It has been an awkward week in college football, and my own power ratings are no exception. Maybe you’ve heard that Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin — on the precipice of taking his program to the College Football Playoff for the first time and fresh off the first 11-win regular season in school history — has left to take over at LSU.
Pretty big deal! One that has sparked plenty of debate, some of it heated. It’s another move that supposedly shows the sport is in a bad place, blah, blah, blah, etc., and so on. There are immediate ramifications to the decision that we still don’t know. How will the College Football Playoff view Ole Miss now that Kiffin is gone? Will the committee punish the Rebels in the rankings, possibly pushing them out of a first-round home game? Will they remove Ole Miss from the field entirely?
I don’t know. I hope not. It would be an incredible disservice to the sport to deny a team that earned its place because of a selfish decision (you can argue right or wrong until the cows come home, but there’s no question Kiffin put himself ahead of the team) by its coach. I have no interest in seeing another Florida State situation.
That said, the power ratings aren’t the playoff. Power ratings evaluate what a team will do going forward, and the coach matters. Typically, when we adjust ratings for coaching changes this time of year, it’s for teams far outside the playoff picture ahead of their bowl games. Sometimes it’s for a Group of Five coach moving up.
I’ve never had to adjust a playoff team’s rating for its head coach leaving. So how does Kiffin’s exit affect the Rebels here? Well, there’s one team from last week’s rankings that’s no longer in our top 12: Ole Miss.
But, again, this is where I remind you that power ratings are a tool to project future performance. When it comes to putting together a playoff field, results that have actually happened should matter — not hypothetical ones.
Fell outside top 12: Ole Miss
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