Week 10 Zero Based College Football Rankings put Utes No. 1
Utah beat BYU, got to nine wins without a loss, and climbed two spots to No. 1. Some folks down here will take that about as well as finding sugar in the cornbread.
Alabama went to Baton Rouge, won, and came home six spots higher at No. 2. LSU fell seven to 13th. Tennessee beat Kentucky and entered our Top 25 at No. 16, while the Wildcats fell from first to fifth. Knoxville, you can turn “Rocky Top” down now. We heard you in Georgia.
Speaking of Georgia, some of y’all have been wearing me out over these rankings. The Dawgs went to Oxford, beat Ole Miss, and jumped six spots to ninth. As for that one loss, Auburn put the 27 to 24 on the scoreboard in Athens but has been a punching bag for other teams. Don’t get mad at me for your team not taking care of business against a bad team. War Tiger or something.
Florida losing to Oklahoma also does the Dawgs no favors.
Wake Forest beat Merrimack 77 to 0 and dropped from ninth to 14th. I hope the scoreboard operator got overtime pay. Strength of schedule is the average rating of the teams you’ve played. Wins over stronger opponents earn more credit, and the cupcake penalty cuts the usual win credit in half when an FBS team beats an FCS team. Lose that game and it costs extra. A win by 77 earns the same credit as a win by one.
Merrimack pulled down Wake’s schedule average enough to outweigh the credit for the win. I reran Week 10 with every other result held fixed. Adding the game took Wake’s rating from 0.7737 to 0.7712. The Deacs ranked 14th either way. The game cost them rating points. The rest of the week’s results moved them down five spots.
The prediction crowd can keep holding séances with its spreadsheets. I’m taking the games that actually happened and asking who’s had the best season so far out of all 138 FBS teams.
Will this be how it finishes? Nope. Just where we are after 10 weeks of football and all of the teams being treated equally from the start of the season.
