There are a handful of ranking methodologies in use today, and you see most of them on a regular basis. The AP and Coaches polls are examples of subjective ratings - call them "eyeball rankings," since the pollsters rank the teams based on their perception of those teams' performance. The various computer polls, like Jeff Sagarin's, attempt to remove the subjectivity from the process by setting up what is in essence a spreadsheet that takes in weekly results and spits out rankings.
What usually ends up happening, though, is that the purely subjective polls look a whole lot like the computer polls. This week, for example, the AP top 5 are...
- Alabama
- Oregon
- South Carolina
- Florida
- WVU
Jeff Sagarin's top 5:
- Alabama
- South Carolina
- Oregon
- ND
- Florida
- Oregon
- Alabama
- South Carolina
- ND
- WVU
- ND
- Florida
- tOSU
- South Carolina
- WVU
- Alabama
- Oregon
- South Carolina
- KSU
- WVU
- South Carolina
- Alabama
- Florida
- Texas
- Ohio State
- La. Tech
- Oregon
- Iowa St.
- LSU
- ND
- Texas Tech
- Rutgers
- UGA
- UCLA
- USC
- Penn St.
- KSU
- Michigan St.
- Texas A&M
- Ohio
- OU
- TCU
- Nevada
- Miss. St.
- WVU
- #4 Texas (19.375 points) is closer to #2 Alabama (20.375) than Alabama is to #1 South Carolina (22.875).
- Among the top 10, only Florida (8.075) gets more help from its opponents' results than does Texas (7.875). Put another way, Texas's schedule has been harder than most of the rest of the top 10.
- Teams in the top 10 with easier schedules than Texas (i.e. less help from their opponents' results): South Carolina, Alabama, tOSU, LaTech, Oregon, Iowa St., LSU, ND. According to the NCAA's website, Iowa State has the most difficult schedule this season; Florida is #7.
- #10 Notre Dame (17.800) is closer to #18 Michigan St. (17.050) than to #8 Iowa State (18.600).
- The top four did not change between last week and this week. (Note Texas remained #4 after losing to WVU.)
- WVU jumped from #34 last week to #25 this week. Playing stronger competition helps.
- OU jumped from #45 last week to #21 this week. Playing stronger competition helps.
- Akron has been #124 all year. Apparently playing stronger competition does not help them.