SRS Has a New Leader! Nebraska Falls To No. 3; TCU No. 8 and BSU No. 13

Boise State absolutely killed Fresno State.  As a Fresno State fan, I was hoping we’d keep it within 30, but Boise State is just that good.  They might beat Nevada by 30. 

The national championship game looks like it’s going to be between two of three teams—Auburn, Oregon and Boise State.  I think Boise State and TCU will win their remaining games, however Boise State has Nevada as one of its last two remaining games, while TCU has New Mexico. 

That should be enough to allow Boise State into the top three.  I think Oregon will win out as well, so that leaves us with Auburn.  Will they be able to beat Alabama?  If they don’t, will a loss plus a win against South Carolina knock Boise State out?  If they lose the SEC championship as well, what will happen then?  

SRS has Auburn squeaking out a win against Alabama and beating South Carolina, so the only thing preventing a Auburn-Oregon matchup is Cam Newton’s status.  It’s a little frustrating for a great Boise State team, but going into every season, every small school knows it has to have no more than one undefeated big school in order to get a shot at something like this, and unfortunately for Boise State, it looks like there will be two undefeated big schools out there.

I had a lively debate with a Husker fan about whether teams like Colorado should be worth as many points as they are, and whether Ohio State should be higher in the rankings.  I think this is bias that creeps into every ranking system. 

Ohio State is almost always good, ergo, they are good today.  If you look at Ohio State’s schedule this year, their best win (up until the Iowa game) was at Illinois.  If you think that this should vault them into the top 10, then you are showing your bias. 

Another part that was discussed was whether the Big 12 South was better than the SEC West.  There are a couple of ways to look at this.  One is to look at record outside your conference.  Here, the SEC West wins easily. 

However, if you look at who they played out of conference, the Big 12 South actually played tougher opponents on average.  Sure they lost more, but playing a bunch of Sun Belt teams shouldn’t make you an all-world conference.  Anyway, all should be well now as we look at the conference rankings…

As of Nov. 21, 2010, the conference rankings are as follows, with last week’s ranking in parenthesis and conferences/divisions in bold if they’ve changed from last week:

17. MAC East (17)

16. MAC West (16)

15. C-USA East (14) 

14. Sun Belt (15) 

13. C-USA West (13)

12. Big East (12)

11. WAC (10)

10. MWC (11) 

9.   ACC Coastal (9)

8.   Pac-10 (8)

7.   Big Ten (6) 

6.   Independents (5)

5.   ACC Atlantic (7)

4.   SEC East (4)

3.   Big 12 North (3)

2.   Big 12 South (1) 

1.   SEC West (2)

	Team	W-L	Last Week	Last Game	Quality Wins	Losses
25.	Texas Tech	(6-5)	23	W vs. FCS	@Colorado @Missouri	Texas @Iowa St Oklahoma St @Texas A&M @Oklahoma
24.	Florida	(7-4)	18	W vs. FCS	None	@Alabama LSU Mississippi St South Carolina
23.	North Carolina St	(8-3)	--	W @ North Carolina	@Georgia Tech Florida St	Virginia Tech @East Carolina @Clemson
22.	Florida St	(8-3)	--	W @ Maryland	@Miami (FL) @Maryland	@Oklahoma @North Carolina St North Carolina
21.	Baylor	(7-5)	20	L vs. Oklahoma	@Colorado @Texas	@Texas Tech @TCU @Oklahoma State Texas A&M Oklahoma
20.	Nevada	(10-1)	19	W vs. New Mexico St	None	@Hawaii
19.	Miami (FL)	(7-4)	22	L vs. Virginia Tech	@Pittsburgh @Clemson @Georgia Tech	@Ohio St Florida St @Virginia Virginia Tech
18.	Michigan St	(10-1)	11	W vs. Purdue	None	@Iowa
17.	Mississippi State	(7-4)	13	L vs. Arkansas	@Florida	Auburn @LSU @Alabama Arkansas
16.	Ohio St	(10-1)	24	W @ Iowa	@Illinois @Iowa	@Wisconsin
15.	Wisconsin	(10-1)	15	W @ Michigan	@Iowa	@Michigan St
14.	Texas A&M	(8-3)	17	W vs. Nebraska	Oklahoma Nebraska	@Oklahoma St Arkansas Missouri
13.	Boise St	(10-0)	10	W vs. Fresno State	@Virginia Tech	None
12.	Oregon	(10-0)	9	BYE	@USC	None
11.	South Carolina	(8-3)	7	W vs. Troy	Alabama @Florida	@Auburn @Kentucky Arkansas
10.	Alabama	(9-2)	8	W vs. FCS	@Arkansas Florida	@South Carolina @LSU
9.	Stanford	(9-1)	16	W @ Cal	@Notre Dame	@Oregon
8.	TCU	(11-0)	12	BYE	@Utah	None
7.	Oklahoma	(9-2)	14	W @ Baylor	Florida St (N) Texas	@Missouri @Texas A&M
6.	Missouri	(9-2)	4	W @ Iowa St	@Texas A&M Oklahoma	@Nebraska @Texas Tech
5.	LSU	(10-1)	6	W vs. Mississippi	@Florida Alabama	@Auburn
4.	Oklahoma State	(10-1)	5	W @ Kansas	Texas A&M @Kansas St @Texas	Nebraska
3.	Nebraska	(9-2)	1	L @ Texas A&M	@Kansas St @Oklahoma State Missouri	Texas @Texas A&M
2.	Auburn	(11-0)	3	BYE	@Mississippi St South Carolina @Kentucky LSU @Mississippi	None
1.	Arkansas	(9-2)	2	W @ South Carolina	@Georgia @Texas A&M @South Carolina @Mississippi St	Alabama @Auburn

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—Oklahoma St

Big East—Pittsburgh

Big Ten—Wisconsin 

C-USA—UCF 

MAC—Northern Illinois

MWC—TCU

Pac-10—Oregon

SEC—Auburn

Sun Belt—Florida International 

WAC—Boise St

Wild Card—LSU

Wild Card—Stanford

Wild Card—Ohio St 

Wild Card—Michigan St

Wild Card—Alabama

Taking these 16 schools, I’d then seed them by conference strength (Using ESPN’s Conference Rankings).

1. Auburn
2. Oklahoma St
3. Oregon
4. Wisconsin
5. Boise St
6. TCU
7. Virginia Tech
8. Pittsburgh
9. UCF
10. Northern Illinois
11. Florida International
12. LSU
13. Stanford
14. Ohio St
15. Michigan St
16.  Alabama

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

Alabama Auburn	Michigan St Oklahoma St	Ohio St Oregon	Stanford Wisconsin
LSU Boise St	Florida International TCU	Northern Illinois Virginia Tech	UCF Pittsburgh

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

LSU Auburn

Pittsburgh Oklahoma St

Virginia Tech Oregon

TCU Wisconsin

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

Wisconsin Auburn

Oregon Oklahoma St

With a Final of:

Oklahoma St Oregon

One other playoff scenario I want to throw at you this week.  What if you take the eight best conference champions, and put them into a playoff?  If any independent teams were ranked higher than the eighth, seventh or even sixth best conference’s champion, we could put those teams in instead of the conference champions. 

This would be more dynamic than what is currently being given to us (separating the Non-AQ’s from the AQ’s).  The problem right now is there is no assumption of change.  That’s what is making social security bankrupt—not indexing to the average age of death.  Anyway, under this scenario, you’d have:

1. Auburn
2. Oklahoma St
3.  Oregon
4. Wisconsin
5.  Boise St
6.  TCU
7.  Virginia Tech
8. Navy (better than Pittsburgh)

Navy Auburn

Virginia Tech Oklahoma St

TCU Oregon

Boise St Wisconsin

With the final four neutral site games and final being the same.

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

Predictions for Week 11

Locks (15-0)

TCU over New Mexico

Missouri over Kansas

Virginia Tech over Virgnia

Great Games (Average Margin of Victory out of 13 games: 13.8)

Always seems to be a couple of games that are oh so close then get blown out at the end.  Anyway, here are games I would think should be good ones.

Boise St @ Nevada

Auburn @ Alabama

North Carolina St @ Maryland

Upsets (if any) (2-8)

Ouch!  0-3 last week.  Two were close, but both ended up losing at the end.  Every week, I think, “This is going to be the week that no upsets will be predicted,” but alas…

Arkansas over LSU

So how are the SRS rankings 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.

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. 

Did you follow all of that? If not, don’t worry about it; just know that it is under constant improvement, and again, this where I think they will be if they continue to do what they did last year.