How much does recruiting impact who makes the College Football Playoff?

Evaluating the 2015 College Football Playoff against recruiting figures

The first College Football Playoff yielded a thrilling pair of semifinals and a surprise from the No. 4 seed as Ohio State rode third-string quarterback Cardale Jones to the Big Ten championship, a Sugar Bowl upset of Alabama, and a championship victory over Oregon. The second edition of the Playoff went far closer to chalk, as Clemson and Alabama entered the postseason clearly atop the rankings.

Clemson finished undefeated as the ACC champion, and no other team finished without a loss. Alabama ran the gauntlet of the SEC schedule with a single loss, giving them cachet that no other conference champion could match. Entering conference championship weekend, the last two spots were effectively sealed up already, though this was the first time the committee was forced to debate the merits of a one-loss team that didn’t win its conference.

The Big Ten seemingly set up a straightforward path for one of its teams to get into the College Football Playoff. Iowa was 12-0 and ranked No. 4, while Michigan State was right behind at No. 5. While the Spartans suffered a one-point loss to a 6-6 Nebraska team on the road in early November, the combination of a win over Iowa and an earlier win over Ohio State to break the tie for the Big Ten East title opened the door for Mark Dantonio’s team.

That left a question around the fourth spot and the right to face undefeated Clemson. Oklahoma entered championship weekend at No. 3 in the College Football Playoff rankings, but the Big 12 had no title game at that point to give the Sooners a 13th data point for the committee. After defeating the Hawkeyes, Michigan State leapfrogged Oklahoma and presented a dilemma for the selectors.

Ohio State’s only loss was a three-point defeat to Michigan State. Iowa also suffered a three-point defeat to the Spartans in the Big Ten championship in Indianapolis. Stanford also had an argument as the Pac-12 champion, though the Cardinal suffered a season-opening loss at 10-win Northwestern and also lost to Oregon by two points. Oklahoma only lost once, but that was a loss in the Red River Shootout against a Texas team that finished just 5-7 in Charlie Strong’s sophomore campaign.

The committee ultimately went with Oklahoma. In the process, two teams with superior talent according to the averages against the median were relegated to other New Year’s Six bowls — Ohio State because of the lack of a conference title, Stanford because they had one more loss than the Sooners.

Things could have ostensibly finished differently in 2015, however. Only Alabama had more highly-regarded talent than USC according to the five-year rolling average, but the Trojans limped into the Pac-12 championship with four losses and then fell to Stanford in a 19-point blowout. Notre Dame and Florida State lost twice, Texas collapsed out of bowl qualification, and LSU and Georgia lost their respective divisions with three losses apiece.

Where the committee lucked out was less with the results of the Big Ten championship than the SEC title game. Had the 10-2 Florida Gators, ranked No. 18 by the committee ahead of the conference championship, defeated Alabama, it would have forced the committee to decide whether to exclude the SEC entirely. They skirted that decision in 2015, but Florida boasted one of the most talented rosters in the country according to the recruiting rankings. After the precedent set with Ohio State in 2014, Florida might very well have forced the committee to introduce a new wrinkle to their logic to figure out how to justify putting in a two-loss conference champion.