MorganWick.com

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

All logos taken from Sportslogos.net, and are the trademarks of their respective schools, used without permission under fair-use clause of United States copyright law. Some logos may be out of date. Use of logos for commercial purposes without consent of the respective schools is prohibited.

It’s still way too early to know what sort of college football season we’re going to have, although it is starting to take shape. The general consensus so far seems to be that, while not quite as wild as 2007, the 2009 college football season may well be very upset-ridden… but it’s hard to know whether any of these games should really be considered upsets.

People have complained about the preseason polls for a long time, and this year seems to have underscored it. Ole Miss was ranked very highly in the polls, rising to #4 after the first three weeks, only to fall to South Carolina. That sparked a discussion as to whether Ole Miss should have had that much hype thrust upon them without this year’s version of the team having done anything to deserve it. After all, we’re hit with surprise teams in both directions all the time in pro sports; why should college be any less of a crap shoot to predict?

But the rest of the weekend seems to have suggested that’s not the problem. Miami (FL) wasn’t ranked at all in the preseason poll and rose to the top ten in only three weeks, only to be demolished by Virginia Tech. Meanwhile, the two teams considered the undisputed top two in the country on the basis of the preseason polls, Florida and Texas, thanks to the volatility of the early rankings, have zoomed up to take two of the top three spots in the C Ratings – they are who we thought they were, despite the Gators losing Tim Tebow during the Kentucky game. That the C Ratings already reflect the national consensus in this area suggests people should pay close attention to the fact Iowa stands between the two in the 2 hole – they are the real deal, and should be considered a budding national championship contender.

I heard someone on ESPN (Kirk Herbstreit?) suggest that the preseason polls are too useful for focusing our attention on certain teams early in the season, so we should keep them but make them meaningless later. Individual conferences have media and coaches’ preseason polls and don’t even have polls during and after the season; to say the conferences should have preseason polls and the entire country shouldn’t seems absurd. Here’s my solution: Have a preseason poll, but hold off on putting out any other polls until week 4 or so, maybe even as late as the release of the first BCS standings. That way, instead of having pollsters make requisite “tweaks” from week to week, you force them to look at the entire body of work of the first four weeks and free them to make a fresh, unencumbered ranking.

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.

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

Off Top 25: #29 Florida State (was #16), #30 Arizona State (was #23), #32 Indiana (was #24), #33 Mississippi (was #14), #51 Miami (FL) (was #15), #74 California (was #7)

Unbeaten teams not on top 25: #26 Texas A&M*, #28 TCU, #36 Wisconsin

Rest of Watch List: #27 Stanford*, #29 Florida State, #30 Arizona State, #31 South Carolina*, #32 Indiana, #33 Mississippi, #34 Iowa State*, #35 Utah*

Other Positive B Ratings: #37 West Virginia*, #38 Wake Forest*, #39 Hawaii, #40 Duke, #48 SMU* (*=Newly Positive)

No Longer Positive: #43 Minnesota, #51 Miami (FL), #52 Southern Miss, #56 North Carolina, #57 Washington, #58 Kentucky, #63 Northern Illinois, #71 Colorado State, #74 California, #76 Louisville

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

Conference Rating: #1 Big 12 (2.795), #2 SEC (1.982), #3 Big East (.811), #4 Big 10 (-.189), #5 ACC (-2.429), #6 Pac-10 (-2.436), #7 MWC (-9.326, leader #28 TCU), #8 WAC (-12.590), #9 C-USA (-16.583), #10 MAC (-18.081, leader #60 Central Michigan), #11 Sun Belt (-19.835, leader #79 Middle Tenn. St.)

Best game of week: UCLA @ Stanford, 12:30pm PT, ABC

All logos taken from Sportslogos.net, and are the trademarks of their respective schools, used without permission under fair-use clause of United States copyright law. Some logos may be out of date. Use of logos for commercial purposes without consent of the respective schools is prohibited.