vs. Ranked Teams

[SWC75]

One thing I always wonder about is: Who won the weekend? Which college football team gave the best performance? I decided to look at the question with this system: (1) List the AP top 25 teams going into the weekend; (2) Give each of them points in reverse order of their ranking: 25 for #1, 24 for #2, etc.; (3) Give their opponent that number of points; (4) add the number of points the opponent beat them by or (5) subtract the number of points the opponent lost by. The net result is the number of points the opponents gets for their performance that week. I will keep track only of positive points as I’m trying to measure positive accomplishments, not discredit teams for negative ones.


In the first week, Clemson played the #5 team , Georgia. They get 21 points for that. The beat them by 3 to push it to 24 points. Georgia played Clemson, the #8 team. They got 18 points for that. They lost by 3 and wound up with 15 points. A good performance doesn’t necessarily mean you won. While we were sleeping Washington took on #19 Boise State, which gives then 7 points to start with. They won by the shocking score of 38-6 and wound up with 39 points, giving them the most impressive performance of the weekend. Lowly Buffalo came back from a 0-23 first quarter deficit against #2 Ohio State to get within 20-30 and then had a fumble recovery in front of the Ohio State goal line negated by a dubious penalty. They wound up losing by 20 but got 4 points out of it.


There are two obvious problems here: you only get points if you played a ranked opponent: Buffalo could get points this weekend for playing Ohio State but Alabama could get none for playing an unranked Virginia Tech team. But I’m trying to measure exactly that: how did teams do against ranked opponents? Alabama will play more ranked opponents than Buffalo this year and they will wind up with a lot more points. The other problem is that the ranking of a team will change over the course of a season. Southern California started out ranked #1 last year and were still #2 when we played them fairly close. They tumbled to 7-6 and were unranked by the end of the season. But teams can change through injuries, poor response to frustrating losses, chemistry problems, they don’t like the coach, etc. They may have been a more formidable team when they were ranked.


But I’m not going to offer this as an alternative ranking of teams, just as a statistic to look at when deciding where to rank teams. Here are the teams that earned positive points this week for their performance under this system:

Stanford beat #23 Arizona State by 14 = 17 points
North Carolina State lost to #3 Clemson by 12 = 11 points
Connecticut lost to #15 Michigan by 3 points = 8 points
Arizona State lost to #5 Stanford by 14 points = 7 points
Auburn lost to #6 Louisiana State by 14 points = 6 points

(The big boys played the little boys this week: Florida A&M, Florida International, Bethune Cookman, North Texas State, New Mexico State, Savannah State, Idaho State, Maine, Louisiana-Monroe, Texas State. None of them got any points- and the teams that played them didn't get any, either.)

CUMULATIVE TOTAL FOR SEASON

Georgia 46 points
Washington 39 points
Brigham Young 30 points
Alabama 27 points
Clemson 24 points
Michigan 23 points
UCLA 23 points
Miami 21 points
Texas A&M 18 points
Stanford 17 points
Louisiana State 16 points
Arizona State 15 points
Texas Tech 12 points
Akron 11 points
North Carolina State 11 points
Connecticut 8 points
Army 7 points
Auburn 6 points
Kentucky 5 points
Wyoming 5 points
Buffalo 4 points
California 4 points
Eastern Washington 4 points
South Carolina 4 points
Texas Christian 4 points
Washington State 4 points
North Carolina 3 points
Vanderbilt 3 points
West Virginia 1 point