So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night to Michigan State, Oregon, and Wake Forest as those three teams were eliminated from playoff contention. If chalk holds, our projected playoff field is Georgia, Ohio State, Cincinnati, and Oklahoma State. Michigan replaces Ohio State if the Wolverines finally win the Big Game and take care of business in the conference championship game. Alabama controls its destiny as well. If the Tide beat Georgia in the SEC title game, the Bulldogs could finish outside our top four if up against a 12-1 Oklahoma State. Although very unlikely scenarios exist that would allow a two-loss Alabama to finish in our top four, it is absurd that this possibility is being discussed as highly likely in the real world. Who else but Alabama would be considered with two losses, only one ranked win, and a non-conference schedule that includes Mercer, Southern Mississippi, and New Mexico State? This demonstrates just how awful beauty contest rules are that seek to reward the best teams simply because they are judged to be the best teams. It should not matter if Alabama is the greatest collection of talent ever assembled. The Tide will not have accomplished top four results if they suffer a second loss.

The FCS playoff field is set. The Power Points Standings (PPS) matched the committee on six of eight seeds and 11 of 13 at-large selections. The committee seeded Sacramento State and Montana while the PPS favored Kennesaw State and Eastern Washington. The committee selected Southeastern Louisiana and Southern Illinois for the playoffs despite season ending losses which knocked those teams out of our playoff field. The PPS favored Monmouth and Eastern Kentucky. Monmouth lost a showdown for the Big South title to Kennesaw State while Eastern Kentucky rallied to beat Jacksonville State in overtime in what amounted to a play-in game for the PPS playoff field. The FCS Standings below list playoff matches in purple. Teams favored by the PPS only and committee only are listed in blue and red respectively. Committee seeds are listed in parentheses. The top eight teams listed in purple are the PPS seeds in that order.

Finally, a popular argument against using rules like our system is that there are too many teams playing two few games to compare teams in this manner. Therefore, using subjective methods is necessary. Of course, this argument does not explain how beauty contest rules get around this “problem”. That said, the FCS includes 128 teams that have participated in 772 total games to date. If the goal were to match the committee on all eight seeds and all 13 at-large selections, I would only need to flip the result of six games to achieve this goal. And these are the results without the benefit of teams playing equal or equal maximum game schedules versus equal classification members only. And games versus higher and lower classification opponents have been assigned artificial values for purposes here. Ultimately, it would be a simple matter to make these rules (or others) known to the teams and leave it up to the teams to beat each other according to the rules in play.