Midseason College Football Playoff Race: Miami, Indiana, Army and Navy are big movers

You have to thank the new era of the College Football Playoff for giving us more drama week after week. Just a week after a handful of top-10 teams lost to unranked opponents, Oregon beat Ohio State by one point, Alabama survived against South Carolina, Penn State came back from a double-digit deficit to beat USC on the road in overtime, and LSU gained ground. With an overtime win against Ole Miss, the team is back in the race and now sees its playoff hopes in jeopardy.

This playoff drama will take place almost every weekend from now until the end of the season. It’s like looking at the stock market in college football. For a week, a team is one for which you buy cheaply; Next time you’ll sell high. Buckle up, because we’re just getting started.

But the stock market also offers long-term investments. Coming into the year, the playoff slate had many teams still in the mix, but some old faces (Florida State) were quickly eliminated while new faces (Indiana) are trying to get in the mix. At the halfway point of the season, this week’s playoff stock watch focuses on the teams whose stocks have risen or fallen the most in my forecast model since August.

Stock up

Miami

It’s no big surprise that the Hurricanes are in the playoff race midway through the season. Miami was considered one of the ACC contenders at the start of the year, right alongside Florida State and Clemson. But it’s off to a 6-0 start after two narrow wins against Virginia Tech and at California, and a 6-0 record in a Power 4 conference guarantees a team playing for a playoff bid in the second half of the season.

According to my College Football Playoff prediction model, Miami began the year with a 19 percent chance of making the playoffs. This probability has increased to 88 percent. My model is slightly more bullish on the Hurricanes than in the betting markets, as BetMGM believes Miami has a 71 percent chance. But no matter where you look, Miami is one of the biggest movers and has a good chance of winning its first ACC title (though it is now a co-favorite for the conference title along with Clemson at 42 percent).

Indiana

I urge everyone to find Indiana in a projected preseason College Football Playoff berth, as I don’t believe such a prediction exists. Beyond that, I doubt anyone included the Hoosiers in the conversation. Maybe some had a higher value than others at the start of Curt Cignetti’s first season at Indiana, but I don’t think anyone believed the Hoosiers were right in the middle of the playoff conversation by midseason.

Indiana may lack standout wins, but as mentioned above with Miami, a 6-0 Power 4 conference team is right in the mix – especially when the results are as dominant as Indiana’s. The Hoosiers’ closest win was by 14 points, and they rank second to Miami in scoring and fourth in yards per play differential. In my preseason predictions, Indiana had a 0.1 percent chance of making the playoffs. It’s now up to 41 percent by Saturday’s showdown against Nebraska. The total number of wins was set at 5.5 and the mark has already been exceeded.

Indiana still has a long way to go before actually making the playoffs, as the Hoosiers are just a fringe top 25 team in my estimation. The advantage for them, however, is that my model has the Hoosiers favored in every game the rest of the season except for their trip to Ohio State. One thing that will be hugely important to Indiana’s postseason hopes will be how much Michigan improves under new starting quarterback Jack Tuttle, who began his career in Bloomington. Indiana hosts Michigan on November 9th and I have the Hoosiers as three-point favorites.

Army and Navy

We cannot talk about improving inventories without addressing the Army and Navy. Both teams had less than a 0.1 percent chance of making the playoffs and were expected to win about 5.5 times, the same as Indiana. Army is now 6-0 and Navy is 5-0. For the first time since 1960, they are in the AP poll at the same time.

They lack decisive wins, although Navy did beat Memphis, they were largely dominant and will both play Notre Dame in the second half of the season. A win over the Fighting Irish (who have a 60 percent chance of making the playoffs) would be a big step in the fight for one of the top five conference champions.

What’s interesting is that these two could face each other in the AAC Championship game and their traditional end-of-season meeting would take place a week later after The mount is already set. According to my model, Army has a 23 percent chance of making the playoffs, while Navy has a 10 percent chance.

Inventory reduced

State of Florida

It’s impossible to write this section without mentioning Florida State, which entered the season with a 54 percent chance of making the playoffs. The fall of the Seminoles was almost unprecedented in recent memory. Usually, teams that fail to impress slowly experience a trickle of disappointment. Not this Florida State team. Sure, the loss to Georgia Tech across the pond was a bit shocking, but the Seminoles still had a chance to recover. This was followed by a 15-point home loss to Boston College.

Since then, Florida State has stumbled to a midseason record of 1-5 and had, you guessed it, a 0 percent chance of making the playoffs.

This team entered the season as projected ACC champions, making their defeat the most surprising outcome of the college football season. We just didn’t talk about it for a month because Florida State’s season was over at the end of Labor Day.

Michigan

Michigan’s expectations weren’t typical for a reigning national champion, as the Wolverines lost a lot of talent – and coaching – to the NFL and started at No. 9 in the preseason AP poll. They weren’t expected to be at the level of Ohio State, Oregon or even Penn State, but the gap shouldn’t be either The large.

Michigan is 4-2 at the midpoint of the season, and one of its losses came against Texas, the No. 1 team in the country. The problem is that the Wolverines were uncompetitive in the game against Texas and the offense was mostly stagnant due to a non-existent passing game. We’ll see if that changes with the move to Jack Tuttle at quarterback. The defense is talented, but isn’t playing anywhere near the level it did last season.

Michigan has about a 1 percent chance of making the playoffs (up from 37 percent last season) and needs to win to get there. A home game against Oregon and a road trip to Ohio State seem almost insurmountable at this point, and that doesn’t even take into account road trips to ranked teams Illinois and Indiana.

At the start of the season, I wondered if Michigan could stay within single digits against the Buckeyes in Columbus. Now I’m skeptical that it can stay within three touchdowns.

Utah

I can’t leave Utah off this list, even if their quarterback’s injury is the main reason for their fall since preseason. But if you’re considered the Big 12 favorite and your midseason playoff odds are less than 5 percent, you’re in that group.

It’s difficult because if you could use a crystal ball and tell me that quarterback Cam Rising would be healthy for the rest of the year, I think the Utes would be the best team in the conference. The problem is that he is out indefinitely due to a second injury that caused him to miss time this year. And that after he had to spend the entire last year recovering from a knee injury.

We may look back on this era of Utah football and wonder what could have been. But as the college football season continues to lengthen, having a viable backup quarterback is paramount. For example, look at Texas, which was without Quinn Ewers for two weeks and couldn’t get ahold of Arch Manning. Other schools across the country are starting to value the backup quarterback position in a similar way to the NFL. Unfortunately, Utah has been unable to find a solution to Rising’s lack of time over the past two seasons, leaving the Big 12 race looking wide open with Iowa State, Kansas State and BYU at the top.

(Top photos of Cam Ward and Mike Norvell: Carmen Mandato and Sam Hodde / Getty Images)