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