tournament champions the average offensive and defensive ratings were 6.7 and 9.1, respectively. Going back a little further, 21 of the last 22 NCAA Champions ranked in the top 21 in offensive rating and 19 of the last 22 were in the top 31 of defensive rating. 15 of the last 16 years, the champion was ranked in the top 35 in both. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to what we came here for.

Just so you know where I got my numbers from, I used Team Rankings and I went back to the first year of the CFP, 2014. Since then, 26/40 teams were ranked in the top 30 in both the offensive and defensive rankings. Digging down a little more and 34/40 were ranked in the top 15 of one or the other.

Looking at the rankings as a whole, to make the CFP, teams had to have an average offensive ranking of 21 and an average defensive ranking of 25. That’s pretty similar to the numbers we saw for the NCAA tourney champions. That wasn’t enough to come out on top of the CFP though.

Where does Kentucky go from Here?

Over the 10 years of the CFP, the winning teams had an average offensive ranking of 19. Offensively, the number bore out to being very similar to the number to make the playoff. It was very different on the defensive side of the ball, however. The winning teams, in the CFP era, had an average defensive ranking of 10. That’s 15 spots higher in the rankings. The adage that defense wins championships held true. Yes, you had to have a top 20 offense to win a CFP championship, but you had to have an elite, top 10 defense to win the title.

Now that we got that out of the way, the question is, ‘Which teams meet the criteria for the CFP?’. Currently there are 9 teams that meet the average offensive and defensive rankings; Miami (1/16), Ole Miss (2/18), OSU (5/4), Texas (6/1), IU (9/11), PSU (14/6), Army (15/7), Oregon (16/19) and finally, Washington (18/9). These are all the teams in the country that meet the Top 21 and Top25 for offense and defense. We know that all these teams won’t make it because of how the spots are filled for the CFP. The 4 highest ranked conference champions are seeded 1-4 with the next highest ranked 5th. The final 7 spots are for at-large picks from the 7 highest remaining ranked teams.

For the sake of this article, we will use the AP rankings to flesh out the CFP bracket;

1 seed: Texas, 2 seed: Oregon, 3 seed: Miami, 4 seed: Iowa State, 5 seed: Boise St, 6 seed: Penn State, 7 seed: OSU, 8 seed: Georgia, 9 seed: Alabama, 10 seed: LSU, 11 seed: Clemson, 12 seed: Tennessee.

Looking at this potential playoff, there are only 5 teams that meet the offensive and defensive rankings to make the old playoff format; Texas, Miami, Oregon, Penn State and Ohio State. From that list, there are only 3 teams that meet the offensive and defensive rankings of the winners; Texas, Ohio State and Penn State.

Penn State Rallies Past USC in Overtime Thriller, 33-30

Does this mean that the winner of the College Football Playoff will come from Texas, Penn State and Ohio State? Of course not, that’s why you play the game. Certainly, any of the teams that make the playoff are going to have a chance to win it, especially if they get a top 4 seed due to the bye, but I thought this would be an interesting thing to look at now that we are at the midway point of this season.

Whatever ends up happening, I know that we are going to be in for an exciting end to the season, as well as a scintillating playoff as we enter a new era of the College Football Playoff.