Buckeye50 Playoff Picks – November 5, 2019

Week 1: College Football Playoff Rankings
As the leave begin to change and fall from the trees, and the calendar shifts from October to November, to college football fans, it means one thing; the first rankings for the College Football Playoff committee are upon us.
The AP and Coaches poll have been the rankings we have pounded our chest over up to this point, claiming ranked wins over teams that have multiple losses, or thinking those early season match-ups which might have hurt our strength of schedule have now come to help us. On November 5th, we finally get to see how the committee is evaluating these teams, who they think are truly in the top 25.
We at Buckeye50 are also passionate football fans, and not only for the men of the Scarlet and Gray, but also the college football landscape as a whole. We have watched the games, looked at the stats, and have provided predictions for the top 5 games each week (you can view that on our predictions page by clicking here). So we feel that even though we aren’t meeting in Texas to discuss who the best teams are, we have our own opinion for who deserves to be in at this point.
Since this is the first time we have done this sort of ranking, here is how we came up with our rankings:
We had staff members submit their rankings for the teams, and based on the average ranking of the team, we are able to come up with our own lists. Instead of ranking our top 25, we focused just on the top 6,, the first 4 in, and the first 2 out. In the result of a tie on the average, the tiebreaker was based on the most votes in the highest ranking spot. Here are our results for our first Buckeye50 Playoff Picks:

How We Voted
Unlike the playoff committee, we are focused on bringing clarity to the voting results for our first playoff picks. We had 8 members submit their top 6 rankings, and here are the results:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Brent | Ohio State | LSU | Alabama | Penn State | Clemson | Oregon |
Gregg | LSU | Ohio State | Alabama | Penn State | Clemson | Oregon |
Jason | Ohio State | LSU | Alabama | Clemson | Penn State | Georgia |
John | LSU | Ohio State | Alabama | Clemson | Penn State | Oklahoma |
Josh | LSU | Ohio State | Alabama | Clemson | Penn State | Oregon |
Mark | LSU | Ohio State | Alabama | Penn State | Clemson | Oregon |
Pat | Alabama | Ohio State | LSU | Clemson | Penn State | Oregon |
Steven | LSU | Ohio State | Alabama | Clemson | Penn State | Oregon |
Vaughn | Ohio State | LSU | Clemson | Alabama | Penn State | Minnesota |
LSU was the top vote getter for the first place place, getting 5 overall first place votes, and Ohio State was second with 3 first place votes and 6 second place votes.
Alabama was next in the rankings, and was at lowest ranked 4th overall, and majority third place votes,
The margin for Clemson and Penn State were close, but the Tigers narrowly edged for the 4th spot
Oregon was the top vote-getter for the 6th spot, and one vote for Minnesota, who is one of the remaining undefeated Power 5 teams, and another vote for Oklahoma, who can still control their own destiny by winning out and winning the Big 12.
Here is how we voted, lets us know how you predict the rankings will go!