(01-20-2018 02:49 PM)Attackcoog Wrote: In the old BCS era, Undefeated G5 teams routinely were ranked in the top10. What’s happened is the opinion of CFP Selection Committee tends to skew voting—likely because the committee is the only opinion that matters.
That's an interesting theory, but weighing heavily against it is the fact that the most important CFP vote, the last one that determines who makes the playoffs, comes after the AP and coaches have voted, so if anything, the CFP is influenced by the coaches and reporters, not vice-versa.
Plus, there's an obvious alternative explanation for the BCS vs CFP discrepancy you lay so much stock in: The BCS-era "G5" teams were simply better than the best CFP-era G5 teams, and so deserved to be ranked higher.
Evidence for this are computer rankings from that era. This year, UCF finished #8 in the Massey Composite, post-Bowl.
In contrast, in 2009, post-bowl, Boise finished 4th in the Massey Composite, while TCU finished 5th. In 2010, TCU finished 2nd in the MC, while Boise finished 5th, and in 2011, Boise finished 5th in the MC. Finally, in 2008, we see that Utah was 8th in the final MC rankings, which were done before the bowl games. Surely, Utah would have risen above that after beating Alabama.
So contrary to your theory that "the CFP is consciously and unconsiously biased against the G5, and then all the rest of the human sheep Baaaaah and follow their lead" are computers which say that the best turn of the 2010s non-AQ teams were simply better than UCF this year or Houston in 2015 or Boise in 2014 and therefore were ranked higher by AP and coach voters.
Why might that be? Realignment in the west. In the east, realignment basically involved Power conferences raiding each other - stripping the Big East, etc.
But out west, the MWC and WAC, very strong in the late 2000s, got wacked hard by realignment and the domino effects it had out there.
Look at the Sagarin ratings: The last three years, the AAC has basically had either a 66 or 67 Sagarin rating, a good 7+ points worse than the worst P5 conference.
In contrast, from 2008 - 2010, the MWC was above *70* each year, and was never more than 3.5 points from the closest AQ conference. The WAC also had two years there when its rating was 65+, very close to what the AAC is now.
Bottom line: The best non-power conference now, the AAC, isn't as good as the MWC was in the late 2000s, and was barely better than the WAC was then. So back then, out west where Boise and TCU and Utah were playing, you had two conferences that were, averaged out, better than the AAC is now.
That milieu just produced better top non-Power teams, which were properly ranked higher by the pollsters than the best non-power teams of the past four seasons.