A week ago, Iowa beat Ohio State 55-24 and recorded the single-best SRS game score (87.5) of the 2017 season. And after the Buckeyes crushed Michigan State on Saturday, that win looks even better: it now measures a whopping 88.5 in the SRS. And yet, it is no longer the top game of the year, not after what Miami just did.
At home against the then-#1 team in the SRS, Notre Dame, the Hurricanes crushed the Irish 41-8. Because Notre Dame still has an impressive 62.2 SRS rating, the 33-point win — which gets knocked down to 27 due to home field and as part of the compression against blowouts — produced an SRS score of 89.2, the best game of the year. And the Buckeyes win over MSU? That was the third best performance of the season, scoring an SRS score of 81.7. And let’s not forget about what Auburn did to Georgia — the Tigers produced the 7th-best game of the year by SRS standards. The table below shows the single-game SRS scores from this week:
The full week 11 SRS ratings are below. As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs.
Notre Dame was at 66.0 last week; but with the embarrassing loss to Miami along with Georgia dropping by three full points after the Auburn game, the Irish are down to 5th in the SRS at 62.2.
You might be surprised to see Penn State back at #1, but the Nittany Lions rank 5th in adjusted MOV and 17th in SOS. They are one of a number of teams that are Pareto Efficient at the top of the college football standings. The biggest problem for the Nittany Lions was that they scored their points inefficiently: a 31-13 win over Michigan and a 31-27 win over Michigan State wouldn’t change their points differential, but it would change the perception about the school much more than the 42-13 win over Michigan and 27-24 loss to the Spartans that actually occurred.
Miami is a fascinating 10-0, and the Hurricanes are a little underrated in the SRS because their worst game of the year came against FSC Bethune Cookman. Take out that game, and Miami has a 13.6 MOV, 46.9 SOS, and 60.6 SRS, which is probably more appropriate. OTOH, Miami still won by just 5 against a terrible North Carolina team, and had one-score wins over Florida State, Georgia Tech, and Syracuse. Prior to the win against Notre Dame, Miami could really only brag about beating Virginia Tech by 18 points.
But the Hurricanes final two games of the regular season are against two of the worst three teams in the conference in Pittsburgh and Virginia. Miami is all but certain to make it to Charlotte for the ACC Championship Game with an 11-0 perfect record, and to clinch its spot into the playoff with a win over Clemson.
