Week 6 Rankings

Hey football fans! It’s been a long week in the Koopmeiners household due to a sick fifteen month old. He appears to be on the mend but I’ll try to keep this short so I can go to bed.

Oklahoma and LSU continued their strong starts to the season with impressive victories over Texas and Florida, respectively. Alabama did their best to keep pace with a 34-0 victory over Vanderbilt. Although, there is a limit to how impressive you can look beating up on the smart kids of the SEC. The remainder of the top 10 beat up on a smorgasbord of mediocre opponents, highlighted by Oklahoma State hanging 70 on Kansas. My updated top 10 can be found below:

Rank	Team	Rating	Record	SOS1	SOS2	E(FR)	P(WARG)
1	Oklahoma	30.3	5-0	5.4	0.11	11.3-0.7	0.47
2	Alabama	28.6	6-0	2.0	0.14	11.3-0.7	0.35
3	LSU	28.1	6-0	5.1	0.04	11.0-1.0	0.21
4	Stanford	26.6	5-0	2.1	0.25	11.1-0.9	0.27
5	Oregon	26.4	4-1	3.5	0.09	10.1-1.9	0.22
6	Boise State	25.6	5-0	-5.2	0.47	11.8-0.2	0.80
7	Wisconsin	24.1	5-0	-3.1	0.35	11.1-0.9	0.27
8	Oklahoma State	21.8	5-0	5.3	0.09	10.3-1.7	0.09
9	Notre Dame	19.4	4-2	6.4	0.11	8.8-3.2	0.14
10	Texas A&M	18.7	3-2	6.0	0.07	8.2-3.8	0.05

Not much has changed since last week with Notre Dame the only new team in the top 10. This is certainly at odds with the two major polls, who don’t even have Notre Dame in the top 25, but, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Notre Dame’s record is deceiving. Notre Dame played one of the most difficult September schedules in the country and their two losses were by a combined seven points. Combine that with consecutive blowout victories and the Irish look a lot better than the polls are giving them credit for. On the other end of the spectrum are Clemson, Georgia Tech and Kansas State. All three are undefeated and have received plenty of love from the national media but all three are outside the top 20 in my rankings.

Here are the top 13 teams with the best chance of finishing undefeated:

P(WARG) Rank	Rank	Team	P(WARG)
1	6	Boise State	0.796
2	1	Oklahoma	0.467
3	2	Alabama	0.352
4	7	Wisconsin	0.270
5	4	Stanford	0.266
6	35	Houston	0.248
7	3	LSU	0.212
8	8	Oklahoma State	0.094
9	11	Michigan	0.054
10	22	Clemson	0.026
11	30	Georgia Tech	0.014
12	33	Illinois	0.003
13	52	Kansas State	< 0.001

Only 13 teams remain undefeated after 6 weeks of the season, several of which, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Kansas State and, to a lesser extent, Michigan, have very little chance of finishing the season that way. Houston has a decent chance of finishing the season undefeated but have no chance at reaching the national title game and, while the Broncos are receiving more respect than they used to, Boise State appears likely to end up on the outside looking in even though they currently have an 80% chance of finishing the season undefeated. That leaves Oklahoma, Alabama, Wisconsin, Stanford, LSU and Oklahoma State as the major players in the BCS. None of these teams have more than a 50% chance of finishing the season undefeated (although, Oklahoma is close at 47%) but it should be noted that there is a 56% chance that either Alabama or LSU finish the season undefeated and a 56% chance that either Oklahoma or Oklahoma State finish the season undefeated. The first BCS standings come out next week and it will be interesting to see what the initial pecking order looks like.

The upcoming weekend doesn’t offer much for compelling matchups with only Oklahoma State facing a meaningful challenge and that comes with a major asterisk as it’s not clear how Texas will recover after taking a beating in the Red River Rivalry.

As always, the full ranking can be found at my personal website: www.biostat.umn.edu/~josephk/wk6_rankings_2011.pdf