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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1571504, 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 THIRTEEN Oklahoma beat #11 Oklahoma State 58-23 15 + 35 = 50 points Ohio State beat #10 Michigan 42-13 16 + 29 = 45 points Washington beat #20 Washington State 45-10 6 + 35 = 41 points Florida State beat #12 Florida 27-2 14 + 25 = 39 points Houston beat #15 Navy 52-31 11 + 21 = 32 points Texas Christian beat #7 Baylor 28-21 19 + 7 = 26 points Southern California beat #22 UCLA 40-21 4 + 19 = 23 points Stanford beat #6 Notre Dame 38-36 20 + 2 = 22 points South Carolina lost to #1 Clemson 32-37 25 – 5 = 20 points Mississippi beat #21 Mississippi St. 38-27 5 + 11 = 16 points Notre Dame lost to #9 Stanford 36-38 17 -2 = 15 points Nebraska lost to #4 Iowa 20-28 22 - 8 = 14 points Auburn lost to #2 Alabama 13-29 24-16 = 8 points Western Michigan beat #24 Toledo 35-30 2 + 5 = 7 points No Carolina St. lost to #14 No. Carolina 34-45 12 - 11 = 1 point Comments: several unexpected blow-out games. Oklahoma, Ohio State and Florida State all dominated their main rivals on the road. The Sooners pushed into second place on the year with 122 points and that's without a conference championship game to potentially add to the total. The closest teams behind them who will play in a conference title game are Michigan State and Southern Cal and they are 56 points behind and unlikely to catch Oklahoma. SEASON TOTALS Alabama 182 points Oklahoma 122 points Mississippi 113 points Michigan 101 points UCLA 87 points Stanford 81 points Washington 69 points Louisiana State 68 points Michigan State 66 points Southern California 66 points Florida 64 points Oregon 61 points Utah 61 points Notre Dame 56 points Florida State 54 points Arkansas 53 points Minnesota 50 points Texas A&M 50 points Iowa 47 points Ohio State 45 points Oklahoma State 44 points Texas Christian 44 points Clemson 42 points Navy 38 points Houston 37 points Temple 37 points Arizona State 34 points Baylor 34 points Georgia Tech 34 points Nebraska 34 points Brigham Young 32 points Indiana 32 points Auburn 31 points Utah State 31 points Arizona 29 points Tennessee 27 points Boston College 26 points Memphis 26 points Vanderbilt 26 points Louisville 25 points Northern Illinois 25 points South Carolina 25 points South Florida 25 points Purdue 23 points Syracuse 23 points Texas 23 points Northwestern 22 points Duke 20 points Kansas State 20 points Texas Tech 20 points California 17 points U of Miami 16 points Rutgers 15 points Western Michigan 15 points Iowa State 14 points Ohio State 14 points Virginia Tech 14 points Wake Forest 14 points Jacksonville State 13 points Kansas State 13 points Florida Atlantic 12 points Toledo 12 points Connecticut 11 point Mississippi State 10 points North Carolina 10 points Virginia 10 points Kentucky 9 points North Carolina State 9 points Pittsburgh 9 points Air Force 7 points Iowa State 6 points Wisconsin 6 points Kansas 5 points Maryland 5 points Ball State 4 points Central Michigan 4 points Penn State 4 points Southern Methodist 4 points Memphis 1 point [/QUOTE]

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