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Non-FBS College Football Ratings Through 13 Weeks

Every week, I publish my college football ratings for FBS teams. To generate those ratings – using this methodology — my program also generates ratings for teams at all other levels.  This week, I will separate out the non-FBS teams based on their levels of play (instead of just lumping all non-FBS teams together). As always, thanks to Dr. Peter Wolfe for providing the final scores for every college football game.

Let’s start with the FCS schools:

Next, the schools that play in Division 2:

Division 3:

And finally, the NAIA schools:

Something fascinating happened this week to people who like making computer rating systems. At first I thought there was a bug in my program, as these 16 teams all saw their SRS ratings rise by 20 points this week relative to last.

Concordia-St Paul
Minnesota-Duluth
Upper Iowa
Wayne St NE
Minn St-Mankato
Sioux Falls
Mary
Northern St SD
Minnesota-Crookston
Bemidji St
Minn St-Moorhead
Minot St
SW Minnesota St
Augustana SD
St Cloud St
Winona St

That makes no sense, this late in the season. But then I figured it out: All 16 teams reside in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference, a division two conference whose teams had played a combined zero out of conference games this year prior to Saturday. The D2 playoffs began last week, with Minnesota-Duluth defeating Emporia State (which ranked 44th in last week’s non-FBS ratings) 55-13. Minnesota-Duluth is 11-1, with the only loss coming to MSU Mankato, a team that boasts an 11-0 record (and on a bye in the first round of the playoffs). The other Northern Sun team to make the playoffs was St. Cloud State, which beat a previously undefeated Henderson State. St. Cloud State’s only loss is to Minnesota-Duluth.

So you have three teams atop the Northern Sun that are a combined 29-0 in conference in games against the rest of the conference. And the entire conference was a closed system. Then, two of those teams played out-of-conference games. One of them defeated a previously undefeated team. The other blew out a team with one loss, and that team’s one loss was to undefeated NW Missouri State. The SRS reconciles every game, but it’s very difficult for a computer to reconcile a conference that has three quasi-undefeated teams that go out and beat two more quasi-undefeated teams; as a result, the ratings and strengths of schedule went through the roof for every team in the Northern Sun.

Remember, the SRS treats each game like a dial, and it keeps wanting to give more credit to all the Northern Sun teams. It kept jacking up all of their ratings until the system assumed that the best team in the Northern Sun was 42 points better than another good team. This isn’t really a bug, but it’s not appropriate (or a good thing). Hence my decision to break down the teams into separate levels of football today to post the rankings (the way I generated the ratings did not change, just the way I am presenting them. As you can see, Minn St-Mankato — which was 33rd last week — has the highest rating of any non-FBS school, including all of the FCS teams).

This is actually a topic worth discussing in greater depth, but that is best left to another day.

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