Against Ranked Teams

[SWC75]

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 FIVE (10/1-3/2015)
Florida beat #3 Mississippi 38-10 23+28= 51 points
Alabama beat #8 Georgia 38-10 18 + 28 = 46 points
Arizona State beat #7 UCLA 38-23 19 + 15 = 34 points
Oklahoma beat #23 West Virginia 44-24 3 + 20 = 23 points
Clemson beat #6 Notre Dame 24-22 20 + 2 = 22 points
Purdue lost to #2 Michigan State 21-24 24-3 = 21 points
Indiana lost to #1 Ohio State 27-34 25-7 = 18 points
Texas A&M beat #21 Mississippi State 30-17 5 + 13 = 18 points
Iowa beat #19 Wisconsin 10-6 7 + 4 = 11 points
Notre Dame lost to #12 Clemson 22-24 14-2 = 10 points
Wake Forest lost to #11 Florida State 16-24 15-7 = 8 points
Kansas State lost to #20 Oklahoma State 34-36 5 – 2 = 3 points


SEASON TOTALS
Alabama 75 points
Utah 55 points
Florida 51 points
Texas A&M 50 points
UCLA 44 points
Louisiana State 35 points
Michigan 35 points
Arizona State 34 points
Oklahoma 33 points
Brigham Young 32 points
Notre Dame 32 points
Mississippi 30 points
Stanford 30 points
Louisville 25 points
Clemson 22 points
Michigan State 22 points
Purdue 21 points
Duke 20 points
Texas Tech 20 points
Indiana 18 points
Northern Illinois 18 points
Oregon 18 points
Minnesota 17 points
Northwestern 15 points
Jacksonville State 13 points
Toledo 12 points
Vanderbilt 12 points
Iowa 11 points
Georgia Tech 10 points
Mississippi State 10 points
Virginia 10 points
Kentucky 9 points
Syracuse 8 points
Wake Forest 8 points
Western Michigan 8 points
Air Force 7 points
Virginia Tech 7 points
Wisconsin 6 points
Arkansas 5 points
Ball State 4 points
Central Michigan 4 points
Southern Methodist 4 points
Boston College 3 points
Kansas State 3 points
Connecticut 1 point