Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa is a Latin phrase roughly translated as “blank slate”. It is a cornerstone of Greek philosophy developed by Aristotle. That the mind starts completely clear of all preconceptions, and only learns as the world impresses itself upon the mind.

Many people complain about preseason polls, and the weight they carry throughout the season. The following ranking system takes this to heart. It is based completely on that precept. Only what has happened in games this season has any weight. It is completely calculated by wins/losses, point differential, and strength of schedule. There is absolutely no preseason bias or weighting. Consequently, early in the season there is a lot of movement, and quite a few unfamiliar faces, and that’s ok. As the season progresses the cream will rise to the top. This is in no way attempts to be predictive. The aim is tell us who has been the most impressive, so far.

A couple of technical notes. This was the first week, consequently, there is no strength of schedule adjustment, yet, as it would be very circular. Once every team has played at least 2 opponents (week 3, I believe), I will add in the rest of the algorithm. That being said, I did ding teams for playing FCS opponents.

The Rankings:

Teams:

Conferences:

B1G Thoughts:

• TOP 2 teams in the country, WOO!!!
• It’s the Ohio State Buckeyes and Michigan Wolverines. BOO!!!!
• Must be the 90’s all over again, because the Nebraska Cornhuskers are a top 10 team.
• The Indiana Hoosiers, Iowa Hawkeyes, and Penn State Nittany Lions all clustered in the top 20. It’s kinda what you get when you have solid, yet unspectacular results over middling teams.
• 6 of the top 20 is pretty damn good.
• Bit of a drop here to the Minnesota Golden Gophers and Illinois Fighting Illini, who are right next to each other, though getting there in different ways. MN looking bad against a P5 opponent, and IL looking dominant against a bad FCS team.
• Huh, doesn’t appear that the Wisconsin Badgers were really all that impressive.
• With the FCS adjustment the Maryland Terrapins win doesn’t look quite that impressive, anymore.
• The Purdue Boilermakers and Michigan State Spartans may have won, but they certainly didn’t look very look very good doing it against outmatched FCS teams.
• Oh, Northwestern Wildcats, losing to MAC schools isn’t a recipe for success.
• The Rutgers Scarlet Knights are not good. They got blown the fuck out by the Washington Huskies, and I don’t really expect them to climb too much higher than where they currently are.

Other Thoughts:

• Dammit, the Alabama Crimson Tide are already in the top 5.
• The Tulsa Hurricanes currently the top of the G5 teams. Can they actually give OSU a game this week*? This is also the StewPoll game of the week.
• Think Colorado being in the top 5 is my favorite. They’re probably still pretty bad, but they’ve certainly made some strides.
• Army Black Knights!!!

Come back next week, when we have almost twice the data! Massive changes guaranteed.

*Probably not