Week 6 Rankings

Hi football fans. I dropped off the face of the earth for a couple of weeks but I’ll hopefully be back consistently for the remainder of the season.  

It’s been too long for me to summarize all of the major results since my last post. Therefore, I’ll just get right to it with the updated top 10:

Rank	Team	Rating	Record	E(FR)	P(WARG)
1	Alabama	29.39	5-0	11.19 – 0.81	0.270
2	Oregon	26.10	6-0	11.01 – 0.99	0.247
3	South Carolina	25.34	6-0	10.76 – 1.24	0.087
4	Florida State	23.68	5-1	10.30 – 1.70	0.412
5	Texas A&M	22.06	4-1	9.26 – 2.74	0.046
6	Texas	21.81	4-1	9.28 – 2.72	0.115
7	Notre Dame	21.75	5-0	10.45 – 1.55	0.128
8	Oklahoma	21.06	3-1	8.49 – 3.51	0.038
9	Georgia	20.48	5-1	10.08 – 1.92	0.008
10	Florida	20.30	5-0	9.85 – 2.15	0.013

The top three mirror the major media polls but the rest of the top ten diverges from what is found in the polls. The major difference being that the top eight teams in the media polls are undefeated, whereas my rankings take margin of victory into account and aren’t afraid to rank a one loss team in front of a major conference unbeaten. In fact, Oregon State, who is undefeated at 4-0 and ranked in the top 15 in the two major polls, is ranked #48 in my rankings! On the flip side, my rankings have Texas A&M at number 5, compared to #22 and #21 in the AP and coaches poll, respectively. My rankings are probably giving A&M too much credit for blowing out a couple of bad teams and it will be interesting to see how the rest of their season shapes up.

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

P(WARG) Rank	Rank	Team	P(WARG)
1	1	Alabama	0.270
2	14	Ohio State	0.266
3	2	Oregon	0.247
4	65	Ohio	0.161
5	7	Notre Dame	0.128
6	32	Louisville	0.090
7	3	South Carolina	0.087
8	33	Cincinnati	0.073
9	42	Rutgers	0.054
10	51	Louisiana Tech	0.048
11	16	West Virginia	0.038
12	13	Kansas State	0.031
13	10	Florida	0.013
14	104	UTSA	0.002
15	35	Mississippi State	~ 0.000

It has to be tough being a Buckeye fan this year. They have as good of a chance of finishing undefeated as anyone but are not eligible for the postseason. Although, I should point out that their probability of finishing undefeated is artificially inflated because they can’t play in the Big 10 title game. Otherwise, Alabama and Oregon lead the pack with the best chance of finishing undefeated. Among major college unbeatens, Notre Dame and South Carolina appear to have the next best chances of finishing undefeated, while the rankings are not very optimistic about West Virginia, Kansas State or Florida.

We’re into the heart of the season at this point, which means that there are big games every weekend. Two that stand out to me are South Carolina putting their undefeated record on the line at LSU on Saturday night and Notre Dame facing a difficult game against Stanford.

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