It's finally here, the most anticipated rankings drop of the day! Come one, come all! We have some numbers to discuss!

Fed up with the constant bias and subjective reasoning that leads to overrated teams and feedback loops of inflated rankings **cough*SEC*cough**, I set out to create an objective system of ranking every team on the only statistic that matters at the end of the day. Did you win the damn game?

The premise is simple, but explaining can be hard. I'll do my best, though!

Opponent Value:

Each team on your schedule is given an opponent value. This value is based on your opponent's record over their last twelve games. If a team on your schedule is 10-2 over their last twelve games, beating them will earn you a score of +10 for that week, and losing to them will give you a score of -2.

If you play an FCS team, your win value is divided by two, and your loss value is multiplied by two. Playing a 10-2 FCS team would net you +5 for a win and -4 for a loss.

Scoring:

For each team you play, the value you earn for that win or loss is determined by two variables, that team's value at the time of the win, and that team's value in the current week. Beating a team in week one with a prior record of 10-2 returns a value of +10. In week ten, if that team now has a prior record of 8-4 for an opponent value of +8, those scores will be averaged for a score of +9. So, in week ten, your score will return as +9 for beating that team in week one rather than the +10 it'd been originally. If that team continues to lose, your win score will continue to decay. If that team improves, your score for beating that team will improve.

Your opponent score for each game you've played is then added up and divided by the number of games played for an average total score.

The 1:3 Rankings:

This is a modified system to the original system explained above. Instead of averaging the opponent scores 1:1 in the week the game was played with the current week, this system puts greater emphasis on the opponent score in the current week. So, for an example, I'll use our week one win against Notre Dame. We beat Notre Dame in week one when they were 10-2 over their last twelve. This earned us a +10. Now, in week 10, Notre Dame is currently 8-4 over their last twelve games giving them an opponent score of +8 in the current week. To determine the value of beating Notre Dame in week one, the 1:3 system takes an average of the values 10,8,8,8 and returns an overall opponent score of +8.5.

For the sake of continuity, I've continued with the original system proposed two weeks ago, however, I think I prefer the 1:3 system, and will likely switch over to that being the main ranking system from this point on.

Love it? Hate it? Neat. Here you go...

• TCU reclaims the top spot from Ohio State. The Buckeyes have had the most #1 rankings of any team in this system, but over recent weeks, the top spot has been back and forth between OSU and TCU.
• Both Ohio State and TCU lowered their overall score averages by playing opponents that returned lower opponent values than their average from last week. Simply playing Northwestern, with an opponent value of +1, lowered the Buckeyes average score from 6.56 to 6.06 this week (1:3 scores), enough to drop us from the top spot.
• TTUN's strength of schedule to this point is holding them back, keeping them a spot behind one loss Tennessee.
• Interesting to see North Carolina a spot ahead of Clemson, both with one loss to the same team.
• Isn't it wild what happens when you remove the name brand's Alabama and LSU from the equation and simply look at the cold hard facts?
• Have a problem with Troy being the highest rated two loss team in the country? Yeah, me too. 

For the Nerds

If you're hung up on my last bullet point, this is for you. I was asked last week whether I'd considered weighting G5 teams at a lower value than P5 teams. My reasoning for not doing so was based on a theory. My thinking was this; if G5 teams are truly inferior to P5 teams, this will be reflected in non-conference records. In this system, teams acquire and lose value based on their win/loss records, so in theory, conferences with the best teams will average higher opponent values than conferences without them. This gives teams in higher value conferences a larger opportunity to earn more points than those in lower value conferences. I assumed this would impose a glass ceiling on G5 schools that would have them struggle to keep pace with P5 schools of similar records. Troy is throwing a wrench in that theory, being the highest rated two loss team in this system, so lets break it down.

I started by using opponent values to rank conferences.

Interesting. Conference values change week to week due to non-conference games being sprinkled into the schedules. Also, teams don't play every team in their conference, leaving room for variation in conference strength of schedules. However, we can roughly assume that, if a team were to go undefeated in conference, their average score would reflect this value excluding non-conference games. 

So what do we make of this? I'm not really sure yet. I believe my next step should be diving into conference scheduling tendencies to see if certain conferences are inflating or damaging their values with their non-conference schedules. Does the Sun Belt inflate their score with more FCS opponents than everyone else? Is the Pac 12 playing harder non-conference schedules, or is the bottom half of the league just a major liability?

I'll consider those questions in the future, but for now, lets dive in on Troy specifically and see what we're working with here.

Lets compare to a few teams ranked behind the Trojans to see if they have a solid case to be where they are.

So, does Troy have a case? Eh, probably not. Their ranking seems to be a product of two low punishment losses and not having played any cellar dwellers in conference. Ole Miss has a lot of low quality wins holding them back, and Penn State has also been bitten by the Northwestern bug.

Lets test my glass ceiling theory by playing out these team's remaining schedules if they were to go undefeated.

These are rough scores, every opponent score is subject to change as the season progresses, but this seems to suggest that Troy has in fact hit their glass ceiling. So, I don't know about you, but I think I'll put my pitchfork down this week. Perhaps, if you know a Troy fan, you could send them a link to this forum post so they may collect their fifteen minutes of well deserved fame.