Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1211392, 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 FOURTEEN STANFORD beat #8 UCLA by 21 = 39 points MISSISSIPPI beat #4 Mississippi State by 14 = 36 points GEORGIA TECH beat #9 Georgia by 6 = 23 points ALABAMA beat #15 Auburn by 11 = 22 points ARIZONA beat #13 Arizona State by 7 = 20 points FLORIDA lost to #3 Florida State by 5 = 18 points WISCONSIN beat #10 Minnesota by 10 = 18 points TEXAS TECH lost to #7 Baylor by 2 = 17 points AUBURN lost to #1 Alabama by 11 = 14 points ARIZONA STATE lost to #11 Arizona by 7 = 8 points MICHIGAN lost to 36 Ohio State by 14 = 6 points GEORGIA lost to #16 Georgia Tech by 6 = 4 points WESTERN KENTUCKY beat #24 Marshall by 1 = 3 points ARKANSAS lost to #17 Missouri by 7 = 2 points MINNESOTA lost to #14 Wisconsin by 10 = 2 points Comments: In rivalry week, a lot of teams got points by playing ranked teams tough and some of them were ranked themselves. It’s become obvious over the course of the season that the SEC and Pac 12 are the strongest conferences in the country. Their teams are the highest ranked so that’s where you can earn points. 15 of the top 21 teams on the list below are from those conferences. It would seem appropriate that the champions of those two conferences wound up playing for the title. But there is still much to be determined next week. CUMULATIVE POINTS 142 Alabama 139 Georgia 135 Texas Christian 129 Arkansas 115 Mississippi State 111 Mississippi 104 Auburn 97 UCLA 93 Arizona State 92 Arizona 91 Oregon 86 West Virginia 81 Oregon 75 Texas A& M 72 Wisconsin 65 Baylor 62 Stanford 56 Louisiana State 52 Florida and Georgia Tech 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 31 Kansas State 28 Oregon State and Virginia 23 Utah State 21 Kansas 20 Minnesota and Missouri 19 Clemson, Miami, Oklahoma State and Tennessee 17 Indiana, Texas Tech 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 Michigan and Penn State 4 Navy and Purdue 3 Western Kentucky 2 California and Iowa State 1 San Diego State [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?