Blind Resumes for Top College Football Playoff Contenders

Next week, the College Football Playoff committee will unveil its first rankings of the 2015 season.

By that point, two-thirds of the schedule will be complete, and we'll start to get a peek at how the members of the committee have made sense of the season so far.

Is Ohio State still No. 1 with that schedule? Was Baylor's rampage through a weak list of opponents impressive at all? Which one-loss teams still deserve the most consideration for a playoff spot?

Also, can the committee explain what is exactly happening in Iowa?

In a college football landscape that features constant debate over biases in polls—whether they be toward a certain conference or a particular team—one would hope those in charge of picking the four teams for the playoff will be as objective as humanly possible.

One great way to strip away biases is the use of blind resumes, which rely solely on what has happened on the field without any influence of human rankings.

Blind resumes aren't perfect by any means, but they can provide a fresh and more complete look at the top contenders in college football.

Richard Shiro/Associated Press

To do this, I assigned a random letter, A through K, to the eight undefeated Power Five teams and the three one-loss teams currently inside the Top 10 of both the major polls. (Teams such as Utah, Oklahoma, Florida and Florida State still have an outside shot at the playoff, but they just missed out here.)

I then did a full statistical profile on each team, which is shown in the table below. These profiles include average points and yardage margins—or how much each team outscores and outgains its opponents per game—similar to what B/R colleague Brian Leigh did in his blind resumes last season.

This year, I've added another feature—yards-per-play performances against Top 25 offenses and defenses, which Paul Myerberg of USA Today used in his own blind-resume comparisons last season.

The profiles below also include each team's strength-of-schedule ranking by Jeff Sagarin, which he bases only on the games a team has played so far in 2015.

Team	SOS	Points Margin	Yards Margin	DYPP vs. T25 O*	OYPP vs. T25 D**
Team A	31	+16.3	+150.1	4.92 (2)	7.05 (1)
Team B	102	+31.5	+303.7	7.15 (1)	—
Team C	19	+15.7	+128.5	7.66 (1)	6.45 (1)
Team D	8	+17.1	+146.1	5.50 (2)	6.20 (3)
Team E	37	+17.6	+126.8	—	4.97 (2)
Team F	63	+11.3	+57.3	5.27 (1)	5.36 (1)
Team G	27	+24.1	+203.1	5.58 (2)	6.03 (2)
Team H	24	+16.8	+115.4	5.91 (2)	3.87 (1)
Team I	70	+23.4	+163.5	—	4.52 (1)
Team J	57	+23.5	+218.9	7.23 (1)	5.22 (1)
Team K	79	+21.4	+163.8	—	—

*Defensive yards per play vs. Top 25 teams for offensive yards per play (number of games)

**Offensive yards per play vs. Top 25 teams for defensive yards per play (number of games)

Each college football writer, analyst and fan has his or her own opinion on what numbers should weigh more when ranking teams. Some favor pure points and yardage, while others lean toward strength of schedule.

Here's how I personally would rank the teams based solely on the numbers above.

1. Team G
2. Team D
3. Team B
4. Team J
5. Team A
6. Team I
7. Team H
8. Team E
9. Team C
10. Team F
11. Team K

The above table gives us a sense of the statistical dominance these playoff contenders have through the first eight weeks of the season.

But we need more context. Records are important, and whom exactly these teams won and lost against should matter in any final rankings. The raw data above also doesn't factor in "garbage" points or yardage in blowouts.

In the following table, I've placed every team next to its record and its ranking in the F/+ metric from Football Outsiders. 

F/+ is a great computer ranking to consider because it combines possession-by-possession and play-by-play data to measure team efficiency, eliminates garbage-time statistics and adjusts for opponent strength. It's a much more advanced way to tackle the numbers and compare them to what we already know.

The last two columns feature each team's key wins and any losses this season. To eliminate any notions of bias from the human polls, the wins and losses are represented by the opponents' current F/+ rankings.

Team	Record	F/+	Top 25 Wins	Total Losses
Team A	7-0	4	at 19, vs. 12	—
Team B	7-0	5	vs. 22	—
Team C	6-1	6	vs. 10	at 1
Team D	7-1	3	vs. 25, vs. 24	vs. 15
Team E	7-0	11	at 25	—
Team F	8-0	16	at 2	—
Team G	7-0	1	vs. 6	—
Team H	6-1	9	at 10, vs. 20	at 43
Team I	8-0	8	—	—
Team J	7-0	13	—	—
Team K	7-0	18	at 22	—

The F/+ rankings and the win-loss breakdown solidified Team G's spot as my No. 1 team, but it caused a shakeup in the next few spots of my second round of personal rankings.

Feel free to share your own blind rankings in the comments below.

1. Team G
2. Team A
3. Team B
4. Team I
5. Team E
6. Team D
7. Team H
8. Team J
9. Team F
10. Team C
11. Team K

In this second round, Team A's two wins over Top 20 teams pushed it into the coveted playoff zone, while Team D's loss knocked it down several spots. Team B's weak strength of schedule didn't affect it too much in the F/+ rankings, as they listed B with a win over a Top 25 team.

Now we move on to the big reveal.

For comparative purposes, this last table compares the average of my two sets of rankings to how the teams shake out in the two major human polls—the Associated Press Top 25 and the Amway Coaches Poll. 

Team	Identity	Blind Average	AP Poll	Coaches Poll
Team G	Clemson	1	3	6
Team A	LSU	2.5	4	4
Team B	Baylor	3	2	2
Team D	Alabama	4	7	7
Team I	Ohio State	5	1	1
Team J	TCU	6	5	3
Team E	Iowa	6.5	10	11
Team H	Stanford	7	8	8
Team F	Michigan State	9.5	6	5
Team C	Notre Dame	9.5	9	9
Team K	Oklahoma State	11	12	10

I was surprised at my own results from this blind exercise. In my latest ballot for Bleacher Report's Top 25, my top four teams were Baylor, Clemson, Ohio State and TCU. So much for trying to avoid SEC bias.

My blind top four is sure to receive a shakeup in a couple of weeks when Alabama and LSU play each other. Ohio State, the No. 4 on my second set, would hypothetically slide into the combined top four after that game.

Also, per ESPN.com, my No. 3-ranked team announced its star quarterback would miss the rest of the season with injury while I was crunching these numbers. Baylor's phenomenal stats may take a hit against tougher competition without Seth Russell.

There's a lot of football left to be played for each of these contenders, and several will be in action again before the people who actually have control over the playoff release their first rankings.

Who knows? Some of them might be willing to open their eyes to their own biases by using some blind resumes.

Justin Ferguson is a college football writer at Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @JFergusonBR.