College Football Rankings: Week 5

Please feel free to compare this to the Massey Composite.

B1G Thoughts:

• There’s starting to be a little separation, even in the top tier, as PSU stays undefeated and OSU’s loss to Oklahoma has not aged very well.
• Fuck wisconsin, they are clownfraud trasch. Notice that while they are only ranked one ordinal spot lower than OSU, they are almost a full 4 rating points worse. The average difference between teams is about 0.75 rating points, so that’s a pretty significant drop.
• I bet there was at least one Sparty fan who wanted to read this and complain about being rated below Michigan.
• Statistical models seem to like Iowa quite a bit more than the human polls. #17 in my model, in the top 25 in the Massey Composite, and the highest ranked 2 loss team by a fairly significant margin.
• I think I may have been the most optimistic about Purdue’s season this side of Matt Jones, and they’ve smashed even those. At this point it seems like not making a bowl would be disappointing, which is kinda nuts.
• Maryland appears to be playing the role of crazy inconsistent team. No idea what to expect from them week-to-week. Stay away.
• Indiana, perfectly mediocre.
• Minnesota is not good. We knew this.
• UNL is probably the most pleasant (for me) surprise team so far. Their skill positions have been pretty stellar for a while, and it sounded like they finally may have found a QB to run Riley’s preferred offense. Welp. Enjoy OSU.
• jNW was supposed to contend for the West? Really? There’s still time to rack up wins for a bowl, as the division is putrid. Still, though, quite a bit of disappointment in the West.
• Illinois, I don’t think Lovie Smith is really the answer, long term. But I do think he’s doing generally decent things with bringing in capable players. I think he finishes above last in the West at least one more time.

Other Thoughts:

• Yes, yes, yes, UCF is still at the top. But it is coming back to the pack fairly quickly. Here is the difference between UCF and the 2nd place team since week two: 45.45, 16.3, 11.12, 0.15. I’m willing to bet that UCF is overtaken next week.
• My model kind of always loves Navy, and I’m fine with that.
• SMU’s turn around under Chad Morris has been quite impressive, I’d think he gets a call up to a P5 team after this season.
• USF is getting a lot of love as a G5 darling, but they are not that good. I’m sorry, Thump.

High Risers:

• Not much of a surprise, but ISU’s massive upset zooms them pretty far up the ranks.
• Southern Miss seems to have been the beneficiary of their SoS getting a bit of a boost (their previous opponents all doing fairly well).
• Bronco Mendenhall seems to have UVA in good position to get to bowl eligibility in his 2nd year. Now just watch out for the dirty play.

Free Fallers:

• Minnesota got a bit of a double whammy as they got beat by Purdue, and a lot of previous opponents did poorly (having Oregon St. on the schedule is bad).
• So, uh, Bert. Yeah, I think he survives this, but only because of his buyout.
• Florida, getting beat by a team that got beat by Troy is gonna hurt.
• Seems like UTSA and Southern Miss flip-flopped on one game, which seems a bit much, but here we are.

Stats, Elite, and Trasch:

• Average rating: 38.47
• Standard Deviation: 23.14
• Elite teams (+2 stds dev from mean): 84.75

1. UCF
2. ‘Bama
3. Clemson

• Trasch (-2 stds dev from mean): -7.81

1. UTEP
2. Georgia Southern
3. Charlotte

• Spread: 97.24
• Average Difference in Rating: 0.75