2023: Week 14 (Conference Championships)

2023 is the last year of the four-team playoffs (and the PAC-12, sadly).  So, of course there was going to be a lot of drama picking the four teams that will go to the playoffs.  Conference Championships were yesterday.  The playoff committee made their picks known today:

1. Michigan (13-0, Big Ten champions)
2. Washington (13-0, PAC-12 champions)
3. Texas (12-1, Big-12 champions)
4. Alabama (12-1, SEC champions)
5. (Didn't make it) Florida State (13-0, ACC champions)
6. (Didn't make it) Georgia (12-1, lost to Alabama in the SEC championship game)

There's quite a bit of furor about putting Alabama over Florida State.  I won't get into all the controversy, though I disagreed that Michigan should be above Washington.  But, let's see what my (buggy) ranker says!  I stuck with the parameters from before: 35 max point differential and using the quarter-circle function.

Ranking Stats

Upsets: 722 of 4160 games (17.35576923076923%)
Margins of Victory in upsets: 7618 (8.853918480724305% of total margin points)

That is an improvement from last week!  Let's see how the top 25 shook out:

1. Washington
2. Florida St
3. Texas
4. Oregon
5. Michigan
6. Louisville
7. Ohio State
8. Oklahoma
9. Penn State
10. Notre Dame
11. Arizona
12. Alabama
13. North Carolina St
14. Oregon St
15. Georgia
16. Kansas St
17. Duke
18. Clemson
19. North Carolina
20. Oklahoma St
21. James Madison
22. Kutztown
23. Kansas
24. Miami FL
25. LSU

There's one obvious outlier in Kutztown, but otherwise I think this is pretty good.  I am looking forward to rerunning things from this season once I get this ranker working better!