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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1203978, member: 289"] Again this year I’m going to keep track of how teams have done against ranked teams. And again I’ll remind the reader that this is not itself an attempt to rank teams, although I will have cumulative standings: it’s intended just as a stat to look at in determining where teams should rank. Also, as with all stats, the early results are hardly definitive but they will become more meaningful as the season progresses. Another issue is that I’m using a team’s ranking at the time the game is played, not their final ranking. When we played Northwestern last year, they were ranked 19th in the writer’s poll, (the one I use for this). They wound up 5-7 and unranked. Auburn, coming off a 3-9 season, was unranked. They wound up playing for the national title. But I’d have to wait to the end of the season to compute this using the final rankings, by which time no one would care about a breakdown of some of a team’s games. I’m trying to maintain a running tally of how teams are doing in their biggest games. Besides, a teams ranking at the time you played them may truly reflect how good the team was at that time. Northwestern played like a top ten team against us and went on to a 4-0 start before losing a series of close games. Auburn was not as great early in the season as they later became. Also I’m not making any allowances for home vs. road, (which I think affects the top teams less than the mediocre teams), or injured players, the impact of which is impossible to compute, (and top teams can usually replace guys). So here we go. I’ll stick to the writer’s poll for the rankings for consistency, (I need one #1 team, one #2 team, etc.) and because they have a poll each week from preseason to post season. The formula is pretty simple, although there are two parts to it. First you compute the “schedule points”. A team gets 25 points for playing the #1 ranked team, 24 points for playing the #2 ranked team, 23 points for playing the #3 ranked team, etc. down to getting 1 point for playing the #25 ranked team. Then you add or subtract to/from that the margin of victory or defeat. If they have any positive points left, I’ll record it here and add them up as the season goes along. I’m not going to record any net negatives or I would be documenting the season of Louisiana-Lafayette or somebody like that. That’s not what we are interested in here. We want to know about teams likely to wind up ranked and in consideration for the playoffs or the bowls. WEEK THIRTEEN ARKANSAS beat #8 Mississippi by 30 = 48 points ARIZONA beat #17 Utah by 32 = 41 points UCLA beat #19 Southern California by 18 = 25 points BOSTON COLLEGE lost to #3 Florida State by 3 = 20 points IOWA lost to #16 Wisconsin by 2 = 8 points WEST VIRGINIA lost to #12 Kansas State by 6 = 8 points MINNESOTA beat #23 Nebraska by 4 = 7 points INDIANA lost to #6 Ohio State by 15 = 5 points Twenty three of the Top 25 teams were in action but in a lot of cases the action was against teams like West Carolina, Charleston Southern and Samford as they gave themselves what amounted to a week off before the last major confrontations of the regular season. But Arkansas and Arizona sure picked up some points. The Razorbacks have had quite a season for a 6-5 team. CUMULATIVE POINTS 135 Georgia and Texas Christian 127 Arkansas 120 Alabama 115 Mississippi State 97 UCLA 91 Oregon 90 Auburn 86 West Virginia 85 Arizona State 81 Oregon 75 Mississippi and Texas A& M 72 Arizona 65 Baylor 56 Louisiana State 54 Wisconsin 47 Florida State 43 Boston College 41 Texas 40 So. California 38 Ohio State, Utah and Virginia Tech 37 South Carolina 36 Northwestern 35 Notre Dame 34 Florida 31 Kansas State 29 Georgia Tech 28 Oregon State and Virginia 23 Stanford and Utah State 21 Kansas 20 Missouri 19 Clemson, Miami, Oklahoma State and Tennessee 18 Minnesota 17 Indiana and Washington State 16 East Carolina and Michigan State 15 Temple 14 Washington 13 Louisville and North Carolina 11 Kentucky, Nebraska and Oklahoma 10 Duke, Navy and North Carolina State 9 Syracuse 8 Iowa and Memphis 6 Penn State 4 Navy and Purdue 2 California and Iowa State 1 San Diego State [/QUOTE]

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