The B1G Poll

People get hung up on ordinal ranking. In rating systems you should take the ordinal rankings only in the context of the the actual ranking.  It's why their included here, and in Heogher's rankings, and in Football Outsiders rankings, and in Sagarin's rankings.  This is because there could be big differences between teams, but only a single rank difference (see: Clemson and everyone else), or there could be virtually no difference between several teams (see:  Michigan through Ohio State).  Because of the way these things work people focus on the rank, but ignore the context.  DON'T DO THIS!

The Ratings:

B1G Thoughts:

• 4 teams in the top 10!  Fuck haters.
• There's virtually 0 difference between Michigan, Michigan State, Iowa, and Ohio State.
• Michigan and Michigan State got there similarly by doing pretty well against pretty tough slates.
• Ohio State and Iowa also have similar resumes dominating mostly lesser competition.  Ohio State's schedule gets harder to end the season.  Iowa's does not.
• Northwestern dropped a little, but not really significantly.  They're kinda difficult to get a handle on.  A couple of blowout losses, some close wins against decent competition, a blowout win against a meh Minnesota, and a scare from Ball State.  I think this is a fair spot for them.
• Penn State didn't move.  A win's a win, I guess.
• Illinois takes a bit of a tumble, but still far better than most expected out of them.
• Wisconsin makes a pretty big gain after the convincing win against IL.
• Indiana actually moved up because a loss against Michigan State doesn't really hurt them too much, and they put up a pretty good showing until the final few minutes.
• Nebraska stays about the same.
• Rutgers got housed by OSU, but there's little enough separating the teams in this range that the SoS bump from playing Ohio State was enough to move them up a little.
• Maryland moves up a little despite the loss.  A one point loss against a team rated much higher.
• Minnesota stays about the same through the bye week, but the loss of Kill is certainly a gut punch.
• Purdue didn't play.  No one noticed.

Other Thoughts:

• Clemson is pretty far out in front.
• Utah was so far out in front, that their loss only drops them to 4.  The poll also like USC.
• Fuck Notre Dame
• There are a few undefeated G5 schools: Memphis, Toledo, and Temple.  This poll loves Memphis, but Temple and Toledo have faced absolutely horrible schedules (HA HA PSU, AR, and ISU) and suffer accordingly.