College Football: Auburn Falls To No. 2, So Who's the New No. 1?

Another crazy week in college football!  An interesting idea was passed along to me recently and that was to take the average score instead of the cumulative score.  This results in teams not having an advantage for playing more games than another.  Being that it is an easy change, I put it in this week!  I think the results are better overall, tell me what you think!

	Team	W-L	Last Week	Last Game	Quality Wins	Losses
25.	South Carolina	6-2	20	W vs. Tennessee	None	@Kentucky @Auburn
24.	North Carolina State	6-2	--	W vs. Florida State	@Georgia Tech	@Virginia Tech @East Carolina
23.	Texas	4-4	15	L vs. Baylor	@Nebraska	UCLA Iowa St Oklahoma (N) Baylor
22.	USC	5-3	22	L vs. Oregon	@Hawaii	Washington @Stanford Oregon
21.	Ohio St	8-1	14	W @ Minnesota	@Illinois	@Wisconsin
20.	Baylor	7-2	23	W @ Texas	None	@Texas Tech @TCU
19.	Arizona	7-1	--	W @ UCLA	None	Oregon St
18.	Michigan St	8-1	6	L @ Iowa	None	@Iowa
17.	Arkansas	6-2	13	W vs. Vanderbilt	@Georgia @Texas A&M	Alabama, @Auburn
16.	Stanford	7-1	21	W @ Washington	@Washington	@Oregon
15.	Oklahoma	6-1	12	W vs. Colorado	None	@Missouri
14.	Hawaii	7-2	5	W @ Idaho	@Army	USC @Colorado
13.	Utah	8-0	19	W @ Air Force	@Iowa St	None
12.	Mississippi State	7-2	10	W vs. Kentucky	@Florida	Auburn @LSU
11.	TCU	9-0	11	W @ UNLV	None	None
10.	Oregon St	4-3	--	W vs. Cal	@Arizona	@TCU @Boise St @Washington
9.	Alabama	7-1	8	BYE	@Arkansas	@South Carolina
8.	Wisconsin	7-1	7	BYE	@Iowa	@Michigan St
7.	Oklahoma State	7-1	16	W @ Kansas State	@Kansas St	Nebraska
6.	LSU	7-1	3	BYE	@Florida	@Auburn
5.	Boise St	7-0	9	W vs. Louisiana Tech	@Virginia Tech	None
4.	Missouri	7-1	4	L @ Nebraska	@Texas A&M Oklahoma	@Nebraska
3.	Oregon	8-0	17	W @ USC	@Arizona St @USC	None
2.	Auburn	8-0	1	W @ Mississippi	@Mississippi State	None
1.	Nebraska	7-1	2	W vs. Missouri	@Washington @Kansas St @Oklahoma State Missouri	Texas

My college football playoff preference:

The detractors of a playoff indicate that the reasons they don’t like a playoff is that there would be too many games included in the season, and it would be hard to transport as many people as would be needed to each and every neutral site game.  So to solve this, the playoff needs to let a minimum number of teams in as possible, and only have a few of the games be at a neutral site game. My thoughts are: Make it like the NIT tournament, each of the higher seeded teams get home games until the final four.  Also, in order to give everyone a chance, have only conference champions invited.  That gives us 11 teams, and in order to make it an even number, I’m okay with one “wild card”.  I’ve been told that a lot of people want 16.  So given that, let’s take the Current Standings and choose our 16 schools.

 ACC—Virginia Tech

Big XII—Baylor

Big East—Pittsburgh

Big Ten—Michigan St

C-USA—UCF 

MAC—Northern Illinois

MWC—TCU

Pac-10—Oregon

SEC—Auburn

Sun Belt—Troy

WAC—Hawaii

Wild Card—Boise St

Wild Card—Utah

Wild Card—Alabama

Wild Card—Nebraska

Wild Card—Oklahoma

 Taking these 16 schools, I’d then seed them by conference strength.

1. Baylor
2. Auburn
3. Oregon
4. Michigan St
5. Virginia Tech
6. Hawaii
7. TCU
8. UCF
9. Pittsburgh
10. Troy
11. Northern Illinois
12. Boise St
13. Utah
14. Alabama
15. Nebraska
16. Oklahoma

In this scenario, the first round of games would be (I have road teams winning in bold):

Oklahoma Baylor	Nebraska Auburn	Alabama Oregon	Utah Michigan St
Boise St Virginia Tech	Northern Illinois Hawaii	Troy TCU	Pittsburgh UCF

 I’d take the worst teams and send them the best teams like the NFL.  The next round (again winning road teams in bold):

Boise St Baylor

UCF Auburn

TCU Oregon

Hawaii Michigan St

That would leave us with a Final Four Saturday-Sunday Contests in a Neutral Site to be: 

Boise St Auburn

Michigan St Oregon

With a Final of:

Oregon Auburn

Playoff Dreams are fun, too bad you have to wake up.

Predictions for Week 10

Locks (3-0)

Auburn over Chattanooga

Michigan St over Minnesota

Wisconsin over Purdue

Great Games (Average Margin of Victor out of 4 games: 9)

Georgia Tech @ Virginia Tech

TCU @ Utah

Arkansas @ South Carolina

Upsets (if any) (1-1)

Georgia Tech over Virginia Tech

Utah over TCU

LSU over Alabama 

How the SRS is created:

First, the easy one: The whole point of me starting a ranking system 15 years ago was to remove any and all bias (that’s what they all say). The only teams I might have any sort of bias towards are the small Boise States of the world (no, I don’t have them No. 1) or my favorite team, Fresno State (not ranked). 

I’ve tried to come up with the rationale that every sports announcer I’ve ever heard brings up: Conference rankings (check), Road vs. Away (check), and who did you play (double-check).

As I said before, I’ve been doing this privately for over 15 years, and every year there have been slight changes to it. Usually by the end of the season, I see more improvements I can make, and I do that for the following season. By no stretch is it perfect, but I think it’s getting there.

So what are the specifics? It starts by generating a ranking for each conference. This is done by generating a win-loss record for each conference against the other conferences. For the purpose of this system, I consider each division a conference (for example, the SEC West is a conference—so are the independents).

This is modified by determining who those wins are against. For example, the Big Ten loses some of its power by scheduling lots of MAC teams. I take the total and divide it by how many teams are in the conference to normalize the value, and then take a ranking of that value.

As of Oct. 31, 2010, the conference rankings are as follows, with last week’s ranking in parenthesis:

17. MAC East (17)

16. MAC West (16)

15. Sun Belt (15)

14. C-USA East (14)

13. Big East (13)

12. C-USA West (12)

11. MWC (11)

10. WAC (10)

9.   ACC Coastal (8)

8.   ACC Atlantic (9)

7.   SEC East (7)

6.   Independents (4)

5.   Big Ten (5)

4.   Pac-10 (6)

3.   Big 12 North (3)

2.   SEC West (1)

1.   Big 12 South (2)

After determining the conference rankings, I generate values that a team would receive for playing another team. Values are generated for a Home Win, a Home Loss, a Road Win, and a Road Loss.

Each of the values is derived from the Home Win, which is formed by taking the team's place in the conference (first, second, third, etc.), inverting it so more points are awarded for beating the team, and multiplying it by the inversed conference ranking. This is then normalized again for the number of teams in the conference.

For example, if the first place team in the first place conference is Alabama, and Arkansas beats Alabama, they will earn 102 points. This is because Alabama was in first place (inversed = 7 multiplied by inversed conference ranking = 17, 7 * 17 = 102). 

Losses are similar, though there is no inverting. Thus an Arkansas loss will only cause them to lose two points (Place in Conference = 1, Conference Rank = 1, 1 * 1 = 1). I added an additional modifier of two if you are lost at home, so 1 * 2 = 2. A Road Win is the same as a home win, except the value is multiplied by two, and a Road Loss takes the Home Loss and divides it by two.