Month: October 2009

This was a fairly weak week in college football with a ton of top 25 teams having byes, including the two national title favorites, and the best game of the week being #16 UCLA against Stanford, where the Bruins failed to prove they deserved to be ranked in the polls and the Cardinal earned themselves their first trip to my Top 25 in the time I’ve been tracking them. The bye was worse for Florida than Texas, as Texas’ strength of schedule held up enough that they could flip places with Florida. Iowa moved out of the #2 spot with a closer-than-it-should-have-been win over Arkansas State, but Cincinnati will not go away, and Alabama is finally looking like the team everyone thought they were.

There were games between teams ranked in the top 25 in the polls, but in every case at least one team was way overrated, at least according to the C Ratings. Cal’s ridiculously large tumble following the loss to Oregon was seemingly substantiated by the pedestrian performance against USC, while Oklahoma, now almost certainly out of the national title race (unless this is another 2007 in the sense that a two-loss team finds themselves in the title game) is in theory, hurt more by the loss to Miami than the Hurricanes can bounce back with it, given its closeness.

But we’re going to make up for lost time this week – especially with the return of the Gators against LSU, in what may be their biggest obstacle to a repeat national champion, an LSU team that looks rather weak with a close call against a Georgia team that the C Ratings aren’t as high on as the polls. There’s only one undefeated team – Wisconsin – that’s not on the top 25, and they’ve got a big test against Ohio State this week.

How the C Ratings are tabulated: First, A Ratings are tabulated by multiplying the total score ratio, which is expressed by (points-opponents’ points)/points, by the winning percentage. Score ratio minimizes the effect of running up the score. Next, B Points for each game are tabulated by (margin of victory)/(opponent’s A rating)+/-1 for wins, and -(margin of loss)/(1-opponent’s A Rating)+/-1 for losses. The “+/-” is + for road games and – for home ones. The total number of B Points is multiplied by the A Rating to get the B Rating. Conference Ratings are tabulated by averaging the B Ratings of all teams in the conference. (Independents are counted separately, and Army and Navy are counted as one conference.) Finally, the C Rating is tabulated by taking the difference between the team’s B Rating and his conference’s rating, taking a fraction of that equal to the fraction of Division I-A the conference makes up, and taking the result off the B Rating. The three ratings go A, B, C across. Click here to see the complete ratings.

34 teams total with positive C Rating (none with negative B Rating)

Off Top 25: #27 UCLA (was #16), #28 Michigan (was #19), #65 Houston (was #24)

Watch List: #26 Wisconsin (only unbeaten team not on top 25), #27 UCLA, #28 Michigan, #29 South Carolina, #30 Florida State, #31 West Virginia, #32 Notre Dame*

Other Positive B Ratings: #33 Wake Forest, #34 Arkansas*, #36 Utah, #45 Northern Illinois (*=Newly Positive)

No Longer Positive: #48 Iowa State, #51 Arizona State, #55 SMU, #57 Duke, #61 Indiana, #65 Houston, #70 Texas A&M, #78 Hawaii

Bottom 10: #111 Buffalo, #112 San Jose State, #113 Eastern Michigan, #114 New Mexico State, #115 Memphis, #116 Washington State, #117 Western Kentucky, #118 New Mexico, #119 Miami (OH), #120 Rice

Conference Rating: #1 Big 12 (1.510), #2 SEC (1.492), #3 Big East (.053), #4 Big 10 (-1.417), #5 ACC (-3.548), #6 Pac-10 (-4.761), #7 WAC (-14.119), #8 Mountain West (-14.178), #9 C-USA (-18.771, leader #55 SMU), #10 Sun Belt (-21.808, leader #75 Middle Tenn. St.), #11 MAC (-23.010, leader #45 Northern Illinois)

Best game of week: Florida @ LSU, 5pm PT, CBS

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