Last week, Michigan topped the SRS. Following the Gift Six, the Wolverines fall to the fifth spot after one of the craziest games in recent history. Jumping into the top spot is Baylor, after the Bears scored 56+ points for the sixth time in six games this year.
Baylor wide receiver Corey Coleman already has 16 touchdowns this year. 16! In six games! Okay, the Bears have only played two games of note — against Texas Tech two weeks ago and against West Virginia on Saturday — but the Bears also have the track record to show that they’re a top five team. Are they truly the best team in college football? We won’t find out more until a date with Oklahoma in four weeks, and the showdown with TCU two weeks later still looms as a de facto playoff game.
Without further ado, below are the SRS ratings through seven weeks. As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs.
You might be wondering why 6-0 Memphis — who just upset an Ole Miss team that beat Alabama — is down at #22. The Tigers are tied for 10th in adjusted Margin of Victory (ironically, with Alabama) but have the 86th-ranked strength of schedule. By comparison, Alabama has faced the 18th toughest schedule, and while Baylor has the 89th ranked schedule, the Bears are #1 by a mile in adjusted margin of victory. In other words, given the cupcake schedule, if Memphis was a top ten team, they’d be winning by more points. Let’s dig down a little deeper: here are the single-game SRS scores for Memphis this year. As you can see, the win over Ole Miss was the team’s top performance of the season.
The Tigers faced an FCS cupcake in week 1, and that is lowering the team’s rating a bit. Take that game out, and Memphis would have a 44.9 SRS rating, although you’d have to be consistent and do that for all the other teams to see how that would change things. The bigger issue: A 7-point win over a bad Cincinnati team that was as competitive as it looks (Memphis was home and won on a touchdown in the final minute). Memphis also beat USF by just 7 points, and a 3-point win over Bowling Green doesn’t help the cause, either. The win over Ole Miss was nice, but Ole Miss is “only” 23rd in the SRS, far behind the public perception that at one time had them number three in the polls.
Here’s something that surprised me: Alabama looked great this week, but fell slightly farther behind a Utah team that was not as impressive in week seven. So why did that happen? The beauty of the SRS is that you can always figure out why: you may not agree with it, but the explanation is always there. Alabama dropped by 0.9 points in the SRS week despite blowing out Texas A&M for a few reasons.
First, Ole Miss lost to Memphis. That makes Alabama’s game against them look even worse. In addition, Louisiana-Monroe got blown out, 59-14, by Appalachian State. While scheduling ULM, that game looks even worse now. And Georgia, which looked like a signature win when it occurred, is now ranked 38th in the SRS.
Utah beat Arizona State, at home, 34-18, but the Sun Devils aren’t very good. Still, the Utes only dropped by 0.3 because it received boosts in the SRS as the team’s past victims did very well this week (Michigan excluded). Utah State had the second best SRS score of any team in week 7, courtesy of a 52-26 win over Boise State. Oregon stopped the bleeding with a six-point win in Washington. And even Fresno State won this week!
Finally, here are the single-game SRS scores from week 7. Oklahoma’s 55-0 win over Kansas was the top performance of the week, following by the big wins by Utah State and Iowa. And yes, we are at the point where we have to really consider the possibility of a 12-0 Iowa team.
As always, please leave any questions or comments in the comments.
