Last week, the top five was Florida State, Baylor, Oregon, Alabama, and Arizona State. Florida State won big (by 56), while Baylor and Alabama won big games (against Oklahoma and LSU) by comfortable margins. Arizona State won by a point at Utah, an underrated team (despite the record, Utah ranks 24th in the SRS). Of course, the big story of the week was Stanford (who lost to Utah earlier in the year) upsetting Oregon. Oregon understandably will drop in the rankings, but this late in the season, one game doesn’t swing the SRS nearly as much. After all, each game is given the same weight. Oregon gets credited with a 50.7 SRS score for losing in Palo Alto, which essentially says for one game, the Ducks were about the 20th best team in the country. Alabama gets 69.9 points for defeating LSU at home by 21. But while the Crimson Tide move up, and moves the Ducks down, Alabama did not pass Oregon in the SRS.

Say what? Yes, the SRS still has FSU, Baylor, and Oregon ahead of Alabama. I’ll explain more in a minute, but first, the SRS ratings through eleven weeks. As a reminder, you can read about the methodology here. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter Wolfe for providing the final scores for every college football game.

As highlighted last week, the Crimson Tide faced two nonconference cupcakes in Georgia State and Colorado State. Those games hurt Alabama in this system: remove them, and the Tide jump to 67.4. But if we do that, we also need to remove the blowouts for all teams that ultimately lower the victor’s rating. For example, Oregon received an SRS grade of just 50.3 for a 66-3 beating of Nicholls State.

So I thought of a new adjustment to the SRS. What if we remove all games where a team won by at least 21 points but the game lowered the winning team’s SRS rating? The top four doesn’t change, although the quantity of games does. Here is how the top 25 would look:

So why is a “3-1” Oregon team ahead of a “4-0” Crimson Tide? Not, as you might suspect, because of the high-octane Oregon offense. No, the Ducks are ahead because of a tougher strength of schedule. ^[1]Removing the blowouts eliminates Nicholls State, California, Virginia, Colorado, and Washington State, teams Oregon obliterated. That leaves four games: a 59-14 win over Tennessee, a 42-14 win … Continue reading For non-predictive ranking purposes, the difference between 4-0 and 3-1 is huge; for predictive purposes, a 7-point win against Texas A&M is only 12 points better than a 6-point loss to Stanford. Oregon’s rating is pumped up because Washington and UCLA are ranked in the top 11, and Oregon smoked both teams. Essentially, this tells us that Oregon and Alabama are essentially equal, although the SRS does not know that the 26-20 score against Stanford was quite a bit deceiving. But putting that aside, I’m not too bothered by Oregon being sliiiiiightly ahead of Alabama: Humans are subject to a recency bias, but the SRS is not. Had Oregon lost to Stanford in week 1, and then played the Washington game last weekend, it wouldn’t be very jarring to consider Oregon one of the top three teams in the country. And if Alabama beats Auburn and Missouri to end the season, the Crimson Tide’s strength of schedule should be enough to boost them ahead of the Ducks.

One team that jumps up in this modified system is Wisconsin. The Badgers blew out Purdue 41-0, Tennessee Tech 48-0, Massachusetts 45-0, and Illinois 56-32…. and all of those games hurt Wisconsin’s rating. Take those out, and Wisconsin jumps into the top five based on blowing out respectable teams in Iowa and Northwestern, and defeating a very good BYU team by 10 points. The two losses were against top-eight teams on the road, so the Badgers aren’t really harmed. Ohio State is still on the outside looking in, at least in the SRS, because the wins against Cal, Iowa, and Northwestern were very underwhelming given the level of competition.

What about the top games of week 11? In what seems to be a very common occurrence, Florida State again produced the top game of the year. It’s getting boring talking about FSU, but rest assured, they’re #1 for a reason. With the Gators tanking and the eventual opponent in the ACC Championship Game unlikely to present a real challenge, it would be a major shock if FSU didn’t wind up in the BCS National Championship Game.

Baylor continues to rise, although the Bears really need a loss by FSU or Alabama for it to make a practical difference. As always, you can view the SRS single-game results from each game at this page.