SuperPower Rankings

Week 11 SuperPower Rankings (and a bonus!)

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The full SuperPower Rankings are in the same place they always are.

I’m also picking certain trends to continue the rest of the season, and partly as a result I have a rare triple Upset Special. The streaks I’m picking, until they’re broken, are for the Rams to win out, the Saints to complete a four-game losing streak and win out, and the Bears to continue alternating wins and losses. One of my upset specials, thus, is the Rams defeating the Seahawks – within the realm of possibility given the Seahawks’ inconsistency.

The second Upset Special – the Texans over the Browns – isn’t too surprising when you consider the Texans finally have Andre Johnson back. The third, though, is the biggie: the Lions over the Packers. It may seem farfetched, especially given the Lions’ loss to the Giants, but I’ve looked at the schedule and for the Lions to get to ten wins they have to win at least one of three games against the Cowboys or Packers. I consider the Packers to be the more overrated of the two, and there’s no better time to beat them than when the Lions are at home. Wouldn’t it be fitting for the Lions to win on Thanksgiving when it actually will have some effect on their season?

Or am I just crazy?

Week 10 SuperPower Rankings Up

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Last week the Patriots achieved a momentous feat: single digits in points. Falling to 9 points means becoming the unanimous No. 1 pick in the Super Power Rankings. This week, the Dolphins pull the opposite feat: 288 points for being the unanimous last place pick.

My Upset Special this week is the Bears over the Seahawks, though I’m starting to reconsider that. Oakland over the Vikings is a technical upset both in the lines and the SuperPower Rankings, so I could have chosen that as my Upset Special and let the home-team edge between two wildly inconsistent teams go to the Seahawks. In fact, screw it. I just moved my pick back over to Seattle. The Upset Special is Oakland handling the Peterson-less Vikes.

Laptop Update

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I installed a second version of XP on my hard disk and my computer is once again operating semi-normally. The web site has been updated with two weeks‘ worth of College Football Rankings, changes in both lineal titles, and one week’s update of the SuperPower Rankings. This week’s SuperPower Rankings (and the picks) will wait until at least tomorrow.

Update

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I still have no means of uploading to Freehostia at the moment. Here are the Week 9 SuperPower Rankings:

  1. *Patriots
  2. Colts
  3. Cowboys
  4. Packers
  5. Steelers
  6. Giants
  7. Titans
  8. Lions
  9. Browns
  10. Jaguars
  11. Saints
  12. Buccaneers
  13. Chargers
  14. Redskins
  15. Ravens
  16. Chiefs
  17. Seahawks
  18. Bills
  19. Panthers
  20. Texans
  21. Vikings
  22. Bears
  23. Broncos
  24. Cardinals
  25. Eagles
  26. Bengals
  27. Falcons
  28. Raiders
  29. 49ers
  30. Jets
  31. Rams
  32. Dolphins

My Upset Special for the week is the Raiders over the Bears at home, which isn’t exactly a blockbuster. Other things that require a web-site update are still on hold for the forseeable future, including the Week 10 College Football Rankings, which, God willing, I will post next week along with the Week 11 Rankings. The NFL Lineal Title is updated on the web site’s front page to reflect the Pats’ victory but not on the Lineal Title History.

As for the SNF Flex Schedule watch, it’s forthcoming, but hang on, it’ll take me a bit longer than usual to prepare it, and not because of my computer situation.

Attention

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The NFL SuperPower Rankings, NFL lineal title update, SNF Flex Scheduling watch, and NFL picks are all delayed at least until Thursday and possibly Friday due to a computer issue.

The College Football Rankings will be up by 5 PM PT. Link is on a prior post.

UPDATE: The College Football Rankings are delayed as well and I may not be able to update anything web site related. If so, I will not have any more SuperPower Ranking updates for the remainder of the season. It seems at least some of the school computers may have restrictions on uploading files to the Internet. That or Freehostia is having problems at the moment.

NFL Week 8 SuperPower Rankings

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I only missed four games this past week, and only two in which I picked the favorite. In both cases, the team on top in the SuperPower Rankings won, so there really was no good Upset Special this week.

This week, I have Indy pulling the Upset Special over the Patriots in Super Bowl XLI.V. However, I also think the Patriots could turn the tables and win the AFC Championship Game. I also find it incredible that the Saints are favored over the supposedly red-hot Jaguars, even though I’m going the same way. I have a second Upset Special picking the Cardinals over the Bucs.

The Chargers and Chiefs may have fattened up against weak opposition. KC is facing a Packer team that’s better than them in the rankings anyway, and the Chargers are facing Minnesota, who are too weak to challenge them.

NFL Week 7 SuperPower Rankings

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Just to have an upset special, I made a late change to the picks so that I would be picking the Texans over the Chargers. Last week I got back on track with an 8-for-14 week. Through seven weeks I’m 63-40 for a .612 record.

As promised last week, the SuperPower Rankings are moving to an Excel file. That address will contain all SuperPower rankings from here through at least the end of the season. Adjust your bookmarks accordingly!

Superpower Rankings and a Life Update

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Can someone take over the Consensus Power Rankings for me? Not right away, maybe next year. I still like the concept and value the Consensus Rankings far more than any individual ranking when making out my picks of the week, but it’s so time-consuming. Ideally, looking at and plugging in a ranking for a team doesn’t take much time, but with nine rankings and 32 teams, I’m looking at nearly 300 rankings I have to add in, and some rankings are easier to do than others. Then I hand-reorder the rankings, and then comes the really long part: the little blurbs I stick next to each team. Those really take time.

Starting next week, I will probably move all the Power Rankings into an Excel file and just do the rankings on there from now on, unless someone else volunteers to take over by next Wednesday. And I’ll probably ditch this experiment next year.

That I spend so much time on the consensus power rankings is a problem, considering I am back to being a college student. And especially since I’m in one class where three is the norm. Last week, after an incident that happened the Thursday before, I was removed from one of the two classes I started the year in. I spent the weekend fretting that I might be kicked out of school entirely. I wrote the following during that time:

I don’t like the direction my life is heading, and I don’t know what I can do to
stop it. I’m about to be kicked out of school, but that’s only going to solve
the problem for them, not for me. This path has the chance to end with me in
jail. I could move on to another college, but without some changes the same
thing is probably going to happen. Especially since Mom says I would have to get
a job and basically have no fun whatsoever between school and work. And I don’t
have much of a work ethic, which might be an even bigger problem than the
behavior stuff. I would like to write a lot, I’d like to write a novel about
what I have to go through, but I started thinking about it as a seinor in high
school and I’ve barely made it out of the first chapter. I could enter the
working world but I could get kicked out there too. And there’s the work ethic
too. I could become a nonworking househusband but I’d be wasting my talents, I’m
too timid to meet any girls, and that would end badly too.

The things I spend my time working on are so trivial that I’m not sure I would want them even as jobs. That’s the real reason I want to unload the Superpower Rankings: I’m not even enjoying them. It’s too much work.

With the Patriots’ demolition of the Cowboys, only the true diehards who keep saying “I won’t drop the defending SB champs from until they lose” (namely, Fox) keep the Patriots from being a unanimous No. 1. In other news, I think we need to call an intervention on Yahoo’s Charles Robinson, and gently let him know that the team he keeps ranking at #14 is 0-3 in their last 3 and their two wins came on last-second field goals against teams he ranks 26th and 28th. And the Eagles are 2-0 in games where the home team wears bad throwbacks. I’m picking Jacksonville over Indianapolis to win the Lineal Title as my upset special only because I wasn’t moved to pick any other real blockbuster upsets.

NFL Week 5 SuperPower Rankings

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News and notes from the SP rankings:

-If the Pats show even a hint of weakness against the Cowboys, No. 1 will go to the Colts. Dr. Z’s SI rankings joined CBS and Fox in ranking the Colts ahead of the Pats this week, leaving the Colts just two more turncoats shy of taking over the top spot in the Consensus Rankings.

-The Chargers are the latest team to be overrated for beating the Broncos.

-You may recall I picked two upsets last week: the Chiefs over the Jags and the Dolphins over the Texans. Neither happened; the only dog I picked to win that actually managed to do that was the Chargers over the Broncos, which caused the rankings to finally put the Broncos in a more correct position. I missed the other two technical upsets, Carolina over New Orleans and the Bears over the Packers, but went 10-for-14.

This week, my upset special may not seem to have a big enough gap in the Consensus Rankings to qualify. I don’t agree that the tight pull-out over the Bills shows that the Cowboys have the stuff to “overcome adversity”. I think it shows weaknesses other teams can exploit. That said… you can probably see where this is going. That game has probably put that little seed in the minds of the Patriots players: This is an easy one. Oh, and the game is in Dallas. That counts for something.

This week’s College Football Rankings are coming out tomorrow.