I’ve perused CB occasionally over the years but never posted. I really only venture here when realignment rumors heat up because it can be pretty entertaining. So thanks for that.

Anyway, during the 4-0 start last year, as excitement and expectations mounted, and wanting to see where BYU would need to be ranked to make the NY6, I created a spreadsheet to track the weekly rankings and project which teams would be placed in the NY6 bowls. Since we’re in the doldrums of the offseason and Big 12 expansion rumors can only entertain one for so long, I thought I would share in case anyone is interested.

There is a tab at the bottom for each week of the season, showing the rankings, some basic conference comparisons and then the NY6 bowl teams based on that week’s rankings. I used the AP poll as a proxy in the early part of the season, then beginning in week 10, the CFP rankings take over (I built the spreadsheet to update on its own every week, otherwise I probably would have stopped after the week 6 rankings because of depression after, well, you know).

I also have a template tab for each of the three rotation cycles of the CFP format (i.e. the rotation of the semifinals through the 6 bowls).

Since the weekly updates occur automatically during the season, the spreadsheet is mostly view-only, except for the three rotation template tabs, which can be fun to play with in the offseason when no actual football is happening. If you fill in teams 1-25 in the rankings, the bowl placements will update automatically so you can see how things would shake out under various hypothetical scenarios and under different years of the CFP rotation (NOTE: to work correctly, the format for each team name must be exactly as shown in column K of “conferences” tab—for example, USC must be written as “Southern California” and BYU must be “Brigham Young”).

The “current rankings” tab has the latest AP and CFP rankings (updates automatically with the latest--obviously 2015 preseason rankings haven't come out yet so it's still the final 2014 rankings). If you want to play with different team rankings/bowl scenarios in one of the rotation tabs a good starting point is to copy the latest rankings, and then you can play around with the teams if you want.

Given the complexities of how the bowl selections are made in the different years, as well as the human element of a selection committee, there are certain nuances that the spreadsheet can’t account for. Some notes and assumptions:

• As the most logical proxy, the highest ranked team in a conference in a given week projects as the default conference champion
• The spreadsheet does not consider regular season rematches or which at-large bowl spots a team might be placed in, since ultimately the selection committee is deciding on the most compelling matchups—the important thing is which teams are in, not which particular at-large NY6 bowl they would be slotted into
• The spreadsheet does not factor in bowl considerations that stretch beyond a single year because it’s a single-year model (e.g. the SEC and B1G are guaranteed at least 3 appearances in the Orange Bowl during non-playoff years, while ND can appear only twice)

It is not perfect and undoubtedly has errors, but it’s for entertainment purposes only. Feel free to let me know of any problems you see. Here’s the link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OA9VoEKcm2s2y7VsXK5zvM_9P6pVLZlNmScUxPd9eTo/edit?usp=docslist_api

There’s a 2015 season spreadsheet as well, which will automatically update through next season as the rankings come out. There’s obviously nothing in it yet but I’ll include it here as well (note that the “conferences” tab hasn’t yet automatically updated for the 2015 season to account for the few teams moving around (e.g. Navy to the AAC)—it is keyed off of ncaa.com and they haven’t updated yet). Here’s the link for 2015:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19EuNUJaSx5_V91jfbMlkAHrnxj8xGqTS5IfYETwCG5s/edit?usp=docslist_api