Alabama is the best team in college football, and maybe the best team in a generation of college football.

Clemson is fantastic, and is the second best team in college football. A Crimson Tide/Tigers clash in the playoff for a fourth straight year is not going to surprise anyone.

Notre Dame is 10-0 and will make the playoff assuming the Irish can handle Syracuse and USC, two average teams.

That leaves one final spot for the playoff. Ohio State and Michigan are both 9-1 and will play in two weeks. The Buckeyes and Wolverines face Maryland and Indiana this week, so they should be 10-1 as they enter The Big Game for the final week of the regular season. The winner will have the inside track for that 4th spot, assuming they can handle Big 10 West division winner Northwestern in Indianapolis.

The Big 12 also has a pair of 1-loss teams in 9-1 Oklahoma and 8-1 West Virginia (due to Hurricane Florence, the West Virginia game against N.C. State was canceled). Michigan’s one loss was in South Bend, a better loss than Oklahoma’s neutral site loss to Texas. Oklahoma has arguably faced a tougher schedule and it will only get tougher: the Sooners will have to face West Virginia in Morgantown, and then possibly a rematch with West Virginia (or Iowa State) in the Big 12 title game. There seems to be no momentum for the Committee to vault a 12-1 Oklahoma over a 12-1 Michigan, but I suppose it’s at least on the table.

But both the Big 10 and Big 12 will have the possibility of a 1-loss champion, which will lead to some interesting debates for the final spot. My hunch is that the Committee would rank the 1-loss teams in the following order:

1. Michigan
2. Oklahoma
3. Ohio State
4. West Virginia
5. Washington State

Below are the single game results from week 10. As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs.

And here are the updated season standings. Yes, Alabama is ridiculous.

Right now, on a neutral field, Alabama would be:

— 6-point favorites against Clemson
— 9-point favorites against Georgia
— 9.5 point favorites against Michigan
— 16-point favorites against Notre Dame
— 22-point favorites against UCF
— 54.5 point favorites against The Citadel, Alabama’s opponent this weekend (that’s based on The Citadel’s 23.5 SRS rating; there actually is no point spread on the game).

In week 10, Alabama produced the win of the season, blanking #3 LSU, 29-0, in Baton Rouge. It was the worst home loss for Louisiana State since 2002, and yet another example of how Alabama is operating on a different level than any other team in college football.

Alabama scored a 91.8 in the SRS for this performance, and the Crimson Tide now have the best two games of the season (Alabama also had a 91.8 in a 62-0 win over Mississippi). The worst game of the year by Alabama (according to the SRS) was a 51-14 drubbing over Louisville on opening weekend. The second-worst game this season was a 65-31 win on the road against Arkansas. A 45-23 win over Texas A&M was the only game the Crimson Tide have won by less than four touchdowns.

Nick Saban has won 5 national championships with Alabama, and his 2016 team was a dominant squad that went 14-0 and lost in the final minute of the national championship game. And yet… this feels like the best Alabama team under Saban, and by a pretty clear margin. And if it’s the best Alabama team under Saban, it’s not too hard to suggest it’s the best Alabama team ever. And if it’s the best Alabama team ever, well, it’s obviously in the discussion for best college football team ever.

That’s how good this 2018 Alabama team is. Right now, they are a touchdown better than the rest of the FBS. Even Clemson has had a couple of unimpressive games: the Tigers needed to rally and score a last minute touchdown to beat an average Syracuse team, and caught a break in a 2-point win over Texas A&M. That’s perfectly normal for an average elite team, but those two blemishes are a standard deviation below anything an apparently invincible Alabama has done this year. Below are the full week 10 SRS ratings. [continue reading…]

It was not a particularly eventful week in terms of college football upsets. No top-5 SRS teams lost, and only two top-10 SRS teams lost — and both lost to very good teams. Iowa ranked 7th in the SRS last week, and lost on the road to Penn State, who ranked 11th in the week 8 ratings. The annual Florida/Georgia game in Jacksonville featured two top 10 teams, with then-#3 Georgia defeating then-#8 Florida.

Other top teams to lose: #13 Washington, #15 Texas A&M, #16 Purdue, #21 Texas Tech, #22 Missouri, #23 Wisconsin, and #26 Texas. The Longhorns may have been 26th in the SRS, but with a 6-1 record and wins over USC, TCU, and Oklahoma, the Longhorns entered week 8 6th in the AP rankings. A loss to Oklahoma State (hi Doug!) in Stillwater now puts the Big 12 playoff picture into chaos. Next week, West Virginia travels to Austin in a matchup of two of the top teams in the conference.

Alabama was off this week, which opened the way for Georgia and Clemson to be the dominant teams of the week. Both teams demolished teams from Florida: the Bulldogs defeated a pretty good Florida team by 19, while Clemson crushed a bad Seminoles team by 49 points. West Virginia, Arizona, and Utah round out the top 5 teams of the week in terms of single game SRS ratings. [continue reading…]

Four teams saw their SRS ratings drop by at least 4 points from their rating one week ago: Ohio State, Oregon State, Minnesota, and Tulane. In that group, Ohio State was the notable loss, of course: Purdue was 38th in the SRS — so better than people may have realized — but still had a rating 14 points lower than that of the Buckeye. Yet in week 8, Purdue blew out Ohio State 49-20, producing one of the three best performances of the season (joining ALabama’s 62-7 blowout against Ole Miss and LSU’s 36-16 win over Georgia).

Purdue was joined by Virginia, North Carolina, California, and Nebraska as teams that saw their SRS rise by at least 4 points. Below are the full SRS ratings through 8 weeks. As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs. [continue reading…]

It was an eventful week of college football, with 6 teams ranking in the top 16 falling in week 7:

• #2 Georgia was blown out by LSU, 36-16.

• #6 West Virginia lost to giant killer Iowa State; over the last 53 weeks, the Cyclones have beaten three Big 12 teams that ranked in the top 6: Oklahoma and TCU in 2017, and the Mountaineers 30-14 on Saturday.

• #7 Washington, which had a loss to Auburn in the season opener (and which only looks uglier in retrospect, as the Tigers have gone 2-3 against the rest of the FBS since then), had a perhaps fatal loss to Oregon on Saturday afternoon. The Huskies lost in overtime, 30-27, in Eugene.

• #8 Penn State, a week after a narrow home loss to Ohio State, was upset 21-17 at home against Michigan State.

• #15 Wisconsin was obliterated by Michigan in Ann Arbor, 38-13. The 25-point differential was the worst by the Badgers in a true road game in over a decade.

• #16 Miami lost to Virginia, 16-13.

In addition, Notre Dame narrowly beat Pittsburgh (19-14), Central Florida barely escaped Memphis (31-30), and Texas, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M all escaped with one-score wins. [continue reading…]

It’s time, once again, to release the first edition of the college football Simple Rating System ratings. While it’s too early to put too much weight on these ratings, they help to at least begin framing the discussion of which are the most impressive teams in college football. As a reminder, here is the methodology:

1) For each game not played at a neutral site, 3 points are given to the road team. After that adjustment, all wins and losses of between 7 and 24 points are recorded exactly as such. This means that a 24-10 road win goes down as +17 for the road team, -17 for the home team.

2) With one exception, wins of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7-point wins and losses of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7 point losses. So a 4-point home win goes down as +7 (and not a 1) and a 1-point home loss is a -7 (and not a -4). The one exception is that road losses of 3 or fewer (and home wins of 3 or fewer) are graded as ties. So a 21-20 home victory goes down as a 0 for both teams.

3) Wins/Losses of more than 24 points are scored as the average between the actual number and 24. This is to avoid giving undue credit to teams that run up the score. So a 75-point home win goes down as a 48-point win.

Once we have a rating for each team in each game, we then adjust each result for strength of schedule. This is an iterative process, where we adjust the ratings hundreds of times (to adjust for SOS, you have to adjust for the SOS of each opponent, and the SOS of each opponent’s opponent, and so on.) in Excel. Then we produce final ratings, where the SRS rating is the sum of the Margin of Victory and Strength of Schedule in every week. [continue reading…]

With the conference championship games in the books, it’s time to look at the final regular season results. The 4 playoff teams — Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Alabama — rank in the top 7 of the final ratings. The other 3 teams? They’re all in the Big 10, a conference that sent zero teams. [continue reading…]

Penn State, at 10-2 and a runner-up in the Big Ten East, is not in the college football playoff discussion. But that doesn’t mean the Nittany Lions haven’t been as good as any team this season. After all, had Penn State had played Ohio State at home and won by 1 point instead of losing on the road the Buckeyes by 1 point, the Nittany Lions wouldn’t be any “better” than they are now, while their record would be much better. An 11-1 Penn State with wins over Ohio State, Iowa, Michigan, and Northwestern, and be a lock to make the college football playoff with a win over Wisconsin in the Big 10 Championship Game.

Penn State ranks 7th in points scored and 7th in points allowed among the 130 teams in the FBS. The Nittany Lions are the only team in the top 10 in both categories, and Alabama (1st in points allowed, 12th in points scored) is the only other team in the top 15 in both; Washington (18th in scoring, 6th in points allowed) is the only other team to rank in the top 20 in both. Penn State has outscored opponents by 26.1 points per game, second to only Alabama (27.6) despite a harder schedule. Penn State lost two games on the road by a total of 4 points; but, even though the Nittany Lions rank 1st in the SRS, the loss to Ohio State — which goes down as the best loss of the season (edging Utah’s 3-point road loss in Washington) — is enough to eliminate them from contention.

As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs. The full week 13 NCAA SRS ratings below: [continue reading…]

The SRS ratings this week didn’t change much, with very few meaningful games among top teams.

Penn State, Notre Dame, Washington, and Iowa State fell a bit in close wins over bad teams, while Oklahoma State and Iowa suffered losses. The only other top-25 teams (by the SRS) to lose lost to even better teams: Michigan lost to Wisconsin, and N.C. State losing to Wake Forest.

Right now, three Big 10 teams crack the top four, with Georgia and Auburn combining with #1 Alabama to give the SEC three top-10 teams. The full week 12 SRS ratings are below. As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs. [continue reading…]

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: [continue reading…]

Let’s start today’s post in a different direction: with a look at the biggest surprises of the week. And there was no bigger surprise than Iowa’s blowout win over Ohio State.

After week 10 (which, of course, compresses the ratings since the year-long ratings include the week 10 results), Iowa has an SRS of 55.0, while Ohio State is at 61.6. Given that the game was in Iowa, we would have expected Iowa to lose by 3.6 points.  But Iowa won 55-24, for a difference of 31 points, and an adjusted MOV of 26 points.  That means Iowa exceeded SRS expectations by 29.6 points, the most of any FBS team this week.

Army, Bowling Green, Baylor, and Utah round out the top 5 in terms of biggest overachievers in week 10:

[continue reading…]

You probably weren’t expecting that headline after Penn State lost its first game of the season on Saturday.

A week ago, I wrote that Penn State rose to #2 in the SRS after blowing out Michigan. Now, this week, Penn State is #1 after losing on Saturday? What happened?

#1 Alabama was idle this week, but Penn State had as good a loss as you can get. The Nittany Lions had an SRS rating of 68.2 last week, and only dropped to 67.6 this week. That’s because Penn State lost by 1 point, on the road, to an Ohio State team that ranks 3rd in the SRS. But the real issue is that Alabama dropped significantly, by 3.5 points from week 8 to 9, despite not playing.

How? Alabama is 8-0 with zero of those wins coming against teams that rank in the top 45 in the SRS. Four of those wins have come against terrible SEC teams that rank outside of the top 70 in the SRS in Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Vanderbilt. The other four wins came against Florida State, Fresno State, Texas A&M, and Colorado St.

FSU lost 35-3 to Boston College this weekend, causing the Seminoles to drop from 51.1 to 44.5 in the SRS, a -6.6 point drop.

Fresno State lost 26-16 to a terrible UNLV team, causing west coast FSU to drop from 49.5 to 43.4, a -6.1 SRS point drop.

The Aggies lost 35-14 to Mississippi State, dropping Texas A&M by 3.9 points, from 46.2 to 42.3 in the SRS.

And Colorado State lost at home to Air Force by 17 points; that led to a 4.4 point SRS drop, from 43.4 to 39.0.

A week ago, Alabama’s SOS was 42.6 points; that was a little weak, but overwhelmed by the Crimson Tide’s dominance. Now? The average Alabama opponent has a 39.1 SRS rating, and that 3.5-point drop was enough to move Alabama from #1 to #4 in the SRS. It’s weird for sure to see Alabama drop this far, but look at the big picture: the Crimson Tide haven’t faced an opponent in the top 45 of the SRS, and their three best wins are against #48 Florida State, #50 Fresno State, and #58 Texas A&M. [continue reading…]

Week 8 of the college football season didn’t see any big contenders fall. In fact, none of the top 14 teams in last week’s ratings lost. And the two best teams that lost all fell to better teams: last week’s #15 lost to last week’s #3 Penn State, #16 USC lost to #5 Notre Dame.

Let’s start with the most impressive wins of the week, which go to Notre Dame and Penn State. Beating a strong opponent helps, but both teams blew out top 20 opponents.  And Iowa State — a school that hadn’t won more than 3 games since 2012 — continued their remarkable run.  In week 6, the Cyclones shocked a great Oklahoma team to win 38-31 in Norman. The next week, Iowa State stomped on Kansas 45-0, the second largest margin of victory for Iowa State in a game in the last 15 years.  Then, on Saturday, the Cyclones upset Texas Tech, 31-13.  This marked the third straight game where Iowa State covered the point spread by more than 21 points!

The table below shows the SRS ratings from each game in week 8: [continue reading…]

Last week, I introduced the first version of the SRS ratings. Well, there were some big upsets this week which have moved the rankings.

Clemson, which ranked 5th last week and 2nd in the polls, was upset by a Syracuse team that ranked 73rd in the SRS.

Washington, which ranked 8th in the SRS, was upset by Arizona State, which ranked 45th last week.

Washington State looked to be soaring this time a week ago: they ranked 14th in the SRS and were 6-0. But the Cougars were obliterated 37-3 by a Cal team that ranked 58th in the SRS a week ago.

Auburn, Texas Tech, Texas, and San Diego State were also SRS top 25 teams that suffered a loss in week seven.

Even Georgia moves down this week by virtue of a sluggish win over a terrible Missouri team. Entering this week, Missouri was 0-4 against FBS opponents (Auburn, Purdue, South Carolina, Kentucky) with an average loss of 23.25 points; therefore, a 25-point home win over Missouri drops 3 to 4. Right now, Ohio State and Penn State joint Alabama in the top 3.

As for the Buckeyes, yes, they rank #2 despite a 15-point home loss to Oklahoma. Why? They beat Rutgers by 56, Maryland by 48, Nebraska by 42, UNLV by 33, and Army by 31 points: those are the worst losses each of those five teams have had this year. They also beat Indiana by 28, and the Hoosiers have only had one loss worse this year (31 points to Penn State). Yes, the Oklahoma loss was bad, but it’s not easy dropping 40-point wins against Big 10 teams. Think of the SRS as a proxy for the Vegas rankings: and right now, I expect Ohio State to be a home favorite against Penn State in two weeks.

As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs. Below are the SRS ratings through 7 weeks: [continue reading…]

For the last few years, I have introduced the first edition of the College Football SRS Ratings after five weeks. I’m a week late this year, so it’s time to release the first college football ratings. And while it’s too early to put too much weight on these ratings, they help to at least begin framing the discussion of which are the most impressive teams in college football. As a reminder, here is the methodology:

1) For each game not played at a neutral site, 3 points are given to the road team. After that adjustment, all wins and losses of between 7 and 24 points are recorded exactly as such. This means that a 24-10 road win goes down as +17 for the road team, -17 for the home team.

2) With one exception, wins of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7-point wins and losses of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7 point losses. So a 4-point home win goes down as +7 (and not a 1) and a 1-point home loss is a -7 (and not a -4). The one exception is that road losses of 3 or fewer (and home wins of 3 or fewer) are graded as ties. So a 21-20 home victory goes down as a 0 for both teams.

3) Wins/Losses of more than 24 points are scored as the average between the actual number and 24. This is to avoid giving undue credit to teams that run up the score. So a 75-point home win goes down as a 48-point win.

Once we have a rating for each team in each game, we then adjust each result for strength of schedule. This is an iterative process, where we adjust the ratings hundreds of times (to adjust for SOS, you have to adjust for the SOS of each opponent, and the SOS of each opponent’s opponent, and so on.) in Excel. Then we produce final ratings, where the SRS rating is the sum of the Margin of Victory and Strength of Schedule in every week. [continue reading…]

The college regular season is over, other than Army/Navy this weekend. Let’s start with a review of the final week of the season for the B12, and the conference championship games for the rest of major college football.

Washington’s destruction of Colorado lead the way, while yet another Alabama blowout only comes in second due to the weaker opponent (yes, Florida is nearly ten points worse than Colorado; 2016 is weird). Also, Temple with a huge upset win over Navy comes in third. [continue reading…]

The rankings haven’t changed much from last week. Here’s how the top 15 teams in the SRS last week fared in week 13:

• #1 Alabama handled Auburn in the Iron Bowl, 30-12. The Crimson Tide is a lock for the playoffs, even if they lose in the SECCG (which they’re not going to do).

• #2 Ohio State beat Michigan in perhaps the game of the college football season, 30-27 in double overtime. Ohio State seems like a lock for the playoffs; the Buckeyes regular season is over, as Penn State won the Big 10 East.

• #3 Michigan lost to Ohio State. Michigan’s playoff chances appear dead in the water.

• #4 Washington had the single best game of the week, according to the SRS, beating Washington State in the Apple Cup, 45-17.  It was the 5th best single game score of the year. Washington looks to be in a “win and they’re in” situation, as the Huskies will face Colorado in the P12CG.

• #5 Clemson blew the doors off of South Carolina, 56-7, to finish the regular season 11-1.  The Tigers are in a “win and they’re in” scenario against Virginia Tech in the ACCCG.

• #6 Colorado beat Utah, at home, 27-22, to capture the Pac 12 South.  The Buffaloes may well be in a “win and they’re in” situation in the P12CG against Washington.  More on that in a bit.

• #7 Wisconsin handled Minnesota, 31-17.  Wisconsin won the Big 10 West, and will face Penn State in the B10CG.

• #8 Southern Cal beat Notre Dame, 45-27, but USC’s season is over now that Colorado has won the South.

• #9 Louisville shockingly lost to Kentucky, 41-38. Louisville finished the year 9-3, with two straight bad losses.

• #10 Washington State lost to Washington, ending WAZZOU’s playoff hopes.

• #11 Oklahoma was off.  The Sooners can still win the conference at 10-2 with a win in the de facto B12CG this weekend against Oklahoma State.

• #12 Penn State beat Michigan State, 45-12.  The Nittany Lions will face Wisconsin in the B10CG.

Below are the week 13 SRS results: [continue reading…]

It was a very good week for Oklahoma.

The Sooners were easy to write off early in the 2016 season, after two bad losses in the first three weeks. Oklahoma failed to cover by 23 points against Houston (33-23 loss, as a 13-point favorite) and Ohio State (45-24, as a 2-point favorite), which appeared to knock them out of the national discussion.

But Houston did the Sooners a favor by knocking off Louisville on Thursday night, eliminating (for now) the Cardinals from the playoff picture. Houston recorded a single-game SRS score of 79.5 for that performance, the top game of the week. And the better Houston looks, the more forgivable that loss is from Oklahoma’s perspective.

Oklahoma also doubled-up on West Virginia, 56-28, the third-best game of the week. And the fourth-best game of the week came from Oklahoma State, who destroyed TCU. The Sooners and Cowboys face off in two weeks in a de facto Big 12 playoff game: the teams are 8-0 and 7-1 in conference play, respectively, with every other team having at least two conference losses.

Below are the single-game ratings from week twelve: [continue reading…]

The story of the college football season had been the lack of any crazy upsets. It felt as though we were on a predetermined path to the college football playoffs, with Alabama, Clemson, Washington, and the Ohio State/Michigan winner taking the four spots.

Then, Saturday happened. The six best teams this year have combined to lose just five games, and *three* of them came in week eleven:

• Pittsburgh went into Clemson and won, 43-42. This was a shocking upset: the Tigers were favored by 21.5 points.

• Less of an upset was seeing USC (+10) go in to Seattle and double up the Huskies, 26-13.  This registered as the 2nd most dominant win of the week, behind only Ohio State’s 62-3 thrashing of Maryland.

• And then the most shocking development of the weekend: Michigan, #1 in the SRS last week, falling to Iowa in Iowa City.  The Wolverines were 24-point favorites, and would have been 22.7-point SRS favorites over a Hawkeyes team that ranked 44th in the SRS a few days ago.

Oh, and in addition to Ohio State taking care of business, Alabama crushed MSU, 51-3, for the 3rd best SRS game of the week.  Below are the single-game SRS ratings from week 11: [continue reading…]

A little late to the party this week, so here are last week’s ratings as a reminder. Given the late publishing date, I am also including the games from Tuesday and Wednesday night, which means Western Michigan is now 10-0 in these rankings.

The big win of week ten was by Ohio State, as the Buckeyes recorded the single biggest SRS win of the season. Playing at home against Nebraska (ranked 31st, SRS of 48.8), the Buckeyes won 62-3. That’s a 56-point HFA-adjusted margin of victory, which gets adjusted down to a 40-point win after the adjustment we use here in the SRS (i.e., the average of 24 and 56). That translates to an 88.8 single-game rating, which trails only Alabama’s 52-6 neutral site win over USC (90.5) for the top rating of the season. [continue reading…]

The most dominant win of week 9 came from…. Tulsa? Entering the week, Memphis was 5-2, with only road losses against ranked teams in Memphis and Navy. Memphis ranked 38th in the SRS last week, and was a 6-point favorite at home against Tulsa. But the Golden Hurricane broke open the game in the second half, scoring the final 24 points en route to a 59-30 victory. Running back James Flanders had 33 carries for 249 yards and 5 touchdowns, including scores of 52 and 48 yards.

In slightly more relevant week 9 news, there was some B12 on B12 crime this weekend, as the last two remaining teams in the conference went down.  Oklahoma State had the 2nd best SRS performance of the week, winning by 17 against previously unbeaten West Virginia. Texas was a bit less impressive, but still had the third best B12 performance of the week in a 35-34 home victory against Baylor.

But perhaps the most notable performance of the week came from Auburn, as the Tigers went on the road and scored 13 fourth quarter points to beat Ole Miss in Oxford, 40-29.  Auburn now seems like a legitimate candidate to beat Alabama, or at least give the Tide a competitive game in the Iron Bowl.

Below are the single-game SRS results from this weekend. As always, thanks to Peter R. Wolfe for providing the game scores. [continue reading…]

Last week, Michigan, Alabama, and Ohio State were far ahead of the pack according to the SRS. The top 6 remains unchanged this week other than Clemson and Louisville switching spots. That might be surprising given that Ohio State lost in Happy Valley, but Penn State now ranks 22nd in the SRS (they ranked 34th last week) and the Buckeyes had a large lead on #4 Clemson last week. Ohio State gets a 51.0 for losing at Penn State, but Clemson had a 56.1 last week for a home win over N.C. State.

The three big wins of the week came from Auburn, Louisville, and Alabama. At this rate, the Crimson Tide look ridiculous: Alabama’s worst game of the year was a 59.7, scored in a 5-point road win against Ole Miss. Two other games (34-6 over Kentucky, 48-0 over Kent State) had similar scores. But against the three teams Alabama has faced with an SRS of at least 50, the Ride have won by a combined 134-30 (USC, Tennessee, A&M).

But after Auburn’s destruction of Arkansas this weekend, there’s at least reason to think the Iron Bowl should be interesting. On Saturday, the Tigers rushed for 544 yards and 7 touchdowns on 56 carries — that is insane. In fact, it’s the most by any SEC team in a regular season game since at least 2000: it’s also one less yard than the famed 2013 Tigers had in the SEC Championship Game against Missouri.

As for Louisville? Well, they obliterated that NC State team that nearly (and should have) beaten Clemson last week. Below are the single-game week 8 SRS ratings:
[continue reading…]

Last week, Michigan jumped to number one in the SRS after demolishing Rutgers. The Wolverines, on bye, stayed at number one this week, but the Crimson Tide are coming after them. The top team of week 7 was Alabama, who destroyed a good conference opponent in Tennessee.  Here’s what you need to know: the Crimson Tide….

• outgained the Vols, 613-201;
• outrushed the Vols, 438-32, the most rushing yards by Alabama in 30 years; and
• scored on both a punt return and an interception return, winning 49-7.

Given that the Volunteers have an SRS rating of 50.4, and that the game was in Tennessee, a 39-point road victory translates to an SRS rating of 83.4; no other team in week 7 cracked 70.

The second best win came from West Virginia; at 5-0 and now #16 in the SRS, it may be time to start watching the Mountaineers more closely.  WVU’s toughest opponents to date have been BYU and Kansas State, and both were close wins.  But the Big 12’s best hope for national relevance is for both West Virginia and Baylor to enter their December 3rd matchup undefeated. Unlikely, of course, but that’s at least a path.

Oh, and the Western Michigan hype machine should keep rolling.  The Broncos destroyed Akron, which may not sound that impressive, but for reference: WMU won 41-0 in Akron, while Wisconsin won 54-10 at home against the Zips. Running back Jarvion Franklin had 33 carries for 281 yards in the win. [continue reading…]

For the last couple of years, I have introduced the first edition of the College Football SRS Ratings after five weeks.  So with five weeks in the books, it’s time to release the first college football ratings. And while it’s too early to put too much weight on these ratings, they help to at least begin framing the discussion of which are the most impressive teams in college football.  As a reminder, here is the methodology:

1) For each game not played at a neutral site, 3 points are given to the road team. After that adjustment, all wins and losses of between 7 and 24 points are recorded exactly as such. This means that a 24-10 road win goes down as +17 for the road team, -17 for the home team.

2) With one exception, wins of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7-point wins and losses of 7 or fewer points are scored as 7 point losses. So a 4-point home win goes down as +7 (and not a 1) and a 1-point home loss is a -7 (and not a -4). The one exception is that road losses of 3 or fewer (and home wins of 3 or fewer) are graded as ties. So a 21-20 home victory goes down as a 0 for both teams.

3) Wins/Losses of more than 24 points are scored as the average between the actual number and 24. This is to avoid giving undue credit to teams that run up the score. So a 75-point home win goes down as a 48-point win.

Once we have a rating for each team in each game, we then adjust each result for strength of schedule. This is an iterative process, where we adjust the ratings hundreds of times (to adjust for SOS, you have to adjust for the SOS of each opponent, and the SOS of each opponent’s opponent, and so on.) in Excel. Then we produce final ratings, where the SRS rating is the sum of the Margin of Victory and Strength of Schedule in every week. [continue reading…]

Coaches of two of the top 3 teams in college football… again.

Meet the new boss, Nick Saban as always.

The Golden Nugget released the point spreads for 100 games this season, and Johnny Detroit was kind enough to pass along that data for purposes of this post.  With only data for 100 games, how am I able to conclude that Vegas views Alabama as the best team (or, at least, one of the top 2 teams)  in college football? Consider:

• Alabama is a 6-point road favorite at Ole Miss this year. That is the only game this year (of the seven we have lines for) where Mississippi is an underdog, and the Rebels are an 8-point home favorite against Auburn and a 4.5-point home favorite against Georgia.  The Rebels finished 10th in the polls last year and are projected to be the 10th-best team this year, so this line says all you need to know about Alabama.

• Against Auburn, Alabama is a 15-point home favorite (that’s a touchdown better than Ole Miss is against Auburn).   The Tigers were not great last year, but are still projected at #20 this year.

• In Arkansas, the Crimson Tide are 8.5-point favorites.  In the other 3 home games for Arkansas, the Razorbacks are 7.5-point dogs to LSU (the #3 team by this methodology), 1-point underdogs to Mississippi, and a 2.5-point favorite against Florida.

• Alabama is a 15-point favorite at home against Mississippi State and a 14-point home favorite against Texas A&M.  Both of those teams are projected to be, by Vegas, top 30 teams this year.

• In Tennessee, Alabama is a 1-point dog, but the Vols are projected as the 6th best team this year! Tennessee is a pick’em in Georgia, a 5-point favorite in College Station, an 11-point favorite at home against Florida, and a 13-point favorite in a neutral site game against Virginia Tech.

• LSU is projected to be the 3rd best team in college football. The Tigers are an 11-point favorite at home against MSU, a 9.5-point home favorite against Ole Miss, 7.5-point road favorites in Florida and Arkansas, a touchdown favorite in Auburn, a 6-point favorite in College Station, and – only – a 2.5-point home favorite against Alabama.

You may be wondering, how do we know how good Alabama’s opponents are? Well, we can imply the ratings of each team in college football based on these points spreads.  I explained how to do this last year, but here is the refresher:

The system is pretty simple: I took the point spread for each game and turned it into a margin of victory, after assigning 3 points to the road team in each game. Do this for every game, iterate the results hundreds of times ala the Simple Rating System, and you end up with a set of power ratings.

Two quick notes about the rankings.

1) These are not intended to be surprise. The methodology may be somewhat complicated, but all these ratings are intended to do is quantify public perception.

2) These are not “my” ratings. These are simply the implied ratings based on the Vegas (or, more specifically, the Golden Nugget) points spreads; nothing more, nothing less.

Below are the ratings for 51 college football teams. In the table below, I’ve included the number of games for which we have point spreads for each team on the far left. The “MOV” column shows the home field-adjusted average margin of victory for that team, the “SOS” column shows the average rating of each team’s opponents (for only the number of games for which we have lines), and the “SRS” column shows the school’s implied SRS rating. As you can see, Alabama is projected to be the strongest team in college football, but Oklahoma is just a hair behind: [continue reading…]

With the college football regular season now officially over, let’s look at the final SRS ratings from 2015:

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After twelve weeks, there were still about a dozen teams jockeying for the final four spots. And with Notre Dame’s loss in Palo Alto, we no longer have to ask that pesky Oklahoma/Notre Dame question.

This year seems likely to be the perfect one for a four-team playoff, as the gap between the 4th and 5th most deserving teams — assuming results go as planned next weekend — matches the natural divide from the on-field results.

• The SEC has one dominant team this year, Alabama. Assuming the Crimson Tide defeat Florida in the SEC Championship Game, Alabama will make the playoff. But the SEC did get a little lucky: if not for Arkansas gaining a first down on an absurd lateral, Ole Miss would have won the SEC West this year. What would the committee do with an 11-2 Mississippi team that beat Bama but lost 38-10 to Florida and by 13 points to Memphis, but won the SEC and beat the Gators in the rematch? Tough to say, but I think we’re all better off that we don’t have to ask that question this year. Assuming Alabama wins, the Tide will finish at 12-1 and very deserving of a playoff spot, while every other SEC team will have at least three losses.

• The Big 10 had four good teams this year, but it happened to have one of them in the Big 10 West, which may as well have been in Mountain West. With 14 teams and just 8 conference games (the same as the SEC), each team plays one game against the other six teams in its division, and only two games against the teams from the other division. This is how a team like Kentucky can finish with a weak schedule despite “playing in the SEC” — the Wildcats faced Auburn and Mississippi State from the West, the weak SEC East, and a soft nonconference schedule. Iowa had a similar setup, getting Maryland and Indiana from the Big 10 East, the underwhelming Big 10 West, and a pretty easy nonconference schedule (other than Pitt). The difference: Kentucky went 5-7, while Iowa rode this schedule to 12-0. Over in the Big 10 East, Michigan, Ohio State, and Michigan State were the class of the division. They went undefeated against the rest of the East, but Michigan State swept Michigan and Ohio State, albeit in skin-of-teeth fashion: the Spartans never led in either game until the clock hit triple zeroes. Regardless, we now have a great B10 Championship Game, and the winner of Iowa/Michigan State will obviously be a very deserving playoff team. Iowa would be 13-0, and Michigan State would be 12-1 with wins over Ohio State, Michigan, Iowa, and Oregon, with the one loss coming in controversial fashion on a bad call against Nebraska.

• The Big 12, like the Big 10, had four good teams this year. Unlike the Big 10, all four teams played each other in the conference’s round robin schedule. Oklahoma went 3-0 against Oklahoma State, Baylor, and TCU, which was enough to make up for the Sooners slip against Texas earlier in the year. The Cowboys, Bears, and Horned Frogs all finished 10-2 (assuming TCU beats Texas next weekend), making an 11-1 OU team the clear deserving choice. It doesn’t hurt that Oklahoma also had the most impressive nonconference win of the group, a 31-24 double overtime victory in Tennessee.

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The chaos continues in college football. In week 12, two more undefeated teams lost, with Ohio State losing at the last second to Michigan State, and Oklahoma State losing, 45-35, against Baylor. That leaves just two undefeated teams remaining in the Football Bowl Subdivision: Clemson and Iowa. The Tigers are now #3 in the SRS, mostly because both Oklahoma and Alabama have slightly higher margins of victory and strengths of schedule than Clemson.

Iowa is down at #15 in the SRS, mostly because of strength of schedule. the Hawkeyes played a terrible North Texas team and an FCS Illinois State out of conference, while Indiana, Minnesota, and Maryland aren’t doing much for Iowa’s schedule. On the top end, only three opponents — Wisconsin (#26), Pittsburgh (#28), and Northwestern (#47)– rank in the top sixty. Against that backdrop, Iowa’s margin of victory simply isn’t good enough to vault them into the top ten of the simple rating system. (For comparison’s sake, Baylor, North Carolina, and Navy have all faced weaker schedules, but have strong enough MOVs to rank ahead of Iowa.)

But this is mostly an academic discussion. For purposes of the 2015 season, Iowa remains in great position to make the playoff. The Hawkeyes have a sneaky tough matchup in the season finale, as Iowa travels to Lincoln, Nebraska to face a 5-6 Cornhuskers team that will be fighting for its own postseason berth. Yeah, Nebraska has six losses, but those games have come by a combined 23 points, and Nebraska has lost several of those games in the final seconds.

Three teams remain in complete control of their playoff destiny: Clemson, Alabama, and Iowa. If all the favorites win, that will leave the committee with a very interesting decision for the final spot, having to choose between Oklahoma and Notre Dame. And if Iowa loses, but Michigan State finishes 12-1, the Spartans may simply take Iowa’s spot, so that won’t help solve any Sooner/Irish debate. It’s still too early to panic for any of the contenders — I think we are only in the middle of the chaos — but the end of the regular season is shaping up to be very, very interesting.

Last week, I noted that the Big 12 would be fine, unless the winner of Bedlam lost on Saturday. And while Oklahoma did beat TCU, Oklahoma State suffered its first loss of the season, setting up a nightmare scenario for the Big 12. If the Cowboys beat the Sooners, the Big 12 may have Baylor as its only hope of making the playoffs.

And, for what it’s worth, Baylor is now up to #4 in the SRS. Below are the ratings through week 12:
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Last week, I looked at how the Big 12 schedule was backloaded. There are four top teams in the conference, and the six-game round robin among those teams was placed at the back third of each team’s schedule. So far, just two of those six games have been played: Oklahoma State beat TCU last weekend, and Oklahoma beat Baylor last night. That means the winner in Bedlam in two weeks — which takes place in Stillwater — has a leg up on the rest of the conference. The winner in Bedlam will be the Big 12 champion assuming they win next weekend. Of course, that’s no sure thing, given that next week Oklahoma hosts TCU and Oklahoma State hosts Baylor. And yes, for those keeping score at home, that does mean the Cowboys got home draws against TCU, Baylor, and OU this year.

If the Bedlam winner wins next week, too, they are almost certainly going to make the college football playoff. The only way they don’t is if literally everything here happens:

• Ohio Sate beats Michigan State, Michigan, and wins in the B10 Championship Game

• Notre Dame wins in Boston against Boston College and in Palo Alto against Stanford

• Clemson beats Wake Forest and South Carolina and then wins in the ACC Championship Game

• The winner of the SEC Championship Game wins their in-state rivalry game (UF-FSU and Bama-Auburn)

• The committee decides that Notre Dame is more deserving than the B12 champ.

The odds of that happening would be, by my back-of-the-envelope calculations, under five percent. So while the Big 12 won’t occupy a top four spot in this week’s playoff standings, and may even fail to place a team in the top five, there’s little reason to think the B12 won’t send a team to the playoffs for the second year in a row. That is, unless the Bedlam winner loses at home next week.

Below are the SRS ratings through eleven weeks. As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs. [continue reading…]