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[QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1954913, member: 289"]
We often hear teams being evaluated at the end of the season by how they did “against ranked teams”. A couple of years ago I came up with a simple system for evaluating this, one with an acknowledged flaw but which nonetheless produced interesting results so I’ll do it again this year.

The system is very simple. First I hand out points to teams based on the ranking of their opponent. If you play the #1 ranked team, you get 25 points for playing such a powerful team. You get 24 points for playing the #2 team, 23 for playing the #3 team, etc. I’ll call them schedule points. Here’s a chart to make it easy:

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.

That’s step one. Now we play the games and see how these teams actually do on the field. What cued me into this is that most games will be won or lost by 25 points or less, so the points involved are comparable. You just compare the point differential to the points teams have gotten for playing a  ranked opponent. If they beat the ranked opponent, their points will grow by the margin of victory. If they lose, you subtract the margin of victory from the schedule points. If that reduces them to zero or less, they get zero points.  I’m not going to deal with minus points, just add up the positive points earned, or else my rankings would be cluttered up with a lot of inferior teams who were below the Mendoza line because they’d gotten blown out by their ranked opponents.  If you play the #1 team and lose by 21 points, you’ll get 4 points: 25 schedule points minus the 21 points you lost by. If you play the #10 team and lose by 13 points, you’ll get three points. If you play the #15 team and lose by 14 points, you’ll get nothing, (11-14 = 0 in this system).

I’ll record the points earned each week and how the teams got them and add them up over the course of the season. That will show us how each team did “against ranked teams”. Like all cumulative standings, they will sort themselves out as the season goes on and come more and more into focus. Later listings will be more meaningful than early ones as more and more teams get through the meat of their schedules. The cumulative listing should I think be less a ranking of teams than a statistic you look at in determining where to rank the teams.

WEEK #11 (November 10-12, 2016)

Southern California beat #4 Washington 26-13                   35 points
Louisiana State beat #25 Arkansas 38-10                                29 points
Pittsburgh beat #2 Clemson 43-42                                            25 points
Iowa beat #3 Michigan 14-13                                                      24 points
Georgia beat #9 Auburn 13-7                                                      23 points
Georgia Tech beat #14 Virginia Tech 30-20                            22 points
Mississippi beat #8 Texas A&M 29-28                                      19 points
Texas Tech lost to #13 Oklahoma State 44-45                      12 points
Duke beat #17 North Carolina 28-27                                        10 points
Texas lost to #16 West Virginia 20-24                                        6 points
Indiana lost to #10 Penn State 31-45                                          1 point
                                                                   
Comments: It was the “Bonfire of the Vanities” as three undefeated teams dreaming of a national championship went down. But because all three of them went down, all three of them are still in it. But none of them was the biggest upset of the day. This was: [URL="http://www.syracuse.com/orangesports/index.ssf/2004/05/origins_of_orange_colors_nicknames_and_mascots_of_syracuse_sports_over_the_years.html"]Origins of Orange: Colors, nicknames and mascots of Syracuse sports over the years (from the archive)[/URL]

SEASON STANDINGS

Alabama                              181 points
Wisconsin                            122 points
Ohio State                           117 points
Mississippi                          95 points
Auburn                                 93 points
Louisville                              82 points
Texas A&M                         77 points
Arkansas                              74 points
Washington                        73 points
Louisiana State                  64 points
Florida State                       63 points
Oklahoma State                                55 points
Texas Christian                  49 points
Georgia                                                48 points
Clemson                              46 points
Southern California         46 points
Texas                                    45 points
Virginia Tech                      40 points
Southern Methodist       37 points
Washington State            37 points
California                             35 points
Houston                               33 points
North Carolina                   33 points
Iowa                                      32 points
Mississippi State               32 points
Michigan State                  30 points
Indiana                                 27 points
Penn State                          27 points
Georgia Tech                     26 points
Navy                                      26 points
Michigan                              25 points
Pittsburgh                           25 points
South Alabama                 24 points
Duke                                     23 points
Syracuse                              23 points
Tennessee                          23 points
Northwestern                   20 points
Troy                                       18 points
South Carolina                   17 points
Nebraska                             16 points
North Carolina State       16 points
Virginia                                 16 points
Nicholls                State                    15 points
North Dakota State         15 points
Texas Tech                          15 points
Utah                                      15 points
Wyoming                             15 points
Oklahoma                           14 points
Iowa State                          12 points
Brigham Young                  11 points
Georgia State                    11 points
South Florida                     11 points
UCLA                                     11 points
Appalachian State            10 points
Arizona                                 10 points
Vanderbilt                           10 points
Missouri                                9 points
Central Michigan                7 points
Kansas State                        7 points
Colorado State                    6 points
Notre Dame                        6 points
Tulsa                                        6 points
Purdue                                  5 points
Colorado                                4 points
Florida                                    2 points
U of Miami                            2 points
Ohio University                  2 points
Wake Forest                        1 point
[/QUOTE]

Verification

What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?