Week 2 Rankings

Hi football fans. I apologize for the delay. The Koopmeiners household received a new addition over the weekend, which tends to cut into the time available for things like updating this blog. On the bright side, late is better than never!

Week 2 brought several unexpected results, highlighted by Wisconsin’s surprising loss to Oregon State in Corvallis and Arkansas’ ugly loss to Louisiana Monroe. It should be noted, though, that my rankings had both teams ranked much lower than the media polls (#37 and #21, respectively) after unimpressive week 1 victories over FCS opponents. Elsewhere, UCLA pulled somewhat of an upset, defeating Nebraska 36-30 at home. It has been a rough start to the season for the Big Ten. Ohio State is not eligible for the postseason and several pre-season favorites have stumbled out of the gate (Wisconsin, Michigan and Nebraska), meaning that Michigan State is now the conference’s only hope for a title contender. Finally, Oklahoma State was not able to follow-up their demolition of Savannah State with a victory, losing by 21 to Arizona on the road.

Here is an updated top 10:

Rank	Team	Rating	Record	E(FR)	P(WARG)
1	Alabama	27.08	2-0	10.55-1.45	0.106
2	LSU	25.86	2-0	10.32-1.68	0.091
3	Florida State	25.83	2-0	10.94-1.06	0.238
4	West Virginia	22.33	1-0	9.26-2.74	0.032
5	Ohio State	22.14	2-0	10.36-1.64	0.145
6	Georgia	21.86	2-0	10.24-1.76	0.045
7	USC	21.79	2-0	9.69-2.31	0.040
8	Oklahoma	20.92	2-0	8.54-3.46	0.010
9	Oklahoma State	20.10	1-1	7.79-4.21	0.010
10	TCU	20.07	1-0	8.38-3.62	0.006

Not much has changed since last year. Alabama and LSU come in at #1 and #2, respectively, setting up an epic match-up on November 3^rd in Baton Rouge. Otherwise, 7 of the top 10 remain from last week with Georgia, Oklahoma and TCU taking the place of Oregon, Clemson and South Carolina.

Here are the top 15 with the best chance of finishing undefeated

P(WARG) Rank	Rank	Team	P(WARG)
1	50	Ohio	0.287
2	3	Florida State	0.238
3	5	Ohio State	0.145
4	1	Alabama	0.106
5	25	Louisville	0.094
6	2	LSU	0.091
7	6	Georgia	0.045
8	7	USC	0.040
9	15	Michigan State	0.034
10	14	Oregon	0.033
11	4	West Virginia	0.032
12	8	Oklahoma	0.010
13	17	Clemson	0.010
14	45	Cincinnati	0.010
15	11	South Carolina	0.008

Ohio remains the team most likely to finish the season undefeated. It will be interesting to follow this story if the Bobcats are still undefeated in a couple of weeks. They don’t have the track record of Boise State or TCU and it will be interesting to see if they can play the role of BCS-Buster coming out of the MAC. Florida State appears to be in good shape and will look to take advantage of a week ACC. Neither Alabama nor LSU have a great shot at finishing undefeated but there is a 20% chance that at least one of them runs the table. Of course, we learned last year that a one-loss Alabama or LSU is not out of the picture as long as their only loss is to the other. Finally, it has to be a little sad for Ohio State fans to see their team so high on the list but hey, those were some sweet tattoos!

I’m going to stay out of the prognostication business after Washington was thrashed by LSU but there are a couple of interesting games on the schedule for this weekend. USC plays Stanford in what will be the first major test for the Tree now that Andrew Luck has left for the NFL. Also, Notre Dame plays Michigan State in what is key non-conference game for the Big Ten. A loss to the Irish would mean that the entire conference is essentially eliminated from the national title picture before the end of September.

Full ranking can be found at my personal website: http://www.biostat.umn.edu/~josephk/index.php?page=sports