| Rank | +/- | Team | WinPct | SoS | Adjusted | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Off. | Def. | Pace | |||||||||
| 1 | -- | Alabama | 1.000 | 0.552 | 11 | 26.9 | 2 | 5.4 | 1 | 156.7 | 121 |
| 2 | -- | LSU | 0.992 | 0.549 | 16 | 24.1 | 5 | 8.1 | 3 | 160.0 | 113 |
| 3 | -- | Oregon | 0.984 | 0.530 | 50 | 26.0 | 4 | 12.5 | 28 | 176.3 | 3 |
| 4 | -- | Oklahoma St. | 0.984 | 0.551 | 13 | 26.9 | 3 | 13.9 | 44 | 173.3 | 7 |
| 5 | +3 | Stanford | 0.959 | 0.542 | 30 | 23.4 | 11 | 12.6 | 32 | 166.9 | 58 |
| 6 | +1 | Oklahoma | 0.959 | 0.543 | 25 | 19.7 | 27 | 9.5 | 4 | 171.7 | 14 |
| 7 | -1 | Wisconsin | 0.959 | 0.535 | 38 | 28.7 | 1 | 11.9 | 23 | 161.5 | 109 |
| 8 | +14 | Houston | 0.958 | 0.474 | 86 | 22.3 | 14 | 14.0 | 45 | 175.5 | 4 |
| 9 | -4 | Boise St. | 0.934 | 0.462 | 96 | 23.9 | 7 | 10.5 | 10 | 168.8 | 36 |
| 10 | -1 | Arkansas | 0.933 | 0.567 | 2 | 23.5 | 10 | 11.2 | 16 | 165.5 | 81 |
| 11 | -- | Florida St. | 0.932 | 0.549 | 15 | 18.9 | 32 | 9.6 | 6 | 165.7 | 77 |
| 12 | -2 | South Carolina | 0.925 | 0.543 | 27 | 20.8 | 21 | 9.6 | 5 | 157.7 | 120 |
| 13 | -- | USC | 0.925 | 0.533 | 44 | 24.0 | 6 | 9.8 | 7 | 166.8 | 61 |
| 14 | -- | Georgia | 0.900 | 0.549 | 17 | 21.4 | 18 | 13.3 | 41 | 159.8 | 114 |
| 15 | +3 | Michigan St. | 0.893 | 0.545 | 23 | 20.3 | 23 | 10.3 | 9 | 167.2 | 53 |
| 16 | -- | Florida | 0.883 | 0.559 | 7 | 16.8 | 55 | 10.1 | 8 | 161.4 | 110 |
| 17 | -2 | TCU | 0.876 | 0.464 | 95 | 23.5 | 9 | 13.3 | 39 | 167.8 | 46 |
| 18 | NA | Nebraska | 0.873 | 0.533 | 43 | 21.1 | 20 | 12.2 | 27 | 166.8 | 63 |
| 19 | -- | Texas A&M | 0.860 | 0.556 | 10 | 22.2 | 15 | 12.1 | 25 | 172.7 | 11 |
| 20 | -- | Notre Dame | 0.856 | 0.565 | 3 | 21.6 | 17 | 10.7 | 12 | 164.8 | 89 |
| 21 | -4 | Michigan | 0.851 | 0.544 | 24 | 22.4 | 13 | 12.0 | 24 | 167.5 | 50 |
| 22 | -1 | Texas | 0.831 | 0.522 | 61 | 19.3 | 29 | 11.6 | 20 | 168.1 | 43 |
| 23 | -- | Ohio St. | 0.831 | 0.532 | 45 | 20.1 | 25 | 11.3 | 18 | 159.2 | 116 |
| 24 | +1 | Missouri | 0.824 | 0.528 | 56 | 17.6 | 40 | 11.5 | 19 | 174.2 | 5 |
| 25 | -1 | Virginia Tech | 0.821 | 0.527 | 58 | 17.5 | 42 | 11.1 | 13 | 158.2 | 119 |
Rankings through games of 2012-09-02
New entries: Nebraska.
Dropped out: Southern Miss.
LOL WUT? I'm sure you're asking yourself why Houston and Stanford went up in the polls after weak performances against Texas State and San Jose State, respectively. There's a perfectly rational reason, which is why the BCS computers wait until week 8 before releasing their statistics. In linear regression, there's a concept called "leverage." Basically, this means that some outliers have sufficient weight that they throw off the entire curve fit. When a team has a terrible start to a season, the new point has significant weight. However, the old data showing them as a successful team remains in the predictor. Therefore, this creates an odd effect where the team appears to do better against strong competition than weak competition.
The plot above illustrates this effect. The horizontal axis represents the strength of Houston's opponents. The vertical axis represents its offensive efficiency in PPH. The size of the bubble indicates the relative weight of the game. Since Texas State sits at the far bottom left of the plot and has significant weight relative to other games, it exhibits high leverage. This creates a plot with a positive slope, rather than a negative slope, which confuses the algorithm. This will sort itself out, so don't sweat it. In the meantime, I'm looking into other approaches.
Unsurprisingly, Alabama is the top team in this week's poll. Drubbing Michigan only proves the point.
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