Every week, I publish my college football ratings for FBS teams. To generate those ratings – using this methodology — my program also generates ratings for non-FBS teams. Since there is less interest in those numbers, I rarely publish them, but here are the ratings through ten weeks for all non-FBS teams.
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Last week, five teams emerged as the upper crust of college football. That number has dropped to four, after Missouri lost to South Carolina in typical heartbreaking style. The Tigers led 17-0 entering the fourth quarter, but that was before USC starting quarterback Connor Shaw — who had been held out due to injury — was inserted into the game. Shaw led the Gamecocks on a furious comeback to force overtime. After MIZZOU scored a touchdown on the first possession, Shaw threw his third touchdown pass on 4th-and-goal from the 16 yard line. On the second possession, USC was up first and kicked a field goal. Missouri looked to match South Carolina, but a 24-yard field goal bounced off the left upright, giving Tigers fans the gut punch loss of the season.

Elsewhere, most things went according to plan. Johnny Manziel played like a Heisman Trophy winner (25/35, 305 yards, 4 TDs, 1 INT), while Teddy Bridgewater (25/29, 344, 3, 0), Bryce Petty (20/32, 430, 3/0), and Jameis Winston (16/26, 292, 3/1) continued their dominant seasons. A couple of embattled schools pulled off impressive wins over conference rivals: Michigan State won 42-3 against Illinois, while Texas continued to put September in the rear-view mirror by stomping TCU, 30-7.

Below are the SRS ratings through nine 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.
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Last week, Florida State topped the SRS ratings. And that was before the Seminoles posted the single best performance of the season, winning at Clemson 51-14 on Saturday Night. They scored an 85.5 in the SRS against the Tigers, so FSU now has the top two games of the season (the team’s 63-0 shutout against Maryland had been the previous SRS leader). Freshman phenom Jameis Winston threw for 444 yards and 3 touchdowns on just 34 passes, and is vaulting to the front of Heisman leaderboards. How impressive was the win? Even if you ignore margin of victory, simply winning at Clemson stands as the most impressive road win of the season. The Tigers have an SRS of 53.5, and no team with a higher SRS score has lost at home this season. And it would be a surprise if the Seminoles didn’t finish the season undefeated.

Four of FSU’s final six regular season games come against teams outside of the top 75 in the SRS. FSU is a 29-point favorite this weekend against NC State, and should be similar favorites against Wake Forest, Syracuse, and Idaho (well, that game should be off the board). The only real challenges the rest of the way come from in-state rivals Miami and Florida, but for now, FSU seems like the best team not just in Florida, but in the country.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed in college football, a reality several teams were painfully reminded of this weekend. Louisville and Heisman/2014 No. 1 overall draft pick favorite Teddy Bridgewater lost, at home, to a sneaky good Central Florida team. If UCF can beat Houston in two weeks, the American Athletic Conference is likely theirs, along with an automatic BCS berth. Through eight weeks, the AAC has just three teams in the top half of the 125 FBS teams, so Central Florida’s path to a BCS Bowl won’t feature too many road blocks.

The one loss for the Knights was out of conference to South Carolina, a team who fell on SEC Upset Weekend. Despite a good game (and one monster hit) out of Jadeveon Clowney, the Gamecocks lost on a last-second field goal at Tennessee, 23-21.

That was one of five intraconference upsets in the SEC this weekend. Georgia lost on the road against Vanderbilt 31-27, despite the Bulldogs entering the game as 6.5-point favorites. Missouri had a higher SRS rating than Florida, but was a three-point underdog in Columbia against the Gators. The Tigers outgained Florida 500-151, and Henry Josey led the way with 18 carries for 136 yards and a score. LSU was a 9.5-point favorite in Oxford, but Zach Mettenberger threw three interceptions and Ole Miss jumped out to a 17-0 lead. The Tigers came back to tie the game, but the Rebels hit a 41-yard field goal as time expired to steal the win.

Johnny Manziel went down with an injury against Auburn, but you wouldn’t know it from his stat line: 28/38 for 454 yards, 4 TDs, 18 carries for 48 yards, 1 TD. Manziel also threw two interceptions, and missed one series with an injury, which might have made the difference in a shootout. Aggie wideout Mike Evans, who is a Vincent Jackson clone, caught 11 passes for 287 yards and four touchdowns. But Auburn, which entered College Station as 12.5-point underdogs, ultimately scored last, pulling out a 45-41 win. Tigers quarterback Nick Marshall had a great game, too, throwing for 236 passing yards and two touchdowns on 23 pass attempts, while adding 100 yards and two scores on the ground.

Only one game went according to script in the SEC, which is a pretty good way of describing just about every Alabama game ever. The Crimson Tide defeated Arkansas 52-0, in typical ruthless fashion. A.J. McCarron was 15/21 for 180 yards and 3 touchdowns, Kenyan Drake had 104 yards and two scores on 8 carries, and T.J. Yeldon had 88 yards and a score on 12 carries. Backup Derrick Henry even ran for an 80-yard touchdown in the final minutes, just because.
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After seven weeks, the idle Seminoles remain atop the SRS Ratings. New readers can read the background about the Simple Rating System here, but the SRS simply takes margin of victory for each team (with some minor tweaks to minimize running up the score and to give credit for close wins) and adjusts that differential for strength of schedule. The top three comprises the same teams as last week, but following a big win in Washington, Oregon leapfrogged Baylor into the number two spot. Quarterback Marcus Mariota now has 17 passing touchdowns, eight rushing touchdowns, and zero interceptions. Among players with at least 150 pass attempts, he leads college football in Adjusted Yards per Attempt, with presumptive number one pick in the 2014 Draft — Louisville’s Teddy Bridgewater — three tenths of a yard behind him. (If you lower the threshold to 100 attempts, both Bryce Petty (Baylor) and Jameis Winston (Florida State) would vault Mariota.)

The 4-5-6 spots are occupied by SEC teams, with newcomer Missouri sandwiched next to SEC stalwarts Alabama and LSU. Missouri was identified as a sleeper in last week’s ratings — the Tigers actually ranked ahead of Georgia entering that game — and then pulled off one of the weekend’s big upsets by winning in Athens. But with Mizzou, the other shoe never waits very long to drop: quarterback James Franklin was injured against Georgia, and is out at least six weeks with a separated shoulder. The Tigers have averaged 45.7 points per game this year, so Missouri is very much a team built around its dynamic offense. It’s hard to imagine Missouri beating both Florida and South Carolina the next two weeks, even with both games coming at home. On the other hand, if the Tigers can do that, there’s a good chance they’ll enter the final game of the regular season with an undefeated record. That game comes against Johnny Manziel and former Big XII rival Texas A&M. If they get to that game, we’re going to just have to assume that this 2013 is Jason Lisk’s year and we’re all just living in it. His Chiefs and Tigers are a combined 12-0 right now, and none of that makes any sense.

There were two other “big upsets” this week among ranked teams. Number five Stanford lost in Utah, in a game that wasn’t as surprising as you might think. Last week, Stanford was “only” 11th and Utah was 30th in the SRS; in fact, the Cardinal only drop to #13 in the SRS this week, while the Utes jump up to #21. The other big upset was in the Red River Shootout, in a game that was hard to see coming. Texas lost to #36 (in the SRS) Ole Miss by 21 points at home earlier this year, so who saw them winning in Dallas against Oklahoma on Saturday? Right now, Baylor is the only team in the top 20 in the SRS from the Big 12, although the Bears had their own struggles against #40 KSU in week seven.

The #7 team in the SRS is Clemson, and the Tigers host Florida State next week in a matchup of two teams ranked in the top five (albeit not in the SRS). That looks to be one of the best games of the year, and is where College Gameday will be in week eight. That’s an 8PM kickoff, so plan accordingly. And now, the week seven SRS ratings. As always, this is an ever-evolving picture, but after seven weeks, you can begin to feel pretty confident in these ratings. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter Wolfe for providing the final scores for every college football game.
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Last week, the Baylor Bears came in at number one in the first edition of the 2013 SRS Ratings. But the Bears ranked #1 on the strength of blowouts against bad teams; how would Baylor fare against West Virginia, who upset Oklahoma State just one week ago?

Art Briles’ squad raced out to a 56-14 lead, eventually won 73-42, and have cemented themselves as the new cool kids in town. But that doesn’t mean Baylor remained atop the SRS ratings. No, after Florida State and Jameis Winston dismantled Maryland, the Seminoles now rank number one:
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It’s still too early to put much faith in any computer ratings, but we can at least begin framing the discussion of which are the most impressive teams in college football. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter Wolfe for providing the final scores for every college football game. As a reminder, here’s the system for producing SRS ratings.

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.

After five weeks, what are the results? As usual, the table is fully searchable (type “-0”, for example, to see a list of undefeated teams, or SEC to see all SEC teams.) Right now, the number one team is Baylor, with an average (adjusted) Margin of Victory of 41.5 points per game against an average opponent that is 27.7 points better than average (average includes all football teams at all levels, so all FBS will have a positive grade). Among undefeated teams, no opponent has faced a tougher SOS than Alabama. Below shows all 125 FBS teams.
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Earlier today, I explained my methodology for coming up with college football ratings after three weeks. Here are the current ratings. These ratings are not capped for margin of victory (but do include a home field adjustment). That’s why Oregon tops Alabama (for now). These ratings exclude all FCS games except games where FBS teams lost to FCS teams, which are included (and all FCS teams are given a rating of -20). Here’s how to read the Alabama line. The Crimson Tide are ranked #2, and had a preseason rank (based on the Vegas point spreads) of #1. Alabam was considered 20.1 points better than average before the season; now they’re considered 21.4 points better than average, making them the top team in the SEC. Oregon jumped Alabama because the Ducks beat Virginia 59-10 and Tennessee 59-14.

To come up with the rankings, I placed a 50% weight on the preseason ratings and a 50% weight on the actual results. In a week or two, I’ll completely ignore the preseason ratings and calculate things the way I normally do. At that point, teams like Texas will really drop.

With three weeks in the books, it’s time to unveil some college football ratings. This is part one — I plan to post Part II on Sunday afternoon.

It’s still too early to create meaningful SRS ratings, but there’s a workaround solution. You may recall that back in the summer, I created implied college football SRS ratings based on the Las Vegas spreads for 247 games. Those spreads were stale, but thanks to RJ Bell, founder of Pregame.com, I was able to get the final pre-game lines for those 247 games. I used those lines to build implied pre-season SRS ratings for 83 FBS teams, shown below:

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The Simple Rating System is a set of computer rankings focused on only two variables: strength of schedule and margin of victory. I published weekly college football SRS ratings each week last season, and you can read more about the SRS there. Last month, Jason Lisk of the Big Lead took the Las Vegas point spread for each NFL game to come up with a set of power rankings; I stole Lisk’s idea and used the same point spreads to create implied SRS ratings for every NFL team. The idea is that if the 49ers are a 10.5-point neutral site favorite over the Jaguars, that’s one data point that implies that Las Vegas views San Francisco as 10.5 points better than Jacksonville. By taking every data point, and using Excel to iterate the ratings hundreds of times, you can create a set of implied team ratings.

Last week, the Golden Nugget released the point spreads for 248 college football games. By using the same process, those point spreads can help us determine the implied ratings that Las Vegas has assigned to each team.

We don’t have a full slate of games, but we do have at least 1 game for 83 different teams. Theoretically, this is different than using actual game results: one game can be enough to come up with Vegas’ implied rating for the team. That’s because once we’re confident in Oklahoma’s rating, Tulsa being 18-point underdogs in Norman gives us a good estimate for how Vegas views Tulsa. I assigned 3 points to the road team in each game in coming up with the implied SRS ratings. For example, Arizona is an 11-point favorite on the road against California. So for that game, we assume Vegas believes the Wildcats are 14 points better than the Golden Bears; if we do this for each of the other 247 games, and then iterate the results hundreds of times, we can come up with a set of power ratings.

Unsurprisingly, Alabama comes out as the highest-rated team. The Crimson Tide are being rated as 19.6 points better than “average,” although average isn’t really a concept with much meaning here. The SRS rating has little meaning in the abstract, but is useful to get a sense of the Crimson Tide’s rating relative to the rest of the teams. If Alabama is 10 points better in the SRS than a team, that means Alabama would be projected as a 10-point favorite on a neutral site. 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 point spread for that team, the “SOS” column shows the average rating of each team’s opponent (for only the number of games for which we have lines), and the “SRS” column shows the school’s SRS rating.
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I didn’t publish my college football SRS ratings last week, but with the conclusion of yesterday’s Army-Navy game, the college football regular season is over. But before we turn our attention to the Bowls, here is a look at the final regular season SRS ratings.

I’ve also updated the NCAA Games page, which displays every game in major college football this season.

The table below lists the Bowl matchups along with some SRS data squeezed in: the last four columns show the SRS rating of the favorite and the underdog, along with the difference between the two ratings (i.e., a projected point spread) and the average of the two ratings (essentially a ranking of how good the game is).
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We all know the big story of the weekend: Wake up the Echoes, Notre Dame is in the National Championship Game. While it may be trendy to rip the Fighting Irish, they earned their golden ticket to Miami. Notre Dame’s opponent will be the champion of the Southeastern Conference, decided next weekend when Alabama and Georgia meet in Atlanta. Let’s take a closer look at the SEC in 2012, which is looking for its seventh consecutive national championship.

For a long time, the refrain among SEC folks was “there are no off weeks in the SEC.” If no team emerged with a perfect record, that was simply a testament to the depth of the conference. But this year has to go down as one of the most predictable seasons in the history of the SEC — or any other conference. There are six excellent teams representing the First Class of the conference: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas A&M, LSU, and South Carolina.

There are four genuinely terrible teams: Auburn, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas are the cellar dwellers, or Lower Class members. That leaves a lean, two-tiered middle class. Vanderbilt stands alone as an upper-middle class member, with the three M schools of the conference (Mississippi, Missouri, and Mississippi State) are lower-middle class schools. As it turned out, there are caste systems with more mobility than the SEC had in 2012. With 14 teams playing 8 conference games each, that leaves 56 conference games for the SEC. Here is what happened:

• The First Class (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Texas A&M, LSU, and South Carolina) went 30-0 in games against the rest of the conference, with 21 of those wins coming by at least 14 points.
• The Upper Middle Class (Vanderbilt) was equally predictable, going 0-3 against the First Class and 5-0 against everyone else.
• The Lower Middle Class (MSU, Mississippi and Missouri) went 0-12 against the First Class, with 9 losses coming by at least 19 points. They also went 0-2 against the Upper Middle Class, but finished 8-0 against the Lower Class, with 6 of those wins coming by double digits.
• The Bottom Class (Auburn, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas) finished 0-26 against the rest of the conference, with 18 of those losses coming by double digits

As a result of how stratified the conference was, it’s hard not to recognize how much the schedule impacts the results. Only two teams in the conference played just two games against First Class teams. It is not a coincidence, in my opinion, that those two teams happen to be the ones that landed in Atlanta.

In the West, Alabama went 1-1 against the First Class, 3-0 against the Lower Middle Class, and 3-0 against the Bottom Class. That’s a really easy schedule for the Crimson Tide — their second-best win this year came against Michigan (or Mississippi or MSU, if you prefer). That’s somewhat laughable for the team that is considered the #2 team in the country. Meanwhile, LSU had four games against the First Class of the SEC, going 2-2 in those games in addition to a 2-0 record against the LMC and a 3-0 mark against the Bottom Class. Texas A&M went 1-2 against the First Class, 3-0 against the LMC, and 2-0 against the BC. Is Alabama the best team in the division, or just lucky that they didn’t face Florida the way LSU and AM did? To put it another way, if Florida wasn’t so good this year, A&M probably finishes 11-1 and wins the division on the tiebreaker.

In the East, Georgia went 1-1 against the First Class, 3-0 against the middle classes and 3-0 against the Bottom Class. Are the Bulldogs in line for a national title game appearance because they’re great, or are they great because they’re in line to play for the title? Georgia’s second-best win this season came against Vanderbilt. Meanwhile, Florida went 3-1 against the First Class, 2-0 against the middle classes and 2-0 against the Bottom Class. Which performance is more impressive?

Since the winner of the SEC Championship Game will end the season going 2-1 against the First Class of the conference, that does improve their resume. They’ll be a worthy participant in the title game, but it’s easy to argue that if the schedule had been arranged differently, so would have Texas A&M, Florida, LSU, or USC.

Here are the week 13 college football SRS Ratings:
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Your assumptions are no longer valid.

Kansas State entered the weekend as the most balanced team in college football. Through 11 weeks, Baylor ranked 120th in yards allowed and 118th in points allowed. But last night in Waco, the Wildcats were unable to do much of anything on offense. Collin Klein had never thrown more than one interception in a game in his career; he threw 3 against the Bears. Kansas State was averaging 213 rushing yards per game, but Baylor limited them to just 76 rushing yards. The Wildcats hadn’t allowed more than 30 points in a game this year; Baylor scored 52 points in the first three quarters and ended the game with 580 yards of offense. The most balanced and consistent team in the country was demolished by one of the most one-dimensional teams in college football.

At the same time, another surprise was happening in Eugene. If there was one thing we knew in 2012, it was that the Oregon offense was unstoppable. This has been the case for years — since Chip Kelly arrived in 2007, the Ducks had scored at least 24 points in every home game. Against Stanford, the Ducks were held to just 14 points in an overtime loss.

In their first years in the post-Andrew Luck and post-Robert Griffin III, the Stanford and Baylor programs dominated the college football headlines on the most important weekend of the season. For the first time in five years, the #1 and #2 teams in the BCS fell on the same day, rendering all of our national championship game assumptions moot.

This much is clear: if Notre Dame defeats USC at the Coliseum on Saturday, the Fighting Irish are going to the BCS National Championship Game. The winner of the SEC Championship Game is going there as well, barring an upset by Georgia Tech in Athens this weekend. ^[1]No, we’re not getting into hypotheticals that involve Auburn beating Alabama. I maintain that Georgia is far less deserving of its spot in Atlanta than Florida, who has the most impressive trio of wins this year by defeating LSU, Texas A&M, and South Carolina. Georgia lost to South Carolina but beat Florida, which gave them the tiebreaker and the division crown. But the real key for Bulldogs was that they faced Mississippi and Auburn in the West, not LSU and A&M; as a result, they are the SEC East Champions.

But now is the time for more relevant debates. Assuming an upset — either by USC, or by Georgia Tech coupled with a Georgia upset against Alabama — who is next in line? At that point, four teams will have legitimate claims for the other golden ticket: Florida, Florida State, Oregon, and Kansas State. Fortunately, the Gators and Seminoles play each other on Saturday, which would leaves us with just three promising candidates.

If they defeat Florida State, Florida is the clear “next team up” following a slip-up by Notre Dame or in the event of a two-loss SEC Champ. The computers would love them due to their strength of schedule, and the voters should love them for the same reason and the bump they would get for defeating Florida State.

If FSU wins, their case is much weaker. The computers hate them, and for good reason: they haven’t beaten any good teams. Defeating the Gators would give them a big bump, and they’ll get a chance to beat mediocre team in the ACC Championship Game, but consider: Outside of 10-1 Clemson, each of FSU’s other 9 victories have come against ACC, Big East, or FCS schools that have at least 5 losses. And how good is Clemson? Yes, they have a nice record, but their 10 wins have come against Ball State (#64 in the SRS), and ACC, SEC, or FCS teams with at least five losses.

According to the SRS, North Carolina is the 3rd best team in the conference and they rank 45th. FSU lost to a bad N.C. State team, while while Oregon (in particular) and Kansas State have much more palatable losses. FSU’s argument would be two parts “we lost earliest” and one part “we beat Florida and Clemson, even if Clemson hasn’t beaten anybody.” Florida State’s overall strength of schedule is far inferior to that both Oregon’s and Kansas State’s. In my opinion, even with a win over Florida, the Seminoles likely do not jump both Oregon and Kansas State in the BCS, nor should they.

And consider: if Stanford defeats UCLA this weekend, the Cardinal — and not Oregon — would win the Pac-12 North, which would deal a significant blow to Nike University. Kansas State still needs to get by Texas, but tonight might not end up being a season killer. At this point, they need to root for USC and Florida State, which is historically not a bad position to be in. My guess is Kansas State is next in line after an undefeated Notre Dame, a one-loss SEC Champ, and a one-loss Florida team. It’s possible only one of those three exist by the end of the season.

Let’s take a look at the SRS ratings after 11 weeks. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe. [continue reading…]

For the second straight season, the game of the year took place in Tuscaloosa. A week after Alabama eeked out a victory over LSU, and 53 weeks after Alabama loss to LSU in last year’s “Game of the Century”, Johnny Manziel produced one of the performances of the season in leading Texas A&M to an incredible upset victory. I have been a believer in the Aggies — they ranked 4th in my SRS ratings last week and remain there this week — but make no mistake, this was still an incredible upset. For a true freshman, on the road, against a Nick Saban defense, to go 24/31 for 253 yards and 2 TDs and to run 18 times for 92 yards is outstanding.

For now, the upset means we’re likely headed towards an SEC-free national championship game. This will anger some in the South, so I’ll take this time to remind you that the SEC’s record this year against the other BCS conferences is an incredibly dominant 4-5. Yes, the SEC has a losing record against the other top conferences in college football in 2011.

The bottom of the SEC has struggled considerably both in and out of conference — Auburn lost to Clemson, Vanderbilt to Northwestern, Kentucky to Louisville (and also to Western Kentucky), Ole Miss to Texas, and Arkansas to Rutgers (and also Louisiana-Lafayette). The positive side of the ledger isn’t all that impressive, unfortunately. Sure, Tennessee beat N.C. State, which would be impressive if not for the fact that the Wolfpack are 68th in the SRS. Yes, LSU beat Washington at home, but it’s LSU against the 8th best team in the Pac-12. Missouri over Arizona State and Alabama over Michigan are basically the two nonconference games the SEC can hang its hat on.

If Oregon wins out, they seem assured of getting one of the two golden tickets to Miami. Who will get the other? Obviously an undefeated Kansas State or Notre Dame would take one of the other spots. For now, K-State is ahead in the polls and the BCS standings, and gets the benefit of playing a streaking Texas team after the Fighting Irish have hung up their cleats for the year. According to the BCS Guru, Notre Dame is the clear third wheel.

But what if both Kansas State and Notre Dame lose? At that point, a one-loss SEC Champ — presumably Alabama — likely rises to number two. To that end, Alabama’s biggest friend right now is Lane Kiffin, who could knock off both Oregon and Notre Dame if USC wins out, setting up a Kansas State-Alabama title game.

And with that, a look college football’s SRS ratings after 11 weeks:
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There were close calls in Baton Rouge and in South Bend, but all six undefeated teams escaped week 10 without a blemish. Ohio State is now the first team to win 10 games in 2012, although the Buckeyes are not eligible to participate in postseason play. Louisville ran its record to 9-0 yesterday, with winnable games against Syracuse and Connecticut before a season-defining finale in Piscataway on November 29th.

However, the eyes of the country are now focused on Notre Dame, Kansas State, Oregon, and Alabama. Last weekend, I said there was only a 10% chance that Oregon, Kansas State, and Notre Dame would finish the season undefeated. That was with 13 games left for those teams to win; now those odds are close to 17%. Kansas State has the easiest remaining path, although all three of its remaining opponents have realistic chances of pulling an upset. Oregon has a relatively easy game against Cal this week while Notre Dame shouldn’t have any problem with Boston College.

Alabama has another tough challenge this week in Texas A&M, although it is hard to imagine college football’s most inconsistent team of the last two years winning a close match-up against the country’s most consistent and brutal opponent. If Alabama can defeat the Aggies this weekend, a perfect regular season is all but assured, with the Crimson Tide’s final two games coming against Western Carolina (SRS of 11.6) and Auburn (37.6). The Iron Bowl this year should be more coronation than battle, which leaves just Texas A&M and Georgia — the likely opponent in the SEC Championship Game — as the two remaining hurdles for Alabama to clear.

Here are the week 10 SRS ratings: [continue reading…]

Oregon’s offense is ridiculous, and its defense and special teams aren’t far behind. Entering this weekend, Oregon had outscored opponents 234-46 … in the first half. Prior to their game against Colorado, Bill Connelly ranked Oregon as the third best defense in college football. Against the horrible Buffaloes, the Ducks didn’t disappoint.

Oregon jumped out to a 28-0 lead after the first quarter, and led 56-0 by halftime. Backup quarterback Bryan Bennett led the team with three touchdowns in the 70-14 rout. De’Anthony Thomas rushed for 97 yards on five carries and scored on a 73-yard punt return. Kenjon Barner had 9 carries for 104 yards and 2 touchdowns, and if not for the one-yard score, would have averaged 12.9 yards per carry; he also caught a 48-yard pass.

For the Ducks, this was a going-through-the-motions victory against a very overmatched opponent. Soon, though, we’ll find out a little more about the Ducks. On Saturday, they go to Los Angeles to face a talented but inconsistent USC team. And while California isn’t a serious threat, the Ducks close with games against Stanford and Oregon State, who may at least be able to slow down the mighty Ducks offense. For now, though, Oregon looks like the one hope to make for an exciting BCS National Championship Game.

We can assume Alabama will take one spot, with Oregon, Kansas State and Notre Dame battling for the other golden ticket. The odds of another all-SEC title game dropped with the Florida loss to Georgia. That’s because the Bulldogs now have the inside track on winning the SEC East, with a head-to-head victory over Florida. South Carolina beat Georgia, but UGA will essentially win the division due to luck of the draw. South Carolina drew Arkansas and LSU in Baton Rouge from the SEC West this year, while Georgia gets to play Ole Miss and Auburn — their final two conference opponents. Assuming the Bulldogs can take care of business against Ole Miss next week, their ticket to Atlanta should be secure. Considering Florida could have boosted their SOS against Florida State — and also faced and defeated LSU — replacing Florida with Georgia as the SEC East champion lowers the odds of that division sending a team to Miami.

Without further ado, below are the week 9 SRS ratings. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for publishing his game results.
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I didn’t think this was possible.

In 2009, Alabama had an incredible defense, ranking 1st or 2nd in points allowed, yards allowed, first downs allowed, completion percentage allowed and rushing yards allowed en route to a 14-0 season and a national title. In the 2010 draft, Rolando McClain and Kareem Jackson went in the first round, Javier Arenas and Terrence Cody in the second, and Marquis Johnson and Brandon Deaderick in the seventh. In 2010, a young Alabama defense wildly exceeded all expectations — how could they lose so much talent and still dominate? — but the team did regress and finished the year 10-3.

Last year, as the younger defense matured, Alabama had one of the greatest defenses in the history of college football. The Crimson Tide allowed a miniscule 8.2 points per game, by far the fewest in college football. Alabama’s defense also ranked 1st by large margins in rushing yards per game, passing yards per game, and first downs per game. But then Mark Barron, Dre Kirkpatrick, Dont’a Hightower, and Courtney Upshaw were top 35 picks in the NFL draft this year, while cornerback DeQuan Menzie and defensive tackle Josh Chapman were fifth round picks. With six defensive starters for the Crimson Tide getting drafted in 2012 — including five members of the first- or second-team All-SEC defense from 2011 ^[1]Upshaw and Barron were All-SEC first team selections by the AP, and Chapman, Hightower and Kirkpatrick earned second-team honors. — 2012 should have represented a significant step backwards for what was a historically dominant defense.

But the Crimson Tide death star is at full throttle now. After winning on the road at Tennessee and sucking the life out of another offense — and the Vols have one of the most explosive offenses in the SEC — Alabama continues to look invincible. While every other team in college football has question marks, Alabama has allowed just 8.3 points per game this year and has a mercilessly efficient offense. Quarterback A.J. McCarron still hasn’t thrown an interception in 2012.

Here’s a look at the SRS ratings after eight weeks. As a technical matter, two 7-0 teams square off in Tuscaloosa next week. But according to the SRS, Alabama should be expected to win by about 24 points.

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Last year, the computers loved the Big 12. The first BCS Standings will be released tonight, and I suspect the B12 will again be viewed favorably by the computers. As a whole, B12 teams have just three nonconference losses, and two of them were by Kansas (to Rice and Northern Illinois). As long as the other nine teams in the conference keep crushing the Jayhawks, those losses won’t matter. The other loss came by Oklahoma State in Arizona, which looks bad in retrospect but again the damage may be limited. With the exception of a blowout over Lousiana-Lafayette, OSU simply hasn’t looked good this season, falling short of a single-game SRS score of 50 in every other game. Yesterday, OSU won by just six points in Manhattan. For the purposes of Kansas State, Oklahoma, Texas Tech and West Virginia, as long as they also beat down on Oklahoma State (and Texas has already handed them one conference loss), I suspect the computers will continue to love them. And for purposes of the BCS computers, a win over the Cowboys is all they will need (as margin of victory is not included).

On the other side, the conference doesn’t really have any landmark victories, either. Mississippi (via Texas), Louisiana-Monroe (Baylor), Tulsa and Iowa (Iowa State), and Miami (Kansas State) are the most impressive heads hanging in the conference’s living room. We might not learn a lot about the Big 12 conference teams as they relate to the rest of college football — the 10 teams have already played 29 of their 30 nonconference games this season. Fortunately for us, that last remaining game is in two weeks, when Notre Dame travels to Oklahoma. If the Sooners win that game, the computers will likely love the Big 12 for the rest of the season.

Below are the SRS Ratings after seven weeks. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter Wolfe.
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For the last couple of weeks, I noted that the SEC East was inching its way back towards respectability. In 2009, the West went 12-7 against the East; in 2010, the dominance was much more pronounced, with the West going 16-3, and Ole Miss being responsible for two of the three losses. Last year, the SEC West went 13-6 against the East, with Ole Miss and MSU being responsible for five of the losses. In all three years, the West was the clear dominant division: any uncertainly was eliminated in the SEC Championship Game, as the West won the three games by a combined 130-40.

But with Florida’s victory over LSU this weekend, the plate tectonics in the Southeastern Conference appear to have shifted. The Gators also beat Texas A&M, leaving the East Division 2-1 so far this season against the mighty West, with Mississippi State’s win over Kentucky being the West’s first interdivision win of 2012. But more importantly, according to the SRS, three of the best five teams in the conference reside in the East, along with two of the three highest ranked teams in all the polls. The two worst teams have been Auburn and Arkansas, both West members. Alabama may be the class of the conference, but we may not find out much more until the SEC Championship Game. In 2012, the Crimson Tide only face Tennessee and Missouri from the East, which may make it difficult to judge the conference’s elite until December. Florida already won both of its two interdivision games, leaving South Carolina’s trip to LSU being perhaps the last referendum on the top of the two divisions until the championship game (USC’s other East opponent is Arkansas).

Anyway, here are the SRS Ratings after six weeks. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter Wolfe.
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Like everyone else, the SRS now has Alabama atop its standings. Here are the full SRS ratings after five weeks ^[1]Note that I called the Oregon-Washington State game when Oregon was up 51-19 late in the 4th quarter.

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It’s still too early to really put a lot of faith into the SRS ratings, but hey, we’ve got enough games to at least give it the old college try. As always, thanks to Dr. Peter Wolfe for providing the game scores for all of college football. As a reminder, here’s the system.

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 scored as however many points the team won by. So 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 three 4-point home wins (+3 before the adjustments, +21 after) is worth more than two 10 point road wins and a 1 point home loss (+19 before, +19 after). The one exception is that road losses of 3 or fewer and home wins of 3 or fewer are graded as 0 point ties. So a 21-20 home victory goes down as a tie 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 67-point home win goes down as a 44-point win.

After four weeks, what are the results?

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As a guy who loves the Simple Rating System, the start of the college football season can be frustrating. Until we get a few weeks in, we can’t really use the Simple Rating System to analyze results. A similar problem affects all computer rating systems. Jeff Sagarin notes in his rankings that that for the first few weeks of the season — until the teams are “well connected” — he uses a starting weight to help match the results to our expectations. By “well connected” Sagarin simply means we need the teams to play each other more frequently so we can have more confidence in our results.

So while it’s fun to watch the games, part of me is disappointed that I can’t run all the teams through the simple rating system. If only we could double the sample size of the games played — after six weeks, teams are fairly well connected — we’d be in business.

Well, I thought of a cheat to do just that. Each game has a point spread, a quantitative expectation of how each team will perform according to the best minds in the betting community. So when Florida plays Tennessee, there are two games that are happening. One is the result of the actual game, Florida winning by 17. The other is what we expected to happen, which is Tennessee winning by 3.

It might seem odd to use projected results as inputs into the SRS. And maybe it is. But why not? It’s similar in ways to using preseason projections, and I generally have faith in the betting community. Plus, what else I am supposed to do until a few more weeks.

So here’s what I did. I took every game where the point spread was less than 35 points (under the assumption that games with ridiculous betting lines or that don’t even have a line are just tune ups) and counted it twice. Once for the actual results, and once for the point spread.

Washington, for example, has played 3 games this year. They played San Diego State, were favored by 15, and won by 9 points. They played LSU, were 22.5 point underdogs, and lost by 38 points. And they played Portland State, were 32-point favorites, and won by 39 points. As a result, in six “games” this year, Washington won by an average of 5.8 points. Their strength of schedule was pretty tough, too — iterated, of course — so they will fare pretty well. How does the rest of college football look?
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The last few years, first at the PFR Blog and later at Smart Football, I’ve tracked the college football season with a modified version of the Simple Rating System. The SRS thrives on interconnectivity — we need each of the teams to play each of the other teams as many times as possible. You can’t create a predictive version of the SRS until after several weeks of results: an objective strength of schedule can’t be created until the system seems how teams perform against multiple teams.

But we can see how teams performed in week 1 compared to expectations, by comparing the actual results to what the SRS would have predicted if the same teams had instead met at the end of the 2011 regular season. For example, the 2011 Pittsburgh Panthers had an SRS of 39.9, while the 2011 Youngstown State Penguins — an FCS team but a very good one — had an SRS of 28.0. With YSU heading to Pittsburgh, we would project Pittsburgh to win by 14.9 points, factoring in three points for home field.

As it turns out, the Penguins beat the Panthers by 14 points, meaning YSU surpassed “expectations” by 28.9 points. At least according to this unusual definition of expectations. But that wasn’t the biggest upset of the weekend, and not just because Pittsburgh was mediocre last year. In 2011, YSU handed eventual FCS National Champion North Dakota State their only loss of the season — in Fargo — last November. No, the biggest upset of the weekend came at the expense of the 13th best team in the SRS last year…. to a team playing its first game at the FBS level.

You may recall that the Houston Cougars started last season 12-0, and were in the running for a BCS Bowl berth before losing in the Conference USA Championship Game to Southern Mississippi. Since then, Cougars coach Kevin Sumlin jumped to Texas A&M while star quarterback Case Keenum finally exhausted his eligibility. Regression was expected — assumed, even — but to see the Cougars lose to Texas State was astonishing. Texas State plays in San Marco, Texas, located roughly halfway between San Antonio and Austin, and joined college football’s highest ranks this season. The Texas State Bobcats were an FCS school last year and went 6-6; against their only non-FCS opponents in 2011, the Bobcasts lost 50-10 to Texas Tech and 45-10 to Wyoming. And coming into the game, Texas State was a 34.5 point underdog. Update: This morning, Houston offensive coordinator Mike Nesbitt “resigned”, and head coach Tony Levine announced that Travis Bush will now handle the play-calling duties.

Here were the biggest “upsets” of week 1 according to the 2011 SRS. The final column shows the difference between the actual results and the expected score:

Team	PF	Opp	PA	Loc	TmConf	OppConf	EXP MOV	Diff
Texas St-San Marcos	30	Houston	13	Road	WAC	CUS	-40.2	57.2
Youngstown St	31	Pittsburgh	17	Road	fcs	BgE	-14.9	28.9
Ohio U.	24	Penn State	14	Road	MAC	B10	-12.1	22.1
Duke	46	Florida Int'l	26	Home	ACC	Sun	-1.5	21.5
Eastern Washington	20	Idaho	3	Road	fcs	WAC	-0.2	17.2
Nevada	31	California	24	Road	MWC	P12	-8.3	15.3
Colorado St	22	Colorado	17	Denver CO	MWC	P12	-6.4	11.4
Troy	39	Alabama-Birmingham	29	Road	Sun	CUS	-0.2	10.2
Arizona	24	Toledo	17	Home	P12	MAC	-2.8	9.8
McNeese St	27	Middle Tennessee St	21	Road	fcs	Sun	-3.8	9.8
Texas-San Antonio	33	South Alabama	31	Road	WAC	Sun	-4.7	6.7
Michigan St	17	Boise St	13	Home	B10	MWC	-1.7	5.7

Again, obviously not all of these were upsets. Boise State was expected to decline following the loss of Kellen Moore and a stellar senior class, and actually covered the spread in their loss to Michigan State. But this helps to at least give a hint of what were some possible upsets. The Pac-12 only went 2-2 in their games against the Mountain West this weekend, as Colorado and California came out flat against Colorado State and Nevada. In addition to McNeese State’s victory over MTSU, there was a 4th victory by an FCS school over an FBS team: but it doesn’t register as an upset on the SRS meter. Tennessee-Martin defeated Memphis 20-17 on a field goal in the final seconds; while UT-Martin was a 9.5 point underdog according to Las Vegas, they actually finished 6 points higher than Memphis in the SRS last year.

Impressive wins by Favorites

We can use the same formula to look at the most impressive wins by the SRS favorites in FBS games. Subjectively, it’s hard to top what Alabama did to Michigan on Saturday Night; if it’s possible for the #1 or #2 team in the country to look better than we thought, the Crimson Tide did just that this weekend. But looking at simple arithmetic…

Team	PF	Opp	PA	Loc	TmConf	OppConf	EXP MOV	Diff
Ohio State	56	Miami OH	10	Home	B10	MAC	15.4	30.6
Notre Dame	50	Navy	10	Dublin Ireland	IND	IND	14.2	25.8
Nebraska	49	Southern Miss	20	Home	B10	CUS	6.6	22.4
Central Florida	56	Akron	14	Road	CUS	MAC	21.6	20.4
UCLA	49	Rice	24	Road	P12	CUS	6.6	18.4
Alabama	41	Michigan	14	Arlington TX	SEC	B10	8.8	18.2
West Virginia	69	Marshall	34	Home	B12	CUS	17.3	17.7
Connecticut	37	Massachusetts	0	Home	BgE	MAC	20.2	16.8
Baylor	59	SMU	24	Home	B12	CUS	19.7	15.3
Brigham Young	30	Washington St	6	Home	IND	P12	9.5	14.5
Iowa St	38	Tulsa	23	Home	B12	CUS	0.5	14.5
Southern Cal	49	Hawai`i	10	Home	P12	MWC	26.1	12.9
Illinois	24	Western Michigan	7	Home	B10	MAC	6.3	10.7

Urban Meyer’s debut was about as good as he could have hoped, thumping a Miami of Ohio team that was solid in 2011. Notre Dame, excellent at disappointing its fan base, destroyed Navy in Saturday’s early game in Dublin. Nebraska’s Taylor Martinez had perhaps the best passing game of his career over Southern Miss, who is replacing head coach Larry Fedora (now in North Carolina). Baylor was only a 7-point favorite against SMU in its first game After RGIII; based on their success last year, the SRS projected Baylor as a 20-point favorite. Still, the Bears blew out Southern Methodist 59-24, in an effort to prove that they weren’t a one-man program. Not every school was as fortunate…

Honorable Mentions

San Jose State, a projected 32-point loser in Palo Alto, nearly pulled off a huge upset in Stanford’s first game After Luck. The Cardinal needed a last second fourth-quarter field goal to win, 20-17. Northern Iowa, a 25-point projected loser to Wisconsin, lost 26-21, a sign that the Panthers should be in for a good year. Maryland needed a 4th quarter touchdown to defeat William & Mary, 7-6, despite being a projected 15.5 point winner. In other depressing ACC news, Wake Forest got a scare from Liberty — a team they were projected to beat by 16.7 points — but won 20-17.