Against Ranked Teams (football) Week 6

[SWC75]

This year I will be again charting how teams have done “against ranked teams”, which is something that always comes up at the end of the year when the arguments over who should be in the 4 team national championship playoff takes place. As usual, this is not meant to end those arguments, just to give those making them something to look at in forming their opinions.

I’m going to do it using the procedure I started a couple years ago. The original procedure was that I would first grant teams playing ranked teams a certain number of points based on who they are playing. If you played the #1 team, (I use the AP- writer’s poll for continuity), you get 25 points. If you are playing the #2 team, you get 24 points, etc. down to getting 1 point for playing the #25 team. I call these “schedule points”. Here’s a chart to make it simple:
1-25, 2-24, 3-23, 4-22, 5-21, 6-20, 7-19, 8-18, 9-17, 10-16, 11-15, 12-14, 13-13, 14-12, 15-11, 16-10, 17-9, 18-8, 19-7, 20-6, 21-5, 22-4, 23-3, 24-2, 25-1.
(Of course you can always just subtract the ranking from 26. That will work every time.)

Then I look at the point differential in the actual game. If you defeated the ranked team, you add the number of points you won by to the schedule points. If you lost to that team, you subtract the margin you lost by from the schedule points. (I call these ‘game’ points.) The difference between this procedure and the original one if that I didn’t count any deficit: if you got to zero, you got zero. This year I’m going to try to record negative points, too, so a team can get full ‘credit’ for a really bad performance.


WEEK 6

Florida beat #7 Auburn 24-13 = +30 points
Ohio State beat #25 Michigan State 34-10 = +25 points
Stanford beat #15 Washington 23-13 = +21 points
Michigan beat #14 Iowa 10-3 = +19 points
Texas Tech beat #21 Oklahoma State 45-35 = +15 points
Cincinnati beat #18 Central Florida 27-24 = +11 points
Auburn lost to #10 Florida 13-24 = +5 points
West Virginia lost to #11 Texas 31-42 = +4 points
California lost to #13 Oregon 7-17 = +3 points
Iowa lost to #19 Michigan 3-10 = 0 points
Michigan State lost to #4 Ohio State 10-34 = -2 points
Tulsa lost to #24 Southern Methodist 37-43 = -4 points
Kansas lost to #6 Oklahoma 20-45 = -5 points
Tennessee lost to #3 Georgia 14-43 = -6 points
Purdue lost to #12 Penn State 7-35 = -14 points
Nevada-Las Vegas lost to #16 Boise State 13-38 = -15 points
Utah State lost to #5 Louisiana State 6-42 = -19 points
Kent State lost to #8 Wisconsin 0-48 = -30 points
Bowling Green lost to #9 Notre Dame 0-52 = -35 points

Comments: The top six games were victories, not surprisingly close defeats. That’s a sign that truly meaningful games are now being played as we are in the conference seasons. The “directional” schools are disappearing from the list. But there are some pretenders still at or near the top of the Top 25 list and some contenders that still haven’t shown up yet.

TOP 25

Southern California +51 points
Notre Dame +40 points
Auburn +43 points
Wisconsin +36 points
Florida +30 points

Arizona State +29 points
Ohio State +25 points
Louisiana State +24 points
North Carolina +24 points
Oklahoma State +23 points

Texas A&M +21 points
Washington +19 points
Pittsburgh +18 points
Army +16 points
California +16 points

U of Miami +14 points
Texas +13 points
Michigan +11 points
Colorado +10 points
Kentucky +9 points

Temple +8 points
Stanford +7 points
Iowa State +6 points
Oregon +4 points
Southern Methodist +4 points
West Virginia +4 points


The worst team so far is New Mexico State with -76 points.

Syracuse has -10 points