I’m on vacation, so this is the short version of this week’s rankings.
If I am so inclined, I may expand on this some as time allows.
Here’s the rundown of my methodology:
- Each team is ascribed a score derived from the combined efficiency rankings produced by the fine folks at Football Outsiders (specifically, Bill Connelley and Brian Fremeau), termed the “F/+” rankings. The basic gist of each set of rankings that goes into this merged list — individually the “FEI” and the “S&P+ Ratings” — is to evaluate a team based on its efficiency on individual plays. If you want a general sense of how “good” a team is, with only a few exceptions, you’re going to get an accurate reading from these.
- The scores pulled from the F/+ do not factor into an individual team’s ranking, however. Rather, they provide the basis for evaluating who said team has played. So for example, Wisconsin didn’t get any credit in regards to its own ranking for being the No. 26 team in the F/+, but it did get credit for facing Alabama, which ranks at No. 1. In reverse, Alabama didn’t get credit for being No. 1, but did get credit for beating No. 26. This is all about accomplishments. And for simplicity’s sake, all teams from below the FBS level got ascribed the same value: 129, which is one slot lower than the lowest FBS team (128).
- Basic weighting is applied such that, in general, road wins>neutral wins>home wins>bye weeks>road losses>neutral losses>home losses. There are discrepancies such that a particularly egregious home loss can hurt a team more than two road losses, or a loss to No. 1 can actually help a team more than being off that week. The actual weighting involved is the wild card here, as I expect I may tweak it some as we go along. Lots of philosophical debates are involved in this process (For example: Is a road win worth more than two home wins? And is a neutral site loss to No. 1 worse or better than a road loss to No. 8?). These questions can go on for days, honestly, and much of it is dependent on an individual’s point of view. I tried to go with the above approach as much as possible and applied a fair, consistent system across the board, so we’ll see where the chips fall.
Here we go:
1. Florida (5-0) … 92.1
2. Texas A&M (5-0) … 99.2
3. Northwestern (5-0) … 106.2
4. Memphis (5-0) … 106.8
5. Michigan State (5-0) … 114.7
6. Ohio State (5-0) … 117
7. Oklahoma State (5-0) … 118.3
8. Temple (4-0) … 122.1
9. Utah (4-0) … 126.5
10. Iowa (5-0) … 127.4
11. TCU (5-0) … 137
12. Cal (5-0) … 140.5
13. Oklahoma (4-0) … 146.8
14. LSU (4-0) … 153.3
15. Toledo (4-0) … 154.5
16. Florida State (4-0) … 170.3
17. Houston (4-0) … 182.4
18. Clemson (4-0) … 187.3
19. Navy (4-0) … 190.8
20. Baylor (4-0) … 198.8