THE POWER RANK

College Football, Week 8

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Thank you, JMU. On Saturday, September 11, the Dukes of James Madison University traveled to Blacksburg, Virginia and beat the Virginia Tech Hokies. Lower division schools like James Madison aren’t supposed to beat top division powerhouses like Virginia Tech. In addition, Tech’s loss muddied the national championship picture. Just the previous week, Boise State, an upstart team from the weak Western Athletic Conference, had been annointed a national championship contender with their win over Virginia Tech. But now that the Hokies had lost to a cupcake, how good was Boise State? So thanks, James Madison; it’s not like college football needs anymore chaos in picking a national champion.

Here at the Power Rank, this game was doubly troubling, since the algorithm did not use games with lower division teams. There were plenty of complaints when Virginia Tech showed up at 4th in last week’s rankings, sporting a 5-1 record that didn’t include the loss to James Madison. When the Power Rank was posted at One Bronco Nation Under God, Boise State fans couldn’t believe that Virginia Tech was ranked so high. We find this quite ironic, since the Hokies gave Boise State all they could handle on the field, even holding a lead late in the fourth quarter. Boise State scored a late touchdown to win by 3. But the best complaint comes from a friend of mine, who sent an empty email with the subject “I am going to stab you if you keep letting tech get away with losing to jmu”. That’s the passion we like from our followers here at the Power Rank!!

So thanks, JMU, thanks for all the extra work to include all games with lower division teams. But, in the end, it makes a ton sense to include games with lower subdivision teams. With only 12 games on the regular season schedule, it’s silly to throw away any information. So now the rankings include an additional 124 lower division teams and account for all games in which the 120 teams in the top division played. (Sorry, the terms Bowl and Championship subdivision are so confusing. You get what we mean if we say there’s a top division and a lower division. The top division fights to play in the Bowl Championship Series.) The rankings still exclude games in which a lower division team plays a team from an even lower division. While we could include these games as well, the effect on the top division rankings would likely be very small.

With these additional teams, The Power Rank now provides a means to compare the top two divisions of college football. Lower division Delaware comes in at 35th, right behind Texas and Oklahoma State of the Big 12 and just ahead of Mississippi State and Georgia of the Southeastern Conference. Not bad too shabby for a Delaware team that can’t possibly have the same resources as these other teams. So Big East commissioner John Marinatto, if you can’t get TCU to join your conference, make an offer to Delaware. It might just strengthen the league. And while you’re at it, consider Villanova, New Hampshire and James Madison as well. These teams are all ranked ahead of all but two teams in your conference.

As for Virginia Tech, the loss to James Madison drops them out of the top ten, but they end up at 11th. Since losing their first two games, they won all their games by at least 11 points.

1. Oregon, 7-0, 40.98
2. TCU, 8-0, 36.40
3. Boise State, 6-0, 32.48
4. Missouri, 7-0, 27.94
5. Nevada, 6-1, 27.37
6. USC, 5-2, 27.13
7. Ohio State, 7-1, 27.01
8. Utah, 7-0, 26.51
9. Stanford, 6-1, 26.32
10. Oklahoma, 6-1, 25.71
11. Virginia Tech, 6-2, 25.69
12. Auburn, 8-0, 24.92
13. Alabama, 7-1, 24.81
14. Nebraska, 6-1, 24.74
15. Arizona, 6-1, 24.53
16. Oregon State, 3-3, 24.15
17. Florida State, 6-1, 24.10
18. Wisconsin, 7-1, 24.08
19. Michigan State, 8-0, 23.95
20. South Carolina, 5-2, 23.87
21. Miami (FL), 5-2, 23.62
22. California, 4-3, 23.58
23. Iowa, 5-2, 22.96
24. Arizona State, 3-4, 22.82
25. San Diego State, 5-2, 21.67

College Football Rankings, Week 5

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College kids like to party. Between the women and alcohol, a college campus can be a distracting place for a young man with a football game to play the next morning. Most coaches recognize this problem and tuck their players away at a local hotel the night before a home game. But not Boise State. Even the night before the recent Oregon State game, arguably the biggest in school history, quarterback Kellen Moore and his teammates slept in their own beds.

The results of Coach Chris Peterson’s trust in his players are remarkable. After going undefeated last year, the Broncos have opened this season with wins over highly regarded Virginia Tech and Oregon State teams. If they played in one of 6 Bowl Championship Series conferences and went undefeated, they would almost certainly qualify for the national championship game. But Boise State is not a part of these conferences, and that’s where the controversy starts. For teams in the BCS conferences, this conference affliation automatically disqualifies the Broncos from the championship game because of strength of schedule and body of work. Alabama coach Nick Saban lumps these concepts into the term SOSBOW, a not so subtle suggestion that these team can’t play a strong schedule or have a championship worthy body of work. SOSBOW. Say it out loud. It sounds like my 21 month son asking for a bowl of pasta sauce.

But Boise State has SOSBOW as well, and the Power Rank can quantify it. Using only the score and location of each game, the algorithm assigns each team a point value. Just like with the old school Vegas bookies, the difference in the point values of two teams is a point spread on a neutral field, much like the setting of the national championship game. It’s not a perfect system. The Power Rank predicted a 33.6 point win for Boise State this weekend over New Mexico State. The line was set at a seemingly preposterous 43.5. Boise State won by 59 and almost covered (38-0) by the end of the first half. But by the end of last season, the algorithm picked 62 percent of the bowl games against the line last year (21 of 34). Hence, it’s a decent estimator of how two teams might match up in a bowl game. Stay tuned.

1. Oregon (4-0) 36.36. The Ducks pulled away from Stanford in the fourth quarter, and the 21 point win vaulted them to the top spot in TPR. The field at Autzen Stadium appparently shakes during games, one reason it’s such a diffcult place to play for opponents. This certainly isn’t an excuse for Stanford, as the shaking didn’t seem to affect their offense in the first half when they scored all 31 of their points.

17. Arizon State (0-3), 18.64. So how can a team with no wins against Football Bowl Subdivision teams be ranked so high? Close losses at Wisconsin (-1), against Oregon (-11) and at Oregon State (-3) suggest the Sun Devils will win some games this year.

26. Utah (4-0) 9.79. The Utes pound San Jose State (+53) and move from 55 to 26 in the rankings. This seismic movement is an indication that the algorithm is still feeling things out this early in the season. Expect this excellent program who has won almost 10 games per year over the last 7 years to continue to rise.

Information about Boise State came from an Austin Murphy article in the October 4, 2010 issue of Sports Illustrated.

1. Oregon, 4-0, 36.36
2. Nevada, 4-0, 30.55
3. Ohio St., 5-0, 29.79
4. Alabama, 5-0, 28.82
5. Nebraska, 3-0, 25.48
6. TCU, 3-0, 25.24
7. Boise St., 4-0, 24.57
8. Miami (FL), 3-1, 24.14
9. San Diego St., 2-1, 22.69
10. Stanford, 3-1, 22.00
11. Missouri, 3-0, 21.94
12. Iowa, 3-1, 21.35
13. Virginia Tech, 3-1, 20.69
14. Arizona, 3-0, 20.32
15. California, 1-2, 18.87
16. Arkansas, 2-1, 18.85
17. Arizona St., 0-3, 18.64
18. Oregon St., 2-2, 15.32
19. Michigan, 4-0, 14.65
20. Florida, 4-1, 14.51
21. Auburn, 5-0, 12.45
22. Illinois, 1-2, 12.18
23. Clemson, 1-2, 11.61
24. Wisconsin, 3-1, 10.37
25. South Carolina, 2-1, 10.12