As with previous years, attempting to answer "who had the best season?" based upon their full body of evidence doesn't always line up with who the eventual college football champion may be. In a retrodictive ranking system, you seek to evaluate the total quality of evidence, not predict who wins games (or preoccupy ourselves with who won the championship game above all else). Treating playoff games equally with the regular season games, Ohio State's victories over Alabama (who drops to 6) and Oregon (who drops to 4) catapult them up the rankings by subsuming the win networks of both these impressive teams. In a ranking that evaluates all the evidence, however, we can't simply overlook the fact they lost to Virginia Tech (ranked 43). In the end, it's just not enough to get them into the number 1 spot, with Florida State despite a somewhat embarrassing loss to Oregon, holding on to number one (though, it's certainly close!).
Top 25 (Explanation; Full Rankings):
- Florida State
- Ohio State
- TCU
- Oregon
- Michigan State
- Alabama
- UCLA
- Clemson
- Ole Miss
- Arizona State
- Georgia
- Georgia Tech
- Mississippi State
- Boise State
- Missouri
- Baylor
- Auburn
- Arizona
- Wisconsin
- Texas A&M
- Marshall
- Utah
- Oklahoma
- Notre Dame
- Louisville