College Football Rankings

The bowls if selections were based on my C Ratings. Bowl tie-ins often reflect my attempt to synthesize the (often not entirely in agreement) bowl selection orders given by Wikipedia and CBS Sports, although the role of the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl in the WAC selection process, given how uncertain Wikipedia remains about it and the WAC selection rules seemingly being written before its involvement, remains perplexing. Teams in parenthesis are the teams that would be selected with Auburn and Oregon still going to the national championship game. (It’s always been a problem that strength of schedule takes the form strictly of opponents’ A Rating which itself doesn’t take into account strength of schedule, allowing inflated ratings from weak conferences, but it became really apparent this year.)

Despite its role in preventing a playoff, I actually feel a little sentimental towards the Rose Bowl’s Big 10/Pac-10 matchup this year; of all the years the Rose Bowl would be forced to pick a non-BCS team, it would be a year where the Pac-10 had a very, very strong second choice in Stanford! This isn’t a year like 2007 where the Rose Bowl would have blindly chosen an Illinois team markedly inferior to its alternatives.

For reasons I’ve covered before, don’t expect the Golden Bowl selections until late in the week at best. For the record, the non-BCS bowls in order of ideal prestige are now: Capitol One, Cotton, Outback, Alamo, Chick-fil-A, Gator, Champs Sports/Insight, Holiday, Sun/Texas, MAACO/Meineke Car Care, Music City, Liberty, Poinsettia, Independence, and so on. With Arizona State likely not bowl-eligible for playing two FCS opponents and finishing 6-6, Tennessee is the only bowl-eligible team not going to a bowl.

All times Eastern.

As usual, people are quick to overreact to a single loss. #2 Boise State’s loss to #16 Nevada was an OT loss on the road to a good team, so they don’t slip much. Enough to fall back behind #1 TCU, but not any further.

It did, however, greatly clear up the national championship picture. TCU is now the only potential interlocutor or fly in the ointment for a #3 Oregon-#7 Auburn national championship game. Funnily, Auburn may have a greater chance of being left out of the National Championship Game if they lose in the SEC Title Game than if they had lost in the Iron Bowl, and not because of the opponent or the time in and of itself, but because the polls would balk at sending Auburn to the National Title Game without winning their conference. 2005, anyone? If Auburn does go to the national championship game without winning their conference, it will be one more point of the non-BCS conferences against the BCS… but TCU will probably be told, “Take your whining and stick it in your bag and carry it with you to the Big East.”

Me, I’m just rooting for Auburn to lose and TCU to make the National Title Game just so #5 Stanford can go to the Rose Bowl…

Other notes on this week’s C Ratings:

• This week’s ratings reflect corrections to my database for no fewer than three games I had attributed to the wrong team, affecting, among others, the ratings for #8 Oklahoma, #15 Arkansas, #18 Iowa, and the Big Ten in general. (One of the games was the Iowa State-Oklahoma game being recorded as an Iowa-Oklahoma game.) This will be the last post in this format; next week’s ratings will be published alongside my annual “Who SHOULD Go To Which Bowls?” post.
• #6 Wisconsin is really determined to prove they deserve to win the Big Ten. They’re now ahead of Auburn and only two spots behind #4 Ohio State. Meanwhile, Ohio State is now up to fifth in the BCS with Boise’s loss, and could well go to a BCS bowl, if not the Rose.
• #13 South Carolina missed tying the Big 12 Title Game for Game of the Week by .145 in the C Ratings behind #12 Missouri. Underrated (or properly rated but ignored) teams to look for in the non-BCS bowls: a possible #14 Alabama-Iowa or Michigan State Capitol One Bowl matchup, plus #11 Oklahoma State, Missouri, South Carolina, Arkansas, #23 Texas A&M. #18 LSU is barely worth mentioning.
• Iowa now outranks #22 Michigan State. That game held very much true to form in retrospect.
• Suddenly Louisville isn’t far behind Pitt in the rankings. #19 West Virginia may have one of the highest ratings for a Big East team this season, but they need help to get the Big East BCS bid. But that help is a very real possibility. USF is ahead of Connecticut in the C Ratings.
• In the past there have been problems with the ACC having so much parity that teams out of the title game hunt have been leading the conference while the teams in the title game struggle to make the Top 25. Not this year. The conference’s two best teams will play in the title game. In fact, every BCS conference title game pits the two best teams in their respective conferences regardless of division.
• Northern Illinois has been a MAC mainstay in the Other Positive B Points in past years, to the point where I wondered if something about their schedule or style of play guaranteed them positive B Points late in the year regardless of how well they were actually doing. Well, this year they could win the conference title.

Best game of week: #8 Oklahoma v. #10 Nebraska in Arlington, 8pm ET, ABC
Complete C Ratings

On the eve of a huge Friday of college football, there’s a new #1 in the C Ratings. #1 Boise State is the beneficiary of #2 TCU not playing last week, but they should increase their lead after playing #16 Nevada while TCU plays lowly New Mexico.

#3 Oregon didn’t slip for their idle hands, but #7 Auburn fell hard, falling behind #5 Stanford and #6 Oklahoma, resulting in Bedlam for the Big 12 South title slightly outpacing the Iron Bowl for Game of the Week. Auburn may have to beat down on #9 Alabama to justify the respect the BCS is giving the SEC. If a one-loss SEC team goes to the National Title Game ahead of an unbeaten team from a non-BCS conference I’ll just put my head in my hands. The SEC is the best conference top-to-bottom, but its best teams haven’t been as dominating as you would like.

Other notes on this week’s C Ratings:

• #10 Virginia Tech breaks into the Top 10 after completing their road to the division title. Given the record of ACC teams, expect them to get a very good seed in the Golden Bowl Tournament.
• #11 Wisconsin is looking better, but #4 Ohio State still looks like a worldbeater, even if every non-BCS team in the country now hates their guts.
• #12 Nebraska and #13 Missouri are once again back-to-back in the ratings. The game that made the difference in the North is likely making the difference in the ratings as well.
• #14 Arkansas is actually ahead of overrated #17 LSU. Expect them to prove they deserve it. #15 South Carolina could have a trap game against a Clemson team in positive B Points.
• #18 Navy is off until the Army game.
• V-Tech has locked up one division, but ACC Madness continues in the other. The Atlantic basically comes down to the #19 NC State-Maryland game, even though Maryland now has three conference losses and #23 Florida State has finished its conference schedule, heading into the Florida game, with two.
• #20 West Virginia has the highest rating for a Big East team this season, but they’re a long shot to win the Big East even if they beat rivals Pittsburgh.
• Congratulations to #21 Texas A&M for winning the Lone Star Showdown (not yet reflected in the rankings) for the first time in forever, and reminding us all why this used to be the Southwest Conference’s premier rivalry.
• The Land Grant Trophy game may be the best of the early games on Saturday. #22 Michigan State hopes to win the Big Ten by beating a decent Penn State team and rooting for rival Michigan. Iowa now finds itself just barely outside the Top 25.
• Finally, #24 Notre Dame breaks into positive B Points – and the Top 25 – after beating up on Army in Yankee Stadium, and #25 Arizona is going to be a bit of a long shot to upset Oregon.

Best game of week: #6 Oklahoma @ #8 Oklahoma State, Saturday 8pm ET, ABC
Complete C Ratings

The top six in the C Ratings remain the same as last week; #1 TCU had too big a lead to be terribly affected by Utah’s loss to Notre Dame. So instead, let’s talk about the chaotic Big Ten race, where I think I actually heard one person on ESPN (I think it was Kirk Herbstreit… I’d say it was on BCS Countdown but I don’t think I watched it this week… was it on PTI?) call #4 Ohio State the best team in the Big Ten if not one of the best in the country. The bandwagon is gaining steam, folks!

Of course, for them to have a chance at even a BCS bowl they probably need #14 Wisconsin to lose, so did the Badgers earn the respect the BCS has been giving them with the way they racked up 83 points on Indiana? Well… not really. As I’ve said in the past, the C Ratings have two curbs on running up the score in the A and B Ratings. Wisconsin didn’t get the benefit in the B Ratings because Indiana sucks (A Rating = .176), and they didn’t get the benefit in the A Ratings because they allowed 20 points. The real margin of victory was 63, which is still impressive if sometimes matched by other guarantee games, but those other guarantee games have scores of 63-0, not 83-20. So the score ratio Wisconsin got was only (63/83)=.759, which translates into the A Rating calculation as .8795, impressive but not overly so, and even the relatively minor A Rating can’t budge much this late. Wisconsin’s A Rating only went from .602 to .627, and while its C Rating more than doubled, the gaps between teams increase in the upper echelons of the ratings, so the Badgers only moved up three spots.

Other notes on this week’s C Ratings:

• #7 Oklahoma nestles right up behind #6 Oklahoma State, setting up a potentially huge Bedlam game for the Big 12 South title, thanks to a squash of 5-5 Texas Tech. #9 Nebraska gives the Big 12 three Top 10 representatives, actually a step down for them, as they put themselves three scores ahead of Kansas by only a point in the final Kansas-Nebraska Act game. #8 Stanford takes a step down with a tight pull-out against Arizona State.
• I have to rant a little about margin of victory, since the BCS’ prohibition of it in the computer rankings has finally come back to the forefront. We can be so concerned with running up the score that we can ignore that just the possibility of running up the score shows how great you are. Not factoring in margin of victory means the BCS can look the other way with teams that beat good teams but have trouble beating teams they should beat easily. Last year Iowa beat Northern Iowa and Penn State by similar scores. This year #15 LSU is putting on a whole new spin on success. It’s not the BCS’ fault they could have grabbed the SEC West title ahead of #10 Alabama if #5 Auburn lost out, including to the Tide – that’s not anyone’s fault unless you want to come up with entirely new schema for conference titles – but it is the BCS’ fault that they’re 5th and could have gone to the BCS Title Game, ahead of TCU and #2 Boise State teams everyone agrees should be given a chance, if they had won the SEC Title Game. (Although picking them ahead of Bama for the Sugar Bowl is a whole other issue.) Auburn and #17 South Carolina isn’t as big as some recent SEC Title Games, but it’s still probably the biggest game of championship week.
• ACC Madness! Two down, one to go, and #11 Virginia Tech has reached the point where they would need to lose to Virginia too to not go to the ACC Title Game. I’d love to see them play a BCS at-large in the Orange Bowl, but they’ll probably be fed a minnow champion from the good but full-of-too-much-parity Big East (the magic 8-ball has come up “yes, #23 West Virginia can play in the Top 25 this week”) that could come down to a mess of tiebreakers (a five-way tie isn’t a possibility but a three-way tie is), and we’ll have yet another year of no one caring about the Orange Bowl. Meanwhile, #22 NC State is the only team in the Atlantic in the Top 25, and control their own destiny if they win out. Maryland, though, is a must-win no matter who wins between Florida State and Maryland this week or even if the Pack lose to their rivals (though if the Pack do lose they’re certainly rooting for Maryland).
• This is really a holding pattern week before the big games next week. Besides the Iron Bowl, and the game that could decide who goes to the Cotton Bowl between LSU and #12 Arkansas (don’t be surprised if the Hogs win), there will also be the big game between #13 Nevada and Boise State.
• #16 Missouri got back on the winning track against Kansas State, but with #24 Texas A&M the only other Big 12 team in the Top 25 that isn’t in the Top 20, and Nebraska needing two losses to lose the North, what exactly are the Tigers playing for? A&M was propelled by a huge win over a good Baylor team and now gets a huge game with Nebraska, but Missouri shouldn’t get its hopes up. Nebraska’s other remaining opponent is lowly Colorado, in both teams’ final Big 12 regular-season game.
• There is one reason that would be sufficient to explain why I keep considering changing the C Rating formula: independents. Notre Dame is a team in negative B Points just sitting there in the middle of a number of teams in positive B Points because their C Rating isn’t depressed by other teams in their conference with lower ratings. #18 Navy has its ratings depressed by being in the “military conference” with Army, but Army is on the first page this year as well. Navy is still good, with only three losses, and their B Rating would still be sufficient for the Top 25, but still, they have three losses despite Air Force being the only team they’ve played in positive B Points.
• Do you think the Big Ten is happy they don’t have any more of these chaotic conference title races after this year? #20 Iowa isn’t even involved with two conference losses and they beat one of the teams, #19 Michigan State, that’s just a spot ahead of them.
• Arizona tumbles off the Top 25 (but just barely; there’s still a huge gap to Oregon State at #49) so #21 USC is the last Pac-10 team on the Top 25. (Actually, now that I think about it, even if USC were disqualified the C Ratings would still have three Pac-10 teams, just a different three…)

Best game of week: #4 Ohio State @ #20 Iowa, 3:30pm ET, ABC
Complete C Ratings