Season
Résumé Rankings After Week 4
1. Alabama 4-0 (1st)
2. Georgia 4-0 (5th)
3. Notre Dame 4-0 (2nd)
4. Rutgers 4-0 (NR)
5. South Carolina 4-0
(8th)
6. Kansas State 4-0
(NR)
7. Louisiana Tech 3-0
(NR)
8. Florida 4-0 (3rd)
9. LSU 4-0 (10th)
10. Texas 3-0 (6th)
Out:
UCLA (4th); Stanford (7th); Ohio (9th).
Comments:
In order to come up with this week’s rankings I used an approach similar to the
ones I’ve used earlier this year. Once again I made some slight changes to the
formula. Since we are now four weeks into the season I decided to loosen the
requirements up a bit.
This week in order to
be eligible for the rankings a team had to be undefeated and have at least 3
wins against FBS schools. Thus, I would be choosing amongst teams that were 4-0
against FBS teams; 4-0 with 1 win against an FCS team; and 3-0 against FBS
teams.
This eliminated several
undefeated teams, including 4-0 teams who had more than 1 win against FCS teams
(FSU for example); 3-0 teams with 1 win against an FCS team (West Virginia for
example); and 2-0 teams (Oregon State for example).
These requirements
narrowed the list down to 18 contending teams. I then graded each team’s wins
in close to the same fashion as I did last week. I did make a few changes.
Previously any team
that had played an FCS opponent was ineligible, but I would now have to factor
those games in. Basically I decided to ignore games against FCS teams all
together. The only exception would be a close win over an FCS opponent which
would be minus 1-point. None of the teams under consideration had 1-score wins
over FCS teams so they actually didn’t have any effect at all on these rankings.
I decided to tweak the
way I graded out “strength of opponent” this week. Mostly for the sake of
convenience I decided not to differentiate between “decent” and “average” teams.
For this week a team was awarded 0 points for a win over a “poor” team; 1 point
for a win over an “average” team; 2 points for a win over a “good” team; and 4
points for a win over a “great” team. The scale increases from 2 to 4 to
reflect the difference between a win over a team like Michigan State and a team
like USC or Oklahoma.
However, while
combining the “decent” and “average” groups together made things faster and
much less confusing it was also one of the bigger weaknesses of this week’s
system. Using this formula, there was no difference between a win over FIU and
a win over Missouri.
The other major flaw in
this week’s formula was that road blowouts had a tendency to throw things out
of whack. Just like last week I gave out 0 points for a win at home; 1 point
for a win at a neutral site; and 2 points for a win on the road. I also stuck
with the grading scale for margin of victory: 0 points for a 1-score victory; 1
point for a win by more than 1-score; and 2 points for a blowout (roughly
defined as a 3 TD margin).
The problem with this
formula is that a road blowout against any team was automatically worth at
least 4 points. In other words, a 30-point win over UMass on the road would be
worth as much as a 3-point win over USC at home. That doesn’t seem to make much
sense.
When the formula seemed
to spit out something totally screwy I would intervene, but for the most part I
went according to the scoring system. I am, of course, still using my own
judgment and gut feelings to rank the strength of opponents.
I switched out 3 teams
in the top 10 this week. 9 of the 10 spots in the rankings were different from
the previous week. Alabama remained the only constant, holding the #1 spot for
a fourth straight week.
UCLA lost to Oregon
State at home last week and they took the biggest fall in the rankings,
dropping from #4 all the way out of the top 10. Of the teams remaining in the
top 10 Florida had the biggest slide, falling 5 spots from #3 to #8.
Georgia and South
Carolina were the teams that made the biggest move up the rankings this week, with
each team rising 3 spots. Rutgers made the biggest splash of any team this
week, jumping into the rankings at #4 after their win at Arkansas.
Anyway, it’s still a
little early for these rankings to be taken all that seriously. They’ll become
more relevant as the season progresses.
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