Like in last week’s MaxDiff Poll results , there is a consensus around LSU, Ohio State, and Clemson as the top tier of college football teams. This view lines up with that of the AP and CFP Committee, except that Ohio State claimed the top spot in this week’s CFP rankings. From a fan perceptions standpoint, this week’s MaxDiff Poll results suggest that most college football fans will agree that these three teams are on a level above the field, but they may not agree on how to order them. The more interesting results start when you look at the rankings after the top tier. . .

Fans snub Utah even though they think the Utes match up well with the Sooners

It continues to look more and more likely that the CFP Committee’s decision regarding the fourth team to include in The Playoff will be controversial regardless of which team gets the nod. The Committee has stated multiple times that their ultimate goal is to select the four best teams, not the most deserving. That’s precisely what this poll aims to measure: which teams fans perceive to be the strongest.

Tier 2 shows that in the minds of fans, the fourth spot has three strong candidates: Georgia, Oklahoma, and Alabama. The most glaring omission from Tier 2 is the Pac 12’s Utah, who clocked in at #7, but were classified in Tier 3. Again, tiers reflect consensus in the minds of fans, so the fact that Utah didn’t make the cut for Tier 2 suggests most college football fans perceive the Utes as weaker than the group of Georgia, Oklahoma, and Alabama.

Interestingly, however, fans do think the Utes match up relatively well against the Sooners. Outside of the MaxDiff exercise, I asked this week’s participants to give a probability estimate regarding Utah’s chances of defeating the Sooners on a neutral field.

As you can see, fans felt the Utes would be just as likely as the Sooners to win that hypothetical matchup. Keep in mind that this question was asked outside of the MaxDiff exercise. In the MaxDiff exercise, participants don’t give a probability estimate, they simply choose the best team in a set of four, and Oklahoma took a small majority of the head-to-head sets with Utah in the MaxDiff exercise. This demonstrates that if the average college football fan is forced to choose between the Sooners and Utes, they will likely choose the Sooners, but they will not feel confident about that decision. The reason the Utes are in a lower tier than the Sooners is because fans felt the Sooners would have a significantly better chance of beating most of the other teams in the MaxDiff exercise, particularly the strongest ones in the top ten. The takeaway is that fans don’t feel the Sooners are a stronger team head-to-head against Utah, they think the Sooners would be significantly more competitive against the other teams they may face in The Playoff.