This week, my rankings are starting to settle in a little bit. I've included information on movement within the rankings for this week, to give you some idea of what changed from last week. As is often the case during the season, the numbers at the top changed a lot less than the numbers at the bottom.
Winners Win, It's Just What They Do
One of the maddening things about a college football season (except for 2008, the best season in a while) is that it seems like a few teams claw their way up to the top of the polls and then stay there (I'm looking at you, 2004 USC Trojans). It always seems like a fix. Voters choose some team to be anointed as #1 in preseason and they more or less stay there until the end of the year (unless they lose). The presence of preseason polls always makes it feel like there's some serious selection bias operating in voting: "well, my preseason pick keeps winning, so I guess that confirms my faith in them." I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work.
I created this computer program to attempt to overcome the kind of bias towards continuing to pick preseason #1 teams as the top teams. I wanted to see if you could analyze the game as it was being played and get wildly differing results.
This season, LSU has been ranked #1 for four straight weeks and Oklahoma has been ranked #3 for just as long.
We can see in the rankings that there was very little change in the top 10, with Kansas State moving in after knocking off Missouri and South Carolina falling out for being South Carolina (no, it was because they played a really bad Kentucky team this week, which hurt their strength of schedule). The major changes, instead were at the bottom, with Virginia Tech moving up 11 spots after beating a really good Miami team in what turned out to be a pretty fantastic game.
All this seems to suggest that maybe there is something to these whole preseason rankings: winners keep winning and they win big. Watching Oklahoma dismantle Texas was definitely not surprising (Texas was easily the worst undefeated team in the country last week), but, as my first chance to watch the Sooners play, they are certainly an impressive team. Outside of some flukey upsets, I really don't seem much changing in the top of the polls until LSU & Alabama play on November 5th and December 3rd when Oklahoma & Oklahoma State play in the Bedlam Game.
Of course, as someone who is a fan of the game, rather than a fan of a particular team (except the #9 ranked Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets!), I always will enjoy the bottom of the top 25 better, anyway. That's where the excitement is, for me. Who cares about watching a behemoth program beat up on some poor losers (although, I do enjoy watching Mack Brown's face when Texas is getting killed).
Scarlet Wha?
What the heck? When did Rutgers get to 4-1? Similarly, Wake Forest? I thought these teams were supposed to be bad, and I don't mean historically bad (b/c, yes), I mean bad this season. The way the media has been talking about Rutgers and Wake Forest, when they talk about them at all, you would think they were 1-4 or something. I totally would have been more angry about not getting the Wake Forest / Florida State game on Saturday if I had known that Wake Forest was actually kind of good this season.
Also, Rutgers's meteoric 15 place rise in my rankings shows you the benefit of beating a statistically good team in these rankings. Despite being 3-3, my computer really likes Pittsburgh (it's like the inexplicable Notre Dame love (actually Notre Dame is pretty explicable; statistically, they're very good, they just get killed by turnovers)). Rutgers, in beating Pittsburgh, really strengthened their value in my rankings, hence the rise.
In any case, it's interesting to see how teams perceived as losers in the media get almost no coverage. Which, in fairness, makes sense. While Wake Forest has as much a shot as anyone to win the ACC (except FSU, of course (that makes me so happy to type)), Rutgers just doesn't feel like a contender. I was going to type that they will definitely lose 2 or 3 more games, but I looked at their schedule and, frankly, they'll probably lose to WVU and end up going 10-2 on the season. I mean, I guess Cincinnati could conceivably beat them or something, but remember when we used to have to take the Big East seriously? Seeing that Rutgers is playing WVU, Cincy, UCONN, Navy, Louisville, and Army, and thinking "those will all be wins except WVU" (for a team, like Rutgers, that people say isn't very good) just shows you how bad the Big East really is.
Week 6 Top 25
- LSU 6-0
- Alabama 6-0
- Oklahoma 5-0
- Illinois 6-0 (up 1)
- Michigan 6-0 (down 1)
- Boise State 5-0 (up 1)
- Oklahoma State 5-0 (down 1)
- Clemson 6-0
- Georgia Tech 6-0 (up 1)
- Kansas State 6-0 (up 2)
- South Carolina 5-1 (down 2)
- Stanford 5-0 (down 1)
- Arizona State 5-1 (up 4)
- Wisconsin 5-0
- Arkansas 5-1 (up 3)
- Notre Dame 4-2 (up 4)
- Rutgers 4-1 (up 15)
- Southern Mississippi 5-1 (up 10)
- North Carolina 5-1 (up 2)
- West Virginia 5-1 (up 5)
- Houston 6-0 (down 2)
- Nebraska 5-1 (up 7)
- Texas 4-1 (down 10)
- Penn State 5-1 (up 3)
- Virginia Tech 5-1 (up 11)
Dropped From Ranking: USF, USC, Tennessee, Florida, Auburn
Added to Ranking: Rutgers, Penn State, Nebraska, Southern Mississippi, Virginia Tech