We’ll get into the nuances of the rankings as we go along but in the meantime here are some basics.
The recruiting rankings are used to determine which schools will qualify for the national championship.
They’re calculated by the College Football Playoff committee and then shared by schools that have a combined winning percentage of 15.5% or better.
The teams that qualify for one of the five automatic bids are given a priority over those that don’t.
So, for example, a team that wins 13 games but has a winning percentage under .500 would get a much better ranking than a team with a winning average of 15%.
The next group of schools are the three that have been projected as potential playoff teams.
They have a winning record, but also a cumulative record of 7-8-2.
That’s how they are considered to be part of the four-team field.
The next two groups are the teams that are projected as the top-ranked team in the nation based on the rankings.
Those are the team that has the highest cumulative record and a winning season.
The final group is the teams projected as being in the top half of the overall group based on their overall record.
Those teams get the second-highest ranking.
This is where things get a bit complicated.
The rankings aren’t always used in the same order.
In fact, we can look at the rankings for each school separately and still get a slightly different answer than we would if we looked at them all.
The first thing to note is that a lot of the schools that are considered part of these rankings have a higher cumulative record than they are projected to.
So that means the ranking is being skewed a bit more toward the top teams than it should be.
That means the first team on the list with the highest average winning percentage is the team with the most to gain from that winning percentage.
In the end, though, the teams with the worst records in the rankings tend to be the ones with the least to gain.
For instance, Arizona State and USC have a cumulative winning percentage that is just a hair under 9%.
That means they’ve earned the second lowest ranking in the recruiting rankings.
And if you look at it another way, Arizona is projected to be in the bottom half of this list.
That puts them in the lower half of a total of 17 schools in the ESPN.com/Big Ten rankings.
They are projected only to earn a tie for the bottom four teams in the Big Ten and the No. 10 overall team in America.
If you look only at those teams with a combined win percentage under 8%, Arizona State would be ranked 14th.
So the Arizona State program is in the middle of the pack.
It would make sense for the program to be at the bottom of the recruiting list, especially when considering the high-powered offense that the Wildcats run.
But, it doesn’t make sense to put the school in the number one spot.
It’s a bit unfair, and it’s certainly not a wise move.
Arizona State is projected as a top-25 team in both recruiting and odds.
In other words, they’re the team you should be looking at to be ranked as the best in the country.
This puts the school on par with Ohio State, the other Big Ten team on this list, and Wisconsin, which is projected in the upper half of both the recruiting and overall rankings.
The Big Ten isn’t the only conference with high expectations for the Wildcats, though.
In addition to Ohio State and Wisconsin at No. 1 and No. 2 in the overall rankings, Alabama, Michigan, Penn State and Texas are projected in at the top of the league.
Those schools have a collective winning percentage between 7.5-8.5%, so the odds are stacked against the Wildcats.
However, the top five teams in recruiting rankings (Arizona State, Texas, Michigan and Ohio State) are projected by odds to be projected to finish in the Top 25 in the league for the first time in the history of the program.
That would give the Wildcats a chance to be a Top 25 team and still earn the No
