Sports analytics from Laura Albert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering

NCAA Football Rankings: December 3, 2017 (Selection day!)

Here are my Selection Sunday NCAA football rankings. I was sad when I crunched the numbers this morning. The College Football Playoff has been announced, and it looks like Wisconsin was officially ranked sixth and will miss out on the playoff. For what it’s worth, I have Wisconsin ranked fourth.

Compared to my rankings from last week, we can see that Clemson went from second to first, Georgia went from fourth to second, Oklahoma went from eighth to third, Wisconsin went from first to fourth, and Alabama went from third to seventh. Not playing in a conference championship game is one less potential victory to improve a team’s mathematical ranking, and that seems to matter a lot to prove the team deserves to be ranked at the very top.

  1. Clemson
  2. Georgia
  3. Oklahoma
  4. Wisconsin
  5. UCF
  6. Ohio St
  7. Alabama
  8. Penn St
  9. Auburn
  10. Notre Dame
  11. USC
  12. Stanford
  13. Miami FL
  14. Washington
  15. Memphis
  16. Michigan St
  17. Boise St
  18. TCU
  19. FL Atlantic
  20. Toledo
  21. LSU
  22. Virginia Tech
  23. Northwestern
  24. Oklahoma St
  25. Iowa

Here is the B1G conference, ranked.

4 Wisconsin
6 Ohio St
8 Penn St
16 Michigan St
23 Northwestern
25 Iowa
29 Michigan
42 Purdue
71 Minnesota
79 Indiana
82 Nebraska
88 Maryland
101 Rutgers
116 Illinois