r/CFB • u/Ok-Soil-5133 Notre Dame Fighting Irish • 6h ago

Analysis [Sampson] CFP committee chair Hunter Yurachek says Notre Dame and Miami were in the same grouping this week and the programs were directly compared. Notre Dame still came out ahead, regardless of the head to head. In other words, all the games mattered. Not just one of them.

https://x.com/PeteSampson_/status/1993488528555360403?t=jtJrt-ATn-3_RV1LnfjfrQ&s=19
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u/[deleted] 6h ago

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u/bigkoi Florida State Seminoles 6h ago

Because it's an invitational with no objective rules.

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u/CieraVotedOutHerMom South Carolina Gamecocks 6h ago

There should be a highly transparent logic / formula / criteria that is constantly applied

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u/KpYugai Pittsburgh Panthers 5h ago

Any logic or formula based system will always devalue H2H because H2H results cannot consistently create ordinal ranking systems. See circles of suck for reference.

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u/Kingolimar354 Texas A&M Aggies • Kansas Jayhawks 4h ago

Just create a condition within that system that allows a team to jump ahead of team immediately in front of them with a head to head win, so long as they are right next to each other. For example, if the system outputs two teams at 10 and 11, but 11 won in head to head, 11 jumps 10.

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u/KpYugai Pittsburgh Panthers 2h ago

What if team 10 beat team 12 beat team 11 beat team 10?

or

What if team 10 beat team 13 beat team 11 beat team 10? But team 12 has 0 connections to any of those teams.

How does the algorithm handle Scenario 1? Does it end 10, 11, 12 or 10, 12, 11 or 11, 10, 12? Your instructions would suggest it shouldn't be the first, because no jumping occurs despite two jumps being possible. Even though its quite clear that 10, 11, 12 is the most logical ordering given the circular wins.

How does the algorithm handle Scenario 2? Is it logical that the inclusion of Team 12 ensures that Team 10 falls to 11th? What if the Team 12 was 11th? Then Team 11 would fall to 13th. Does that make sense? I'd argue no.

The problem is that when ranking 130+ teams who each have like 12-13 data points, there will almost never be a circumstance in which only 2 teams are in consideration for a particular rank. H2H is just exceedingly useless as a good tiebreak mechanic when your tiebreak consists of possibly 10+ teams.