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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 3129899, member: 289"] 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 [/QUOTE]

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