The 2022 college football season has reached the finish line with Championship Weekend giving us all the clarity we need to feature the College Football Playoff games, New Year’s ball games six, and the final CFP rankings for the year. This is not to say that the CFP selection committee has an easy task ahead if it is, though; It’s just that many of them are cut and dried.
Before we get to the rankings themselves, here’s a refresher listing some of the key points committee members consider when determining a team’s ranking beyond their field record:
- schedule power
- Conference Championships (when decided)
- face to face
- results vs. common opponents
- results vs. ranked opponents
Fortunately, the committee’s definition of “classified opponents” is different from what you’re used to seeing. The ratings they use are the previous week’s CFP ratings. They do not consider where teams rank when playing matches either in the CFP or AP Top 25, etc. Using game time rankings is the most useless way to determine “ranked opponents”; In fact, the commission specifically prohibits the use of any preseason poll that has a starting point.
Note that “Game Control” is not included in the standards. It was never considered even though the term (or similar concepts) have appeared out of the committee chair’s mouth on occasion in the past few full seasons. (The CFP has no way of measuring “control of the game”—I’ve seen the data the committee uses—but let’s not kid ourselves: they’re already talking about it.)
With all of that in mind, here’s what the final CFP ratings will look like. Remember: This is not necessarily how I would vote if I were on the committee. I’m just guessing what they’ll do on Sunday afternoon.
Check out the full Jerry Palm 2022-23 bowl bids.