Ratings 10/07/06  
Ratings (10/07)

Welcome to the first 2006 installment of By the Numbers! The ratings will not be done weekly this year, but I did want to get one out while Clemson was still winning. You may be surprised to see Southern Cal at #1. Remember that the system only uses wins and losses and points for and against for each team compared to each of its opponents. On that basis, it's interesting that SC is #1, although they are out of favor with the human polls for not running up the score on Washington. (Note that Washington, at 4-2, is #21 here.) Just as one data point: everybody was arguing that Auburn was the best of the best (the SEC) before last week. And then Auburn loses badly at home to Arkansas, which had lost badly at home to SC. So why is SC being downgraded?

That said, the SEC does have 4 of the top 11 in this week's rankings. The Big 10 has 2 of the top 4, the Big 12 has 4 in the top 20, and 9 of the 12 ACC teams are in the top 88. So the ratings here mostly agree with conventional wisdon about the strengths of the conferences.

There is a good chance that two flaws in my system will significantly affect this year's ratings. First, I account for all Division 1-AA teams as being the same. So when Duke loses to Richmond, the system thinks that Richmond is the same as the William & Mary team that lost to Maryland. That team, by the way, has a fixed rating of 20. With a larger number of 1-AA upsets this year (two in the Big 10) than usual, this could distort some rankings. Also, the system does not account in any way for teams that improve. A team like NC State that loses to Akron and Southern Miss before finding a quarterback can bring down an entire conference; not that the ACC needed much help that way.

No really big games this week, but several battles that will help decide who's in the top half and who's in the bottom half of conference standings. The big game locally is of course the Thursday night game. I completely agree with the computer's pick of Clemson over Temple. Oh, you wanted the other Thursday night game. You might not like that pick much. The following picks are straight from the ratings with 4 points added for home field.

Clemson over Temple by 43 (a break before the Tech-nical part of the schedule)
Boston College over Virginia Tech by 8 (how good are the Hokies? It's not clear.)
Maryland over Virginia by 3 (my doctor says it's a Groh-ing problem)
Wake Forest and NC State even (both teams are still in the ACC hunt)
Rutgers and Navy even (5-0 versus 5-1, imagine that)
Michigan over Penn State by 14 (back to the days of the Big 2?)
Ohio State over Michigan State by 18 (more misery for John L.)
Southern Cal over Arizona State by 32 (this spread seems inflated to me)
Florida over Auburn by 8 (maybe War Eagle was looking ahead last week)
Nebraska over Kansas State by 9 (the Huskers are improved, the Cats not)
Missouri and Texas A&M even (can Mizzou stay unbeaten? can Franchione keep his job?)

1 Southern Cal 70.31
2 Florida 69.79
3 Ohio State 66.00
4 Michigan 64.30
5 Tennessee 62.14
6 Louisville 61.22
7 California 59.79
8 Texas 59.16
9 Boise St 58.98
10 LSU 58.83
11 Auburn 57.50
12 Notre Dame 56.51
13 West Virginia 56.36
14 Oklahoma 56.17
15 Oregon 56.07
16 Clemson 55.84
17 Nebraska 55.23
18 Arkansas 54.70
19 Missouri 53.98
20 UCLA 53.74
21 Washington 53.64
22 Rutgers 53.07
23 Iowa 52.73
24 Washington St 52.33
25 Boston College 51.34
26 Georgia 50.66
27 Georgia Tech 50.64
28 Tulsa 50.39
29 Pittsburgh 50.36
30 Texas A&M 50.15
31 BYU 49.90
32 Texas Tech 48.86
33 Navy 48.72
34 Southern Miss 48.60
35 Wisconsin 47.98
36 Alabama 47.90
37 Florida State 47.20
38 Virginia Tech 46.91
39 Utah 46.59
40 Penn State 46.25
41 Air Force 45.91
42 Wake Forest 45.76
43 Miami F 45.42
44 TCU 45.28
45 Kentucky 45.19
46 S Carolina 44.65
47 Michigan St 43.97
48 Hawaii 43.57
49 Oregon St 43.10
50 Minnesota 43.04
51 Houston 43.01
52 Arizona 42.47
53 Arizona St 41.99
54 NC State 41.96
55 Kansas State 41.94
56 S. Florida 41.34
57 Oklahoma St 41.25
58 San Jose 40.37
59 Purdue 40.27
60 Syracuse 40.19
61 Maryland 39.53
62 Baylor 39.06
63 Central Michigan 39.00
64 UAB 38.31
65 East Carolina 38.31
66 Cincinnati 38.28
67 Ohio 38.09
68 La-Lafayette 37.93
69 Kansas 37.89
70 Colorado St 37.55
71 Northern Illinois 37.35
72 Iowa State 37.28
73 C. Florida 37.26
74 Vanderbilt 36.87
75 Middle Tenn 36.10
76 Army 35.58
77 Wyoming 35.55
78 UTEP 35.43
79 Ole Miss 35.29
80 Kent State 34.98
81 UConn 34.49
82 SMU 34.30
83 Nevada 34.07
84 West.Michigan 33.90
85 Bowling Green 33.84
86 Illinois 33.83
87 Miss St 32.99
88 Fresno St 32.77
89 Virginia 32.45
90 Tulane 32.30
91 Akron 32.27
92 Marshall 32.18
93 Rice 31.56
94 New Mexico 30.83
95 Idaho 30.81
96 Indiana 30.64
97 Troy 30.44
98 Arkansas St 30.12
99 UNC 29.69
100 Stanford 29.62
101 Toledo 29.27
102 La Tech 28.68
103 Memphis 28.49
104 North Texas 27.53
105 New Mexico St 27.33
106 Colorado 25.20
107 Ball State 24.43
108 San Diego St 23.81
109 Utah State 23.32
110 UNLV 22.49
111 Northwestern 22.48
112 La-Monroe 22.13
113 Florida Atlantic 20.36
114 Florida Int. 20.14
115 Buffalo 19.47
116 Miami O 19.33
117 Duke 18.37
118 East.Michigan 14.84
119 Temple 12.65