Path to the Playoff: 2016 College Football Weekly Rankings

12/11/2016 Matt Chambers 0 Comments

I've created this type of visualization for previous years AP Rankings, but I wanted to do an updated version for the College Football playoff ranking.  I'd recently seen a post by Rody Zakovich on using sigmoids in bump charts, and I wanted to see if I could apply it to my design.



With this viz, I wanted to highlight the path of the four teams that have made the playoff.



I also wanted to give users the ability to highlight their favorite team.



Additionally, I wanted to add as much detail as possible to the tooltips.  Notice the indicator for teams rising or falling in the ranking.



I found it interesting to the see the path of the teams that missed out on the playoffs.  There was a lot of controversy with Penn State not getting in while Ohio State did.  It was interesting to see teams like Penn State and Oklahoma State make a run to the top 4 after being outside of the top 10 in the initial ranking.  You have to wonder if it is possible to overcome an initial low ranking in the poll, but I also expect to see the playoff expand to 8 teams over time.