Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Week 12: Top 25 -- TFG

With just three weeks left in the regular season we're seeing the last chances for teams to make a big impression on the 2010 Tempo-Free Gridiron rankings.

Rank +/- Team WinPct SoS Off Pts Def Pts Pace
001-- TCU 0.9483 0.4409 28.1 8.2 80.9
002-- Boise St. 0.9289 0.3820 29.5 9.9 82.6
003-- Ohio St. 0.9232 0.4888 27.3 9.5 79.9
004-- Alabama 0.9189 0.6335 27.1 9.6 78.3
005+4 LSU 0.8734 0.6287 24.4 10.7 78.4
006-- Oregon 0.8684 0.5574 25.0 11.3 92.9
007-- Virginia Tech 0.8679 0.5556 27.3 12.3 79.5
008+2 Oklahoma 0.8476 0.5869 21.8 10.6 91.1
009-4 Iowa 0.8462 0.5497 21.6 10.4 81.2
010-2 Florida 0.8337 0.6442 25.2 12.9 81.2
011+1 Nebraska 0.8101 0.4836 24.1 13.1 79.9
012+1 Auburn 0.8004 0.6225 27.6 15.5 83.8
013+1 Stanford 0.7940 0.5632 27.4 15.5 81.4
014+1 Arkansas 0.7829 0.6009 27.7 16.1 81.9
015NA South Carolina 0.7682 0.6774 22.9 13.8 80.0
016+1 Miami-FL 0.7668 0.6134 20.8 12.5 85.0
017-6 Utah 0.7662 0.4143 23.5 14.4 80.6
018+6 Wisconsin 0.7594 0.5252 27.1 16.7 80.0
019-- USC 0.7467 0.5865 23.5 14.9 85.0
020-- Missouri 0.7379 0.5694 21.0 13.4 85.8
021+2 Oklahoma St. 0.7355 0.5241 23.8 15.6 89.1
022NA Florida St. 0.7310 0.6111 23.8 15.7 82.5
023-7 Arizona 0.7282 0.5896 19.0 12.6 85.2
024NA West Virginia 0.7266 0.5202 18.8 12.4 82.8
025-7 Georgia 0.7225 0.6237 26.1 17.5 76.8

New entries: South Carolina, Florida State, West Virginia.

Dropped out: Clemson, Pittsburgh, Penn State.

Another week, another Clemson Top 25 flip-flop. Penn State found some offense -- and some hope -- against Ohio State for a half, but forgot that the game is a full 60 minutes. Pittsburgh lost a close one to UConn because the Panthers forgot that turning over the ball is a bad idea.

At the top we continue to have four teams that are clearly head-and-shoulders above everyone else. TCU falls a bit closer to the rest, but the Horned Frogs and Boise State continue to be the class of Division I-A football. Ohio State thumped a good Penn State team, and really has a chance to prove that they belong when they visit Iowa on Saturday. A good showing could catapult the Buckeyes into the second-place spot. Alabama is still a solid team, and TFG is seeing their loss at (5) LSU in a much more positive light. The gap between the Crimson Tide and the Tigers is still massive in the eyes of TFG, though; the gap between (4) Alabama and (5) LSU is larger than the gap from (5) LSU to (10) Florida. (6) Oregon didn't do themselves any favors by eeking out a 2-point win over not-top-25 Cal, and got lucky with a 64-yard punt return for a TD.

(7) Virginia Tech inches closer to the Ducks, as TFG's love affair with (8) Oklahoma continues for another year. We round out the top 10 with a pair of teams on the way down: (9) Iowa -- suffering from an embarrassing loss to Northwestern -- and (10) Florida -- still off the mark, offense-wise.

In another interesting development, (15) South Carolina vaulted into the top 25 by improving about 1.0 PPH on both sides of the ball in a single game. Right now we're on track for an Auburn/South Carolina SEC title game, and unlike last year's showdown between then-(1) Florida and then-(3) Alabama, neither team will be in the TFG top 25. It's not entirely unrealistic for Auburn to drop their last two games of the year, leaving us without a representative from the SEC in the National Title game. Stay tuned.