Against Ranked Teams (Football) - Week 9

[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 9
Michigan beat #8 Notre Dame 45-14 = +49 points
Ohio State beat #13 Wisconsin 38-7 = +44 points
Kansas State beat #5 Oklahoma 48-41 = +28 points
Auburn lost to #2 Louisiana State 20-23 = +21 points
Texas Christian beat #15 Texas 37-27 =- +21 points
Louisiana State beat #9 Auburn 23-20 = +20 points
Washington State lost to #11 Oregon 35-37 = +13 points
UCLA beat #24 Arizona State 42-32 = +12 points
Oklahoma State beat #23 Iowa State 34-27 = +10 points
Houston lost to #16 Southern Methodist 31-34 = +7 points
Michigan State lost to #6 Penn State 7-28 = -1 points
Wisconsin lost to #3 Ohio State 7-38 = -8 points
Northwestern lost to #20 Iowa 0-20 = -14 points
Arkansas lost to #1 Alabama 7-48 = -16 points
California lost to #12 Utah 0-35 = -21 points
South Alabama lost to #21 Appalachian State 3-30 = -22 points
Notre Dame lost to #19 Michigan 14-45 = -24 points
Boston College lost to #4 Clemson 7-59 = -30 points
Maryland lost to #17 Minnesota 10-52 = -33 points

Comments: The games are getting bigger and more of the better teams are rising to the top of the standings. Poor Clemson may only have one more game against a ranked team, (Wake Forest, if they keep winning). But they had a good day when K-State took out Oklahoma. South Alabama could have used Ryan Alexander.


TOP 25

Louisiana State +77 points
Michigan +72 points
Ohio State +69 points
Southern California +65 points
Auburn +64 points

Florida +37 points
South Carolina +32 points
Washington +29 points
Clemson +28 points
Kansas State +28 points

U of Miami +28 points
Wisconsin +28 points
Utah +27 points
Texas +26 points
Arizona State +24 points

North Carolina +24 points
Oklahoma State +23 points
Oklahoma +22 points
Alabama +21 points
Texas A&M +21 points

Texas Christian +21 points
Pittsburgh +18 points
Penn State +17 points
Army +16 points
Notre Dame +16 points

The worst team so far is Rutgers with -99 points.

Syracuse has -10 points