Underground Resume Ranking Report - Week 4
GreggS - September 23rd, 2008, 4:47pm“It’s mass confusion down here. Just a mess.”
This week’s rankings brought to you by the ghost of Bill Stewart’s coaching career.
| Top 25 | Rating | Change |
| 1. USC | 39.5 | ↔ |
| 2. Wake Forest | 46.15 | ↑1 |
| 3. Florida | 53.41 | ↑1 |
| 4. Wisconsin | 69.41 | ↑4 |
| 5. Georgia | 70.36 | ↔ |
| 6. UCLA | 72 | ↑20 |
| 7. Alabama | 72.86 | ↑3 |
| 8. Utah | 73.17 | ↑5 |
| 9. Vanderbilt | 75.61 | ↓3 |
| 10. LSU | 78.07 | ↑16 |
| 11. Colorado | 79.67 | ↑10 |
| 12. BYU | 87.31 | ↓3 |
| 13. Boise State | 91.74 | ↑13 |
| 14. Ball State | 93.11 | ↑8 |
| 15. Virginia Tech | 95.07 | ↑1 |
| 16. Fresno State | 95.22 | ↑10 |
| 17. Georgia Tech | 95.41 | ↔ |
| 18. Auburn | 96.74 | ↓7 |
| 19. Connecticut | 97.56 | ↓1 |
| 20. Oklahoma | 100.07 | ↓6 |
| 21. Ohio State | 101.67 | ↑5 |
| 22. Northwestern | 103.31 | ↑2 |
| 23. UNLV | 104.07 | ↑3 |
| 24. Notre Dame | 110 | ↓17 |
| 25. Nebraska | 111 | ↓6 |
Dropped: East Carolina, Oregon, South Florida, North Carolina, Minnesota, Southern Miss
Just Missed: Minnesota, Oregon, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, South Florida, Kentucky
| Conference Rankings (central mean) |
|
| SEC | 116.25 |
| ACC | 128.64 |
| Pac 10 | 131.59 |
| MWC | 135.84 |
| Big 10 | 139.75 |
| Big 12 | 144 |
| Big East | 159.11 |
| Sun Belt | 197 |
| WAC | 197.65 |
| CUSA | 231.85 |
| MAC | 249 |
Comments, Concerns, and General Shenanigans
Mass confusion?
Yeah, the rankings are still a bit of a mess, but they’re slowly working themselves out. There’s much less movement going on this week and once the major conference play begins, there will even less crazy fluctuations.
His Coachness can even charm a computer
We’re sure the first thing you noticed is the very conspicuous presence of UCLA in 6th. No, it’s not a typo. No, we don’t believe UCLA has the 6th best resume in the nation. Yes, UCLA really did earn that rating. How? Strength of schedule. Exhibit A: the win over Tennessee. Exhibit B: losses to BYU and Arizona. This gives them roughly the 3rd toughest schedule to date in FBS football (more on that later). This rating won’t last, however. A loss against Fresno State this week (again, UCLA has a very tough schedule) will raise their rating to somewhere between 110 and 120, depending on other results. If UCLA wins, they’ll maintain about the same rating. Don’t worry; if UCLA is emphatically not a good team, the system will work it out as more games get played.
There’s a couple big movers this week besides the aforementioned UCLA. LSU jumps from off the board to the #10 spot based on their win over Auburn, who dropped 7 spots to 18. Boise State’s upset of Oregon moves them from off the board to lucky #13 while Notre Dame’s loss to Michigan State drops Touchdown Jesus 17 spots.
Conference Wars
There seems to be an impostor amongst the power conferences this season. The Mountain West Conference is having a nice early run this season, including the spanking of 4 Pac 10 teams last weekend. Combine this across-the-board success with a potential BCS-buster in BYU and you have the makings of a surprise conference ranking. As far as the power conferences go, the SEC seems to be dominating. The SEC has also played in-conference games, thus raising the strength of schedule for most teams. Our guess is that it’s a little bit from column A, and a little bit from column B.
Thanks for playing
We’d like to give an honorable mention to 3 teams who managed to crack the top 25 (before our manual adjustment) without a win. These 3 teams found the early season loophole, much like UCLA, by playing some ridiculous opening schedules. Oregon, BYU, Oklahoma, Kansas State, Tulsa, LSU, Kansas, Iowa, and South Florida each had a chance to pad their schedules against these teams. So here’s to you, Washington, North Texas, and Florida International, for offering yourselves up as sacrificial lambs.
1. Okay come on. There’s no way that Notre Dame can be ranked. Wins over bad (yes i can admit it) teams can’t put them in the top 25. I think Gregg is channeling the BCS here in his bias towards ND.
2. How does Vandy fall with a conference win? Especially a conference win against a team coming off a near win over your number 2?
3. Colorado jumps 10 spots with a win over a WVU team that’s on life support?
4. Auburn probably doesn’t deserve to fall 7 after demonstrating it may be able to score points (and doing it against LSU for that matter)
5. Your conference ratings are hurt because they are a mean. The ACC is being propped up there because of that #2 slot. What happens if its a median?
6. The Strength of Schedule argument is bullshit. It’s the biggest bias in this formula. Tennessee isn’t very good, Arizona is a Mike Stoops team, and ND is rewarded for beating a team that has a prestigious name. Ditto Colorado.
This is why it makes it difficult to reward losses against good teams, especially early in the season. I fear the presence of a team that lost 59-0 at number 6 (6 spots higher than the team that dialed up 8 TDs) invalidates your whole poll.
I think my biggest problem with these rankings is the same problem you occasionally encounter in EA Sports NCAA football franchise. You have Colorado jumping ten spots for beating a 1-2 team, who’s losses are to that team and a 3-1 team (ECU) who SHOULD be taking a hit for A) losing to a bad, bad NCSU squad, and B) having WVU continue to devalue their opening season contest. I would think this would even itself out, but it clearly doesn’t if CU is jumping like that. Resume balloting should adjust for this sort of shifting, and yours currently doesn’t appear to.
I think Justin’s 4th point is moot, because resume ranking doesn’t work that way.
Your conference ratings are also goofy, and I’m gonna assume that Justin’s tweak there would fix it.
Finally, Justin’s point the sixth is dead on… One win over UT compared to several losses should not place you at number 6 in a true resume ballot. Shouldn’t have you anywhere near being ranked, actually.
You’re trying to make us angry. That’s it right? Cause there’s no other plausible reason you’d ever want to accuse us of a *that team* bias other than to make us angry. Look at numbers 24 and 25. Do you think we like having them on the board? We were two seconds from making this a top 23 ranking until our sense of journalistic integrity took over and decided to put *that team* and *that other team* on the board in the name of obscure mediocre sports blogging.
So while we’re in a feisty mood, let’s hit these one at a time.
2) Vandy’s rating fell from 81.3 to 75.61. It just didn’t fall as far as some other teams. We’re sure Daron’s happy about our lowering of Vandy’s ranking. Less chance that they’ll be punished by the football gods for overachieving.
3) If West ‘by God’ Virginia is indeed terrible, CU’s win value will suffer. End of story. It takes time for that to play out, however. Remember, this is not a power poll. This is not a finished product. It will get more accurate as more games get played.
5) Central mean. Look it up. Not a simple mean. And a median doesn’t take into account any but 1 team in a conference. Silly child.
6) Did you read what we said about UCLA? Because we’re pretty sure you didn’t. Otherwise you would have read that part about UCLA exploiting an early season loophole in the formula. They can’t (and won’t) stay in the rankings unless they beat Fresno State (which they won’t).
In other comment battle news, ECU did indeed drop off the board for that bit of retardedness against NCSU. A win over WVU is dropping in value. Colorado jumped 10 spots because other teams either lost or won against cupcakes. This ranking is very fluid and does adjust for changing win/loss values, but in the beginning of the season things look wack. It will work itself out as more games get played.
All arguments aside, thanks for reading!
I fear teams are going to start scheduling to exploit your loophole.
If it means not playing Stephen F. Austin and Southeastern Louisiana as “warmups”, we’re all for it.