Blog Poll Week Nine

I was sorely tempted to drop !*w@ out of the top 10 after that debacle against the Hoosiers, but a part of me still thinks they would have won even if the refs hadn't hosed the visiting team so badly. The Hawks didn't deserve to win, but they won. I still dropped them. Bah!

There are 7 undefeated teams: Alabama, Florida, Boise State, !*w@, TCU, Texas, and Cincinnati.

There are 4 teams without a win: Rice, New Mexico, Western Kentucky and Eastern Michigan.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Texas
2	Florida
3	Alabama
4	Cincinnati	3
5	Boise State
6	TCU
7	Iowa	3
8	Penn State	1
9	Oregon	4
10	LSU
11	Georgia Tech
12	Houston	3
13	Southern Cal	5
14	Ohio State	2
15	Pittsburgh	2
16	Utah	2
17	Miami (Florida)	2
18	Notre Dame	4
19	Arizona
20	Oklahoma State	8
21	California	2
22	Wisconsin
23	Brigham Young
24	Virginia Tech	10
25	Rutgers
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: West Virginia (#20), South Carolina (#21), Mississippi (#24), Central Michigan (#25).

And here are the TAS Computer Ranks. I have debuted a new formula this year. The program takes the NCAA data in various categories. Each team is ranked based on how it compares to the other 119 teams. This is further distilled into a "weighted rank" which puts more emphasis on categories like Total Defense and Total Offense, and less weight for categories like net punting or penalties per game. Strength of schedule is calculated two ways: (1) by determining the average rank of all opponents based on their NCAA composite rank, and (2) by the combined win/loss records of their opponents. These are then fused into a single schedule strnegth rank. The final rank is based on the average of these various rankings, with more emphasis on performance (W/L and NCAA rankings) and less on strength of schedule.

	TEAM	W/L Rank	NCAA Rank	Weighted Rank	Schedule Strength		Total
1	Alabama	1	6	7	44		3.63
2	Iowa	1	24	17	23		4.06
3	Texas	1	7	6	59		4.56
4	Cincinnati	1	3	4	70		4.88
5	Florida	1	2	2	78		5.19
6	TCU	1	5	3	92		6.31
7	Boise St.	1	1	1	107		6.88
8	Pittsburgh	10	9	9	14		10.13
9	Oregon	10	13	12	18		10.81
10	Penn St.	8	4	5	86		13.10
11	LSU	10	20	19	57		14.13
12	Georgia Tech	8	17	28	71		14.42
13	Utah	10	40	18	94		17.63
14	Ohio St.	15	11	10	47		18.52
15	Houston	10	23	43	110		19.13
16	West Virginia	18	31	24	21		20.88
17	Wisconsin	18	14	14	53		21.19
18	Notre Dame	18	18	25	46		21.69
19	South Fla.	18	30	16	45		21.81
20	Southern California	18	41	22	38		22.44
21	Arizona	30	21	15	26		22.89
22	Central Mich.	15	19	20	107		23.40
23	Miami (FL)	18	55	50	12		23.44
24	Rutgers	18	16	21	80		23.44
25	Oklahoma St.	18	35	23	66		23.88

The Top Five Most Difficult Schedules:

1 - Mississippi
2 - Georgia
3 - Louisville
4 - Baylor
5 - Syracuse