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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1593965, 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 FOURTEEN Michigan State beat #4 Iowa 16-13 22 + 3 = 25 points Stanford beat #20 Southern California 41-22 6 + 19 = 25 points Clemson beat #10 North Carolina 45-37 16 + 8 = 24 points Alabama beat #18 Florida 29-15 8 + 14 = 22 points Texas beat #12 Baylor 23-17 14 + 6 = 20 points Iowa lost to #5 Michigan State 13-16 22 -3 = 19 points North Carolina lost to #1 Clemson 37-45 25 – 8 = 17 points Houston beat #22 Temple 24-13 4 + 11 = 15 points Florida lost to #2 Alabama 15-29 24 - 14 = 10 points Comment: There weren't many games but all of them mattered. SEASON TOTALS Alabama 204 points Oklahoma 122 points Mississippi 113 points Stanford 106 points Michigan 101 points Michigan State 91 points UCLA 87 points Florida 74 points Washington 69 points Louisiana State 68 points Clemson 66 points Iowa 66 points Southern California 66 points Oregon 61 points Utah 61 points Notre Dame 56 points Florida State 54 points Arkansas 53 points Houston 52 points Minnesota 50 points Texas A&M 50 points Ohio State 45 points Oklahoma State 44 points Texas Christian 44 points Texas 43 points Comments: The above is the top 25, based on their performance against ranked teams. By that measure, Alabama and Oklahoma are clearly better than either #1 tanked Clemson of Big Ten champion Michigan State. Clemson actually ahs the lowest point score against ranked teams of the four playoff teams. Defending national champion Ohio State lost that big game to the Spartans and they wound up with 59 points. Even if North Carolina had gotten the ball after that onside kick, tied the game and won in overtime, they would have come anywhere near Iowa's 66 points or Stanford's 106 points so there would have been a strong argument for leaving them out. The controversial offside call spared us a greater controversy. Others: Navy 38 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 North Carolina 27 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 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 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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