Monday, October 15, 2012

Week 8: Top 25 -- TFG


Rank +/- Team WinPct SoS Adjusted
Off. Def. Pace
1 -- Alabama 0.980 0.592 26 39.6 1 8.3 1 148.9 123
2 -- LSU 0.908 0.628 13 28.7 10 11.5 2 156.7 108
3 +4 Oklahoma 0.883 0.655 9 26.4 22 11.8 4 175.0 14
4 -- Notre Dame 0.871 0.621 16 25.2 26 11.7 3 159.2 95
5 +3 Florida St. 0.870 0.523 51 30.1 6 14.1 10 156.9 105
6 -3 South Carolina 0.865 0.563 36 29.5 8 14.0 9 155.6 112
7 -2 Oregon 0.857 0.523 50 31.1 5 15.2 14 181.2 7
8 -2 Florida 0.835 0.628 14 25.4 25 13.3 5 156.8 106
9 +7 Michigan 0.827 0.560 37 31.6 4 16.9 23 153.3 119
10 +1 Boise St. 0.826 0.433 87 27.7 16 14.8 12 158.3 99
11 -1 Stanford 0.815 0.582 29 29.8 7 16.5 19 162.7 71
12 -3 Texas A&M 0.815 0.617 18 24.8 28 13.7 6 186.1 3
13 +4 TCU 0.795 0.428 89 27.8 15 16.2 17 157.3 102
14 +1 Wisconsin 0.793 0.530 47 31.8 3 18.6 37 153.9 118
15 -2 Oklahoma St. 0.765 0.595 24 27.4 17 17.1 25 181.8 6
16 +2 USC 0.763 0.532 46 28.0 14 17.5 29 161.1 84
17 -5 Texas 0.761 0.602 22 28.7 9 18.0 33 162.1 79
18 +2 Kansas St. 0.757 0.567 34 32.2 2 20.4 53 154.3 116
19 -5 Ohio St. 0.753 0.504 57 28.6 11 18.3 35 160.9 85
20 -1 Michigan St. 0.741 0.566 35 20.8 61 13.7 7 162.6 72
21 +1 Nebraska 0.729 0.621 17 27.3 18 18.4 36 167.0 46
22 -1 Cincinnati 0.728 0.478 69 24.7 29 16.7 21 167.6 39
23 +1 Georgia 0.718 0.526 49 28.3 12 19.5 43 165.9 54
24 NA Texas Tech 0.713 0.572 33 24.6 31 17.1 24 173.6 20
25 NA Virginia Tech 0.711 0.516 53 23.9 36 16.7 20 160.6 87
Rankings through games of 2012-10-14

New entries: Texas Tech, Virginia Tech.

Dropped out: BYU, West Virginia.

With the season halfway over the picture is both clear and murky. Alabama has coasted to a dominant performance and is the clear favorite to go undefeated. Beyond that, though, things get murky. LSU is clearly a team that is a shadow of last year's team, thanks to a severe drop-off on offense. Oklahoma rates well thanks to defense, but the Sooners tend to be consistently overrated by TFG. Notre Dame appears to be a legitimately good team this year, but continues to struggle on offense; when you're not even in the top 25 for offensive efficiency, you're going to have a long road to the title game. FSU is ... well ... in the ACC. South Carolina has definitely improved from last year but couldn't even handle LSU; they'd have an even longer shot against the Crimson Tide.

You'll see more in tomorrow's undefeated post, but the upshot is that after Alabama -- who currently have nearly a 2-in-3 shot of finishing the regular season undefeated -- the next most likely teams to escape unscathed are Notre Dame (~15% chance of going undefeated), Oregon (12%), Florida (11%), Ohio (10%), Ohio State (6.3%), and Cincinnati (5%).

In fact the odds that none of the above teams get to early December without a loss is better than 50-50. This is yet another sign of increased parity in college football, and a reminder that what Alabama is doing right now is nothing less than swimming upstream in an ever-stronger current towards a level playing field.

Then again, there's still better than a 1-in-6 shot that none of the top teams gets to early December with a zero in the 'L' column, at which point all of these discussions heaping praise on the Crimson Tide will look rather silly.


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