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I am going to introduce another section into this feature: Elite/Garbage Teams. This include every team that is outside 2 standard deviations away from the mean rating. Our more statistically literate audience members may complain that this is not the most mathematically sound method, however, for our purposes here, it fits pretty damn well.
Team Ratings:
B1G Thoughts:
- 5 Weeks in a row at the top. Only real question, I think, is if Alabama catches them before The Game.
- OSU plummeted a bit due to the loss. Still, 2nd highest 1 loss team, and still basically control their own destiny.
- UNL falls back out of the top 10. An undefeated team outside the top 10? Behind such notable powerhouses like Boise State and Western Michigan? Yup. Don’t struggle with Purdue or a horrible Oregon team. At least you aren’t Baylor.
- Wisconsin still hanging out with Tennessee and Auburn, the good two loss teams.
- PSU makes the biggest jump in the top 25, and deservedly so. That was a huge win. Good for you, Lions.
- Maryland stopped their slide. My model still likes them more than most, that early season dominance still propping them up. Both losses were without Hills, too. Don’t sleep on them.
- A few weeks back I compared Minnesota and Rutgers based solely on their games against Iowa. This was mostly trolling, but damn if it wasn’t a bit prescient.
- Appears as if jNW and Iowa are finding their equilibrium
- Indiana had a pretty bad loss to jNW and went from near the top of this messy group, to the bottom.
- Really 6-10 are all pretty damn close.
- Huge dropoff here to Illinois and Purdue.
- Dammit, Rutgers, Notre Dame is even ahead of you.
- Sparty, if it wasn’t for that upset over Notre Dame, you’d be Iowa State.
Other thoughts:
- Alabama coming.
- I’ve seen in the comments about how shitty, clownfraud G5 teams like Boise State or WMU are. Let’s compare them to some random B1G team, how about UNL? WMU wins their games, on average, by 25 points per game. UNL’s average MoV is about 16. But surely the B1G team has a much stronger SoS, right? LOL! Nope! While the Broncos’ schedule is pretty weak, it’s still a bit better than the Husker schedule, worth about 4 rating points. As for Boise State, their MoV isn’t quite as good as UNL’s, however, their SoS is way, WAY better. Most G5 teams just aren’t as good, and that mostly gets reflected in the ratings. But Boise St. and WMU are the real deal this year.
- Washington just keeps destroying some pretty dreadful competition.
- Troy doing some work, and everyone laughed when they almost upset Clemson. This is a good team.
- Navy vs. South Florida Friday night. Loser gets the Purdue job.
- My Buffs have a really good shot at winning the Pac12 South, and maybe getting to the ROSE BOWL!!
- Toledo keeps rolling along despite losing Cat Mampbell, who now seems a bit of a doofus, like his Toledo predecessor (one Tim Beckman).
- I just don’t think that Utah is that good. UNL getting called overrated a lot, but really, Utah is every bit as big of a fraud, if not more.
Big Risers:
- WKY appears here for the 2nd straight week. This after I criticized all of the Jeff Brohm to some big school talk. And looking at the rest of their schedule, they should probably be reasonably big favorites in the rest of their games.
- I swear to god there was a SMU grad who was a programmer on old NCAA Football games. After going through a couple of seasons, SMU would inevitably end up in the top 5-10. Anyway, they seem to be improving quite a bit under Chad Morris.
- North Texas has a winning record. They went 1-11 last year, were one of the worst teams in the country. Ferentz dropped over 60 on them. This is a pretty impressive turn around, so far.
Falling Down:
- Getting rock fucked by Auburn and Louisville really hurt Arkansas and NC State, respectively.
- Maybe it’s time Ole Miss shouldn’t be ranked, huh?
- Indiana, still Indiana.
Projected Playoff Teams:
Now, for DJ’s article earlier in the week I just submitted my top 4 teams, as was requested. But I’m going to project forward here. One team per conference with preference given to conference champs.
- Michigan
- Alabama
- Clemson
- West Virginia
Elite/Garbage Teams:
- Mean = 24.37
- Standard Deviation = 23.44
- Elite = 71.25 (Michigan, Alabama, Clemson)
- Garbage = -22.52 (Buffalo)
Conference Ratings:
- The Big 12 continues to be terrible.
- The top 3 are pretty close.