Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Week 4: Top 25 -- TFG

With three weeks' worth of games in the books we're starting to see some of the differences between last year and this year begin to emerge.

Rank +/- Team WinPct SoS Off Pts Def Pts Pace
001-- Alabama 0.9541 0.5783 29.4 8.0 79.7
002+1 Ohio St. 0.9231 0.5294 25.9 9.0 81.5
003-1 Florida 0.9170 0.5813 30.5 11.1 78.2
004-- TCU 0.9166 0.4794 26.6 9.7 82.0
005-- Oregon 0.8997 0.5810 26.1 10.4 90.4
006+1 Boise St. 0.8938 0.4742 27.8 11.3 83.8
007-1 Texas 0.8822 0.5064 27.2 11.7 82.3
008+1 Virginia Tech 0.8645 0.6330 28.6 13.1 79.3
009-1 Oklahoma 0.8590 0.6387 22.2 10.4 90.3
010+1 LSU 0.8585 0.5845 23.3 10.8 80.3
011+2 Penn State 0.8582 0.6049 20.0 9.2 79.4
012-- Nebraska 0.8321 0.4412 22.3 11.4 81.4
013-3 Iowa 0.8271 0.5882 22.2 11.4 81.7
014-- Stanford 0.7984 0.5669 28.0 15.7 81.4
015-- USC 0.7775 0.5592 21.4 12.6 84.8
016+3 Arizona 0.7763 0.6087 22.8 13.6 82.9
017-1 Utah 0.7567 0.3996 22.2 13.8 83.9
018-- Arkansas 0.7459 0.5906 24.5 15.5 83.1
019-2 Texas Tech 0.7449 0.5425 23.1 14.7 88.9
020-- Air Force 0.7299 0.5178 20.4 13.5 83.5
021+1 Miami-FL 0.7269 0.6784 22.7 15.0 83.0
022+2 South Carolina 0.7214 0.6435 18.0 12.0 80.7
023+2 Georgia 0.7107 0.6304 24.1 16.5 78.6
024NA Pittsburgh 0.7106 0.5619 23.3 15.9 80.8
025-4 Clemson 0.7020 0.5315 20.6 14.3 82.1

New entries: Pittsburgh.

Dropped out: Oregon State.

The Pac10 continues to impress, as Oregon remains dominant against vastly inferior competition, Stanford was dominant against moderately inferior competition, USC treads water, and Arizona wins a close game at home against an Iowa team that apparently sent out a bunch of punch-em clowns instead of their O-line on an important last-minute drive. Conference play starts in earnest this week, so we'll see a few games between Pac-10 teams. Stanford has another shot to impress as they visit a Notre Dame team that was a trick FG away from a big win on the road.

At the top of the pile, Alabama actually slipped slightly as they pounded a hapless Duke team by "only" 49 points last week. Florida finally slipped below Ohio State and very nearly behind TCU as last year's dominance begins to fade. The Gators have stepped up their efforts on offense, becoming the only team in Division I-A to crack the 30 PPH mark, but have struggled on defense relative to last year. The TFG rankings still aren't 100% sold on Boise as the third-best team in the country, but even the computers have historically underestimated the Broncos.

This week is also "Exhibit A" in how computers differ from the human pollsters. Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah all won -- in some cases by double-digits -- yet dropped in the rankings. Georgia lost, but still went up two spots. Also in a "coming soon" post, we'll examine how college football is not transitive.