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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1552255, 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 ELEVEN (11/10-14) Alabama beat #17 Mississippi State 31-6 9 + 25 = 34 points Arkansas beat #9 Louisiana State 31-14 17 + 17 = 34 points Oklahoma beat #6 Baylor 44-34 20 + 10 = 30 points South Florida beat #22 Temple 44-23 4 + 21 = 25 points Arizona beat #10 Utah 37-30 16 + 7 = 23 points Oregon beat #7 Stanford 38-36 19 + 2 = 21 points Minnesota lost to #5 Iowa 35-40 21 - 5 = 16 points Syracuse lost to #1 Clemson 27-37 25 - 10 = 15 points Iowa State lost to #8 Oklahoma State 31-35 18 - 4 = 14 points Washington State beat #19 UCLA 31-27 7 + 4 = 11 points Houston beat #21 Memphis 35-34 4 + 1 = 5 points Indiana lost to #14 Michigan 41-48 12 – 7 = 5 points Kansas lost to #15 Texas Christian 17-23 11 - 6 = 5 points South Carolina lost to #11 Florida 14-24 15 – 10 = 5 points Baylor lost to #12 Oklahoma 34-44 14 - 10 = 4 points Memphis lost to #24 Houston 34-35 2 – 1 = 1 point Purdue lost to #18 Northwestern 14-21 8 – 7 = 1 point Wake Forest lost to #4 Notre Dame 7-28 22 - 21 = 1 point Comment: We topped last week's record by having 18 teams earn points. Alabama increased it's huge lead by steam-rolling Mississippi State but look out for Oklahoma. I think the Sooenrs are the Big 12's best team and they will beat TCU and Okie State and earn big numbers for doing so. With the Pac 12 out of it, (everyone has 2 losses), I see the Sooners in the final four and they could be a load. SEASON TOTALS Alabama 182 points Michigan 101 points Louisiana State 68 points UCLA 66 points Florida 64 points Oklahoma 63 points Mississippi 61 points Utah 61 points Stanford 59 points Arkansas 53 points Minnesota 50 points Texas A&M 50 points Iowa 47 points Southern California 43 points Clemson 42 points Notre Dame 41 points Michigan State 40 points Oregon 39 points Navy 38 points Oklahoma State 38 points Arizona State 34 points Georgia Tech 34 points Brigham Young 32 points Indiana 32 points Utah State 31 points Arizona 29 points Washington 28 points Tennessee 27 points Memphis 26 points Vanderbilt 26 points Louisville 25 points Northern Illinois 25 points South Florida 25 points Auburn 23 points Syracuse 23 points Texas 23 points Purdue 22 points Duke 20 points Kansas State 20 points Nebraska 20 points Texas Tech 20 points U of Miami 16 points California 15 points Florida State 15 points Northwestern 15 points Rutgers 15 points Iowa State 14 points Jacksonville State 13 points Kansas State 13 points Temple 13 points Toledo 12 points Mississippi State 10 points North Carolina 10 points Virginia 10 points Kentucky 9 points Pittsburgh 9 points Wake Forest 9 points North Carolina State 8 points Virginia Tech 8 points Western Michigan 8 points Air Force 7 points Boston College 7 points Iowa State 6 points Wisconsin 6 points Houston 5 points Kansas 5 points Maryland 5 points South Carolina 5 points Ball State 4 points Baylor 4 points Central Michigan 4 points Southern Methodist 4 points Penn State 2 points Connecticut 1 point Memphis 1 point [/QUOTE]

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