2023 Bowl Season Preview and CFP Resume Rankings!

Welcome to the 2023 Bowl Preview College Football Playoff Resume Rankings!

It’s everyone’s favorite holiday season!  Christmas is around the corner, Santa is on his way with gifts aplenty, and it’s only a matter of time before we know if the committee is getting a lump of coal or not.  Bowl season is upon us, and then it’s the CFP Semifinals, with #1 seed Michigan facing #4 Alabama, and #2 seed Washington drawing #3 Texas.  Left out in the cold with nowhere to go was unbeaten ACC champion and committee #5 Florida State, who now has a chance to beat the previous #1 and 2021/2022 NCAA champion #6 Georgia Bulldogs in the Orange Bowl.  The winner of the 4-team playoff will certainly deserve a championship, but the door is wide open for Florida State to take care of business and claim a split title of their own.  There’s plenty of coverage of the committee’s belief that if given the choice an opponent would simply rather avoid Alabama more than Florida State, so we won’t relitigate how the decision makers got to the choice they made.  We will point out however that yet again, the top 4 overall resumes made the CFP once again, as has happened in nearly every season we have tracked resumes.

Over the past several weeks we highlighted again and again the disparity between the committee rankings and the resume data, and that committee ranking process made it all the more shocking when #4 Florida State was passed by both #7 Texas and #8 Alabama all while winning with a dominant defensive performance against Louisville.  If the committee had been consistent with their resume evaluation over the course of the season resumes would have progressed as follows:

The narrative would have been as follows:

• Week 10: Alabama and Texas behind Florida State but firmly in the mix for the CFP.

• Week 11: Florida State falls behind as their resume is devalued from poor performances from their opponents.  Meanwhile Alabama and Texas continue to add value to the resume and move ahead of Florida State.

• Week 12: Washington makes a leap to the #2 spot continuing to pick up big wins.  Oregon solidifies their spot at #8 but can’t move any higher for the rest of the season.  Texas and Alabama remain ahead of Florida State, but Michigan climbs into the CFP at #4.

• Week 13: Michigan now up to #2 forcing Washington to slide back a spot to #3.  Georgia finally climbs into the top 4 pushing Texas and Alabama to the 5/6 spots.  Florida State remains behind all other contenders on both strength and raw resume, with their CFP spot firmly in question.

• Week 14: Michigan wins the game and moves to #1.  Washington slides to the 2 spot, now followed by Georgia and Texas to round out the top 4 going into championship weekend.  Ohio State sits at 5, but has no remaining games.  #3 Georgia plays #6 Alabama for the SEC, and it seems like #7 Florida State needs Texas, Michigan or Washington to lose to get into the CFP.

• Week 15: Michigan, Washington and Texas all take care of business, securing CFP spots.  #6 Alabama upsets #3 Georgia, and jumps ahead of idle #5 Ohio State to take the last CFP bid.  #7 Florida State wins the ACC and also slides ahead of Ohio State, but with no upsets amongst the eventual top 3 there isn’t room to jump into the top 4 off of the win over Louisville.  The CFP is the top 4 resumes, as obviously seen from the season progression, and while many disagree with the committee evaluation of Florida State, at least it was consistent with their resume over the course of the season.  There also wouldn’t have been confusion with Texas and Alabama jumping into the CFP.  It’s not that they jumped FSU to take a bid, they were just ahead already and kept winning to close the season.

Here's how those resumes looked at the moment of committee selection for the CFP.

Alright, enough with the CFP relitigation, let’s get to some bowl games!

There are 41 bowl games this season, including 3 with national championship implications (assuming 14-0 FSU makes a claim for the title).  Unsurprisingly, these are the 3 highest quality games on the bowl schedule.  Here’s the full slate of games.

You never know quite what you are getting when it comes to bowl season.  The transfer portal is wide open, and many top players are sitting out looking to make a leap to the NFL.  We project 15 of the 41 games within a field goal spread, but that doesn’t guarantee those games will be close, or that others won’t be.  Take these all with a grain of salt, but if you can find the right upsets (we’re about 75% Straight Up on the season) you can easily use the weighted win probabilities to win your bowl pick ’em this year.

Our best non-playoff bowl is obviously Georgia vs Florida State in the Orange Bowl, which rates as the 2nd best postseason game we’ll get ahead of Michigan vs Alabama.  The best non-New Year 6 bowl is the Sun Bowl in beautiful El Paso, TX between Notre Dame and Oregon State.  There’s some uncertainty if the ratings for that bowl will hold up with the mass transfers from Oregon State and with Sam Hartman sitting out for Notre Dame, so if you’re looking for an alternate maybe the Dillon Gabriel less Oklahoma Sooners playing Big 12 replacement Arizona in the Alamo Bowl is for you (seriously, data doesn’t understand transfers or sit-outs).  Still, a team is more than their QB.  Just ask Florida State.  Both of these non-NY6 games are great on paper, and hopefully will translate to exciting games on the field.

If we look in retrospect at the season, the CFP teams account for 8 of the 9 best games we’ve seen.  Michigan and Washington both show up 3 times, and Alabama cleans up the last 2 spots.  Texas is represented in the early season win over Alabama and the playoff matchup with Washington.  Setting aside Florida State playing Georgia in the Orange Bowl, Ohio State/Penn State takes the title for the next best non-playoff team game of the season, narrowly edging out LSU’s road win at Missouri and Florida State’s season opening win over LSU.

Season Retrospective Best Games:

Wrapping things up pre-bowl season, the conference bragging rights order of merit is as follows:

1. SEC

2. Pac-12

3. Big 12

4. Big Ten

5. ACC

6. Sun Belt

7. Mountain West

8. Independents

9. American

10. C-USA

11. MAC

Here’s how the conferences stack up for now:

We’ll be back with focused content on the playoff semifinals between Christmas and the New Years, so stay tuned for more content.  Until then enjoy bowl season and have a happy holiday season everyone!