Guys, I have exciting news. Well, maybe just exciting for me. STILL. So I've been making these rankings for the past two years, but I've felt somewhat hollow in doing so. See, the real treasure lays not in pts/game data, but play-by-play data. Football Outsiders (and the local Bill Connelly) formulate their rankings and analysis based on this, and it's much more informative than just straight up TD's and FG's.

The issue with this, however, is the time investment. I can find all the week's final scores on ESPN and type them up in about 10-20 minutes. For dates extending into the past, I can look up and grab scores from wonderful sites such as this one (apparently made by a guy as Wisconsin, so awesome). Fairly easy. Play-by-play data, though? 120+ plays/game takes me roughly and hour to manually put in, and that's not even considering the many errors I would make. It's been a pipe dream and completely unrealistic for me to hope to achieve. UNTIL NOW.

I finally realized that I could put my prodigious (NOTE: more like semi-adequate) MATLAB skill to use, and I've been able to write a script to pull play-by-play data from each game for my use. My time investment has been cut by a factor of roughly 1000. I'm so proud of me.

Like I said, not really exciting for anyone but me, but that's how it is. To the rankings!

And the rest of the Big Ten:

Some thoughts:

Alabama finally moves into the #1 slot. I was getting worried and more than a little embarrassed. Especially when my #1 in place of them was a 2-2 Oklahoma State. Notre Dame I could at least live with. But thankfully, it's falling into place now.

Which is good, and is what we expect to see. For all the chaos in the first few weeks (the delicious, delicious chaos) there probably won't be too many surprises the next few weeks. Most of the teams are about where they were the previous week, indicating a settling down of the even the big movers like Oklahoma were still in the Top 25 previously. As the season goes on, big jumps get more and more rare, so don't expect to see much reaction even after shocking upsets. Remember that when I have a 2-6 Oklahoma State team still ranked in the Top 5 in a few weeks [/really hope I'm joking there]

West Virginia, you make me wan to tear my hair out. I'm explained this in past posts, but my rankings tend to favor a strong offense over a strong defense. One of the best rated teams in my historical numbers is 1996 Florida for this reason (and also because Steve Spurrier was a dick who ran up the score). So when a team with an awesome offense STILL barely cracks my Top 25, it should mean that team is going to come crashing down to earth soon.

Yet there West Virginia stands. Ranked 5th in the AP Poll and 21st in my numbers (5th in F/+ Rankings, though, so maybe I'm doing something wrong) because of their not very good defense (76th here, 56th S&P+, 112th FEI, so at least I'm more in agreement there). And it's not like they been allowing a lot of garbage time scores, which can throw my numbers off. No, I watched the Baylor-West Virginia game, and there was ZERO defense being played. They have had no garbage time because they've need every bit of Holgo magic to get them wins. And they get them.

I really thought they would lose against Texas last week, and the Longhorns let me down. Now, since the rest of the Big 12 doesn't play defense (though MAYBE Texas Tech will put up a fight), I think I have to resign myself to a possible BCS Championship participant being ranked in the high teens in my Excel sheets. Sigh...

On the subject of the Big Ten, we're less bad than we thought! Maybe! This is a very optimistic view to take, because unless something drastically changes, none of the Big Ten teams are going to rank even close to my Top 10. However, we do have a lack of absolutely rotten teams (Illinois is making a strong fight, though). The SEC is the best league here, blah, blah, blah. But every other BCS league (the Big East doesn't count) has at least one team ranked worse than 100th (so, 101st and on down). The Big 12: Kansas. The Pac-12: Washington State and Colorado. The ACC: Boston College? Wake Forest (I actually have to look this one up. Boston College is 85th.). But the Big Ten stands proud with only Illinois ranking worse than 80th (82nd). So... yay? It's best to just accept our position and move on (this is my preferred phrase during foreplay).

Weekly Crap-i-ness Update. Your bottom five schools:

125 - Massachusetts

124 - Colorado

123 - Eastern Michigan

122 - Generic FCS

121 - Idaho

PICKS TIME

Last week: 12-9 overall, 3-2 Big Ten.

And the rest of the Big Ten:

My Stupid Upset Pick of the week is: Utah over UCLA (-7.5) . I started off the season so well, and I haven't hit on a single one since. I eventually have to turn this around, right?