From Old Virginia Ballot - Week 11
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | LSU Tigers | -- |
| 2 | Alabama Crimson Tide | -- |
| 3 | Oklahoma Sooners | -- |
| 4 | Oklahoma St. Cowboys | -- |
| 5 | Boise St. Broncos |  3 |
| 6 | Clemson Tigers | -- |
| 7 | Stanford Cardinal |  -2 |
| 8 | Oregon Ducks | 1 |
| 9 | Nebraska Cornhuskers | -2 |
| 10 | Michigan Wolverines | -- |
| 11 | Arkansas Razorbacks | 12 |
| 12 | Texas Longhorns | 8 |
| 13 | Wisconsin Badgers | 1 |
| 14 | Penn St. Nittany Lions | -3 |
| 15 | South Carolina Gamecocks | -- |
| 16 | Georgia Bulldogs | 8 |
| 17 | TCU Horned Frogs | 5 |
| 18 | Houston Cougars | 7 |
| 19 | Southern Miss. Golden Eagles | -- |
| 20 | Virginia Tech Hokies | -3 |
| 21 | USC Trojans | -5 |
| 22 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | -- |
| 23 | Kansas St. Wildcats | -11 |
| 24 | Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets | -3 |
| 25 | Michigan St. Spartans | -12 |
| Dropouts: North Carolina Tar Heels, Arizona St. Sun Devils | ||
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I think when it comes to 1 through 8, and a few of the other slots, things are dead on. For example, continuing to have Oklahoma over Oklahoma State probably has me in the minority, but when you gather up all the common opponents between the two, it's a no-brainer. Particularly as it relates to the really good opponents: Texas, Kansas State, Texas A&M, etc.
On the other hand, there are some weird things going on, too. My system gave me Arkansas near the bottom and South Carolina, like, 11th or so; obviously that's not gonna fly no matter how weak the middle of Arkansas's resume is. I decided to buck the system harder than I'd ever done and get Arkansas up there. Part of the problem might be that I'm underrating A&M these days (which was previously one of Arkansas's biggest resume boosters), which is 5-4 but isn't, like, a bad 5-4.
(Still, 5-4 gets you booted from top 25 consideration.)
I think MSU is underrated here, too, although, truth is they haven't played much like a ranked team the past two weeks. There's that annoying triangle of doom between Michigan, MSU, and ND that pops up somewhere every year, so all that's kind of a wash. Just not sure who MSU should displace. Wins over Wisconsin and Michigan, yes, as well as OSU; on the other hand, lousy-looking wins over Minnesota, Youngstown State and totally uncompetitive losses to Notre Dame and Nebraska. And FAU drags down every schedule they appear on. So I dunno.
At least there's a pretty distinctive line between who should be considered and who shouldn't. I only looked at 27 teams this week; Cincinnati and Arizona State are the odd ones out, and frankly, there's a pretty big divide between them and the top 25. I even did a secondary ranking, before I did the main one, to see what teams should be included from the morass of 6-3 teams hovering below the top group. Out of 19 teams, only Notre Dame looked potentially rank-worthy, and as you can see they sort of barely slid in. North Carolina was next, but 6-4 didn't cut it. (In case you're curious, UVA came in 8th out of 19, just ahead of Baylor and just behind Rutgers. Thanks for the vote, lone intrepid AP voter guy or gal, but I think we've got a ways to go.)
1 comment:
I think Michigan's too high at this point. Of the 7-2 big ten mess, they've got pretty clearly the weakest "big" wins list, since it really only includes their shootout at home with notre dame. Then they've got a really long list of mediocre teams they've blown out, including what I've got as the 4th and 7th best MAC teams, the best of the MWC also-rans, and the lower-half of the big ten rankings. These are all nice wins, and they avoided having any drags on the bottom of the schedule (other than minnesota), but... I can't see them as making up a top 10 resume. They're 1-2 on the road and have only beaten one team even considerable for ranking. It's like they built their schedule to accumulate points in your system...
Kansas State seems too low to me, especially as compared to Texas. They both got blown out by oklahoma, and they both lost closer games to Oklahoma State, but K State's was literally about as close as it could get, and on the road. Texas' wins, meanwhile, have been mostly dominant, but all over somewhat sketchy competition. Tech's clearly the best of them (I think?), and then there's a mess of Iowa State/UCLA/BYU, all of which are again ok, but nothing that sets them apart. K State meanwhile has closer victories, but they've beaten Miami, Baylor, Missouri, and Texas Tech... and on that slate I think Tech is the _weakest_ opponent. I can see the margin of victory argument, but I'm personally coming down on K State's side. (I actually went the other way, and as I sit here now I think I went too far, with K St 10th and Texas 22nd, lol...)
And I don't get TCU. Their losses aren't particularly strong, especially since SMU is looking a lot weaker lately, having been absolutely HOUSED by all 3 of the other decent teams on their schedule. Then they've got 4 ok wins and 3 fairly meaningless wins. Looks kind of like michigan state's sheet, except every team involved is worse.
Losses: Baylor/SMU vs. Nebraska/Notre Dame, yeah, tcu was competitive, but that's a strong drop in quality of opponents.
"Good" Wins: @AF/@SD St/@Wyoming/BYU (sagarin: 68/63/80/57) vs. Wisconsin/Michigan/@OSU (sagarin: 21/24/38), then everyone else either of them played is outside of the top 100 (sagarin has new mexico one spot below FAU, even). The way I do things tends to value the top half of a team's schedule more than the bottom, while you try to evenly rate it all, but I'm still having a hard time putting TCU up there (I didn't rank them at all, they actually wound up 35th of the 40 teams I looked at, one spot behind good ol' uva.)
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