Reactions from Week 10

The first weekend of November in the books. Big matchups, championships being chased - the good stuff!

Week 10 wrap up

For once, the ACC is making things fairly easy.  Meanwhile, the SEC East and B1G West are a mess.  Sometimes you just need one team to win the right game just to knock everyone out of contention.  Or do what the ACC does and eliminate 5 of 7 teams in one division over the course of seven hours.

CFP Bowl projections - week 10

These projections are based strictly off of the rankings as provided each week.  The premise is that the committee chooses the highest ranked team available to fill any spots that are vacated by a team moving up into the semi-finals.

Semi-finals (Peach and Fiesta Bowls)

#1 Alabama vs. #4 Texas A&M
#2 Clemson vs. #3 Michigan

Rose Bowl (Pac-12 vs. B1G)
#5 Washington vs. #6 Ohio State

Sugar Bowl (SEC vs. Big 12)
#9 Auburn vs. #14 Oklahoma

Orange Bowl (ACC vs. highest ranked SEC/B1G)
#7 Louisville vs. #8 Wisconsin

Cotton Bowl (at-large vs. Group of 5)
#10 Nebraska vs. #23 Western Michigan

So, we have the top ten represented, plus #14 and #23.  There are 4 B1G teams, 3 SEC teams, 2 ACC teams, 1 Big 12 team, 1 Pac-12 team, and 1 Group of 5 team.

Week 9 Reactions

I intentionally waited until the CFP Rankings release this week to look back on the week gone by. I'll resume doing this on Sunday, but I did want to share some of my initial thoughts on the initial rankings.

Chaos Theory: Week 10

So I get distracted for a couple of weeks and forget to go over the chaos theory, and what happens?  Everybody loses, almost.

Last time I did a Chaos Theory post, we had 11 undefeated teams.    Three weeks later, we're down to 5.  Now, though, none of the undefeated teams are scheduled to play each other, so we could be done.  Or, we could be in for mass chaos, as none of the undefeated teams from the last few weeks have fallen to other undefeated teams.

Chaos is rooting for these teams in week 10:

LSU over Alabama
Maryland over Michigan
Syracuse over Clemson
Cal over Washington
Ball State over Western Michigan

Week 9 wrap up

Chaos reigns, sort of.  A lot of shakeups going on, and a lot of teams officially getting eliminated from contention.  And yes, we know that some of the scenarios are ridiculous, but until teams are officially eliminated, we're keeping track of what keeps them in contention.

ACC Wheel of Destiny update

So I don't junk up the main wrap up post, here's an explanation for why Florida State and NC State are both out of contention for the ACC Atlantic division, even though they could force a tie at 5-3.

Week 8 wrap up

Sorry, Miami, you are still not back.

And Ohio State lost.  Well, that's what I get for deciding to switch to the game on ESPN after baseball because I figured it would be on longer.

Apparently, a lot of teams got gifted with a bye, or nonconference game this week.

Oh, and the magic number is coming back.  As I explain every year, that's determined by taking the team with the most wins in the division and adding the remaining number of games to their loss column, then adding one.  Any team that has the magic number or higher in the loss column is automatically out.  We have a few teams dangerously close to that number.  There's probably a few teams that are pretty much eliminated from contention, but I would have to work through a lot of tiebreakers to be 100% sure.  Since that's usually a waste of time, I'll hold off until announcing them being out until I am sure.

Now, on to the conference races...

Reactions, Post-Week 8

With the second half of the season underway, it's back to jotting down some weekly reactions. See below.

Midterm review

With rough calculations, I have determined that Monday, October 17 is the midpoint of the college football season, beginning on September 1 and ending with the conference championship games of December 3.  (Even if we add the Australia game and Army-Navy, this is still the midpoint.)

Let's assess where we are this season.