College Football SRS Rankings: Two New Teams in Top 5, Aggies, Ducks in Top 10

So Boise State finally lost, and they tumbled closer to where SRS actually had them placed to begin with.  With not many games this week, I’m going to take a stab at predicting all of them.  I think by next season, this will become a regular for this column.  Without further ado, we start, as always with the conference rankings

As of November 28, 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. C-USA East (15)

15. MAC West (16) 

14. Sun Belt (14)

13. C-USA West (13)

12. Big East (12)

11. WAC (11)

10. MWC (10)

9.   ACC Coastal (9)

8.   ACC Atlantic (5)

7.   Pac-10 (8) 

6.   Big Ten (7) 

5.   SEC East (4) 

4.   Independents (6)

3.   Big 12 North (3)

2.   SEC West (1)

1.   Big 12 South (2) 

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

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—Nebraska

Big East—West Virginia 

Big Ten—Wisconsin

C-USA—UCF 

MAC—Northern Illinois

MWC—TCU

Pac-10—Oregon

SEC—Auburn

Sun Belt—Florida International 

WAC—Hawaii

Wild Card—Stanford

Wild Card—Ohio St

Wild Card—Arkansas

Wild Card—Michigan St

Wild Card—Oklahoma

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

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

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

Oklahoma Auburn	Michigan St Wisconsin	Arkansas Nebraska	Ohio St Oregon
Stanford TCU	Florida International Hawaii	Northern Illinois Virginia Tech	UCF West Virginia

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

West Virginia Auburn

Virginia Tech Wisconsin

Hawaii Nebraska

TCU Oregon

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

Oregon Auburn

Nebraska Wisconsin

With a Final of:

Nebraska Auburn

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. Wisconsin
3.  Nebraska
4.  Oregon
5.  TCU
6.  Hawaii
7.  Navy (better than Virginia Tech)
8.  Notre Dame (better than West Virginia)

Notre Dame Auburn

Navy Wisconsin

Hawaii Nebraska

TCU Oregon

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 14

ARIZONA -6 vs. Arizona St

FRESNO ST +5.5 vs. Illinois

Miami (OH) + 17 vs. Northern Illinois

Pittsburgh -2 vs. CINCINNATI

WEST VIRGINIA -20 vs. Rutgers

SOUTH FLORIDA -1.5 vs. Connecticut

BOISE ST -39.5 vs. Utah St

Nevada -10 vs. LOUISIANA TECH

Southern Cal -6.5 vs. UCLA

Washington -6 vs. WASHINGTON ST

Oregon -16.5 vs. OREGON ST

IDAHO -13.5 vs. San Jose St

HAWAII -34.5 vs. Nevada-Las Vegas

Troy -4.5 vs. FLORIDA ATLANTIC

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL -5 vs. Middle Tennessee St

Southern Methodist +9 vs. UCF

Auburn -5 vs. South Carolina

Florida St +4 vs. Virginia Tech

Oklahoma -3.5 vs. Nebraska

EDIT:  For some reason I had Utah St over Boise St +39.5, and West Virginia getting 20 instead of losing 20.  Those have been corrected.

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 is where I think they will be if they continue to do what they did last year.