☀️ Good morning and welcome back to The Nosebleeds.

🧑‍🎓 Every year, which teams should be selected for the College Football Playoff (CFP) sparks extreme debate, but the selections made this year may be the most controversial since the four-team playoff was introduced.

✔️ Did the Selection Committee get it right? Let’s take a look and see…

‼️ Florida State makes history…

…as the first Power Five school to go undefeated, win their conference championship, and miss the CFP!

🙈 

Without a doubt, I think we can all agree that the seven best college football teams are (in no particular order):

• Michigan Wolverines (Qualified for CFP)

• Washington Huskies (Q)

• Texas Longhorns (Q)

• Alabama Crimson Tide (Q)

• Florida State Seminoles (Tough)

• Georgia Bulldogs (Three-peat dreams are dead)

• Ohio State Buckeyes (Can’t beat Michigan)

Florida State’s exclusion from this year’s CFP has been one of the most controversial omissions in the history of the playoff. But the end of the day, the playoff is supposed to include the best four teams in NCAA Division 1 football—so let’s dive into some of the numbers and see if this was the case.

The below chart incorporates three different ranking systems to help paint us a picture of who the best teams are:

1. The actual NCAA Football rankings

2. Massey Ratings

3. ESPN Football Power Index (FPI)

We then used these rankings to develop a composite ranking:

Some takeaways:

• Michigan is the undisputed #1 team

• Ohio State is probably a CFP-quality team but they needed a miracle to qualify after losing to Michigan

• We are in for a wonderful Rose Bowl🌹 between Michigan and Alabama on New Year’s Day

But here’s the thing about those composite rankings—unless a team that didn’t win their conference championship is clearly better than a conference champion, they cannot be in the CFP. Therefore, we will eliminate Georgia and Ohio State from our playoff contention, leaving us with five teams to fill four spots.

So if Nosebleed Sports was in charge of selecting the CFP, this is how it would look:

Sorry, Seminoles. Y’all were never playoff worthy.

🤔 NCAAF Trivia

Washington’s Michael (big 🍆) Penix Jr. is the only Heisman Trophy nominee participating in the CFP.

• Question: who was the last Heisman Trophy winner to win the National Championship in the same year?

Answer at the bottom.

👀 Looking ahead to 2024—the 12-team playoff

Next season, we won’t have to worry about a team like Florida State missing the CFP. Heck, we won’t even have to worry about teams like Ohio State and Georgia missing the playoff, because a 12-team playoff will be implemented for the next college football season.

They say you should always live in the moment, but man, I can’t help but fantasize what a 12-team playoff would’ve looked like for this season… and luckily, I don’t have to thanks to this tweet!

Football porn 😍 

Can’t wait for next season!

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• Trivia Answer: LSU’s Joe Burrow in 2019