Week 5 USA Today Coaches' Poll RANK TEAM RECORD PTS PVS 1. Oklahoma (57) 4-0 1520 2 2. LSU (1) 4-0 1399 6 3. Missouri 4-0 1398 5 4. Alabama (2) 5-0 1350 10 5. Texas (1) 4-0 1310 7 6. Penn State 5-0 1146 12 7. BYU 4-0 1054 11 8. Texas Tech 4-0 1047 9 9. USC 2-1 990 1 10. Georgia 4-1 888 3 10. South Florida 5-0 888 14 12. Ohio State 4-1 854 13 13. Florida 3-1 832 4 14. Auburn 4-1 776 16 15. Utah 5-0 684 17 16. Kansas 3-1 555 18 17. Wisconsin 3-1 521 8 18. Boise State 3-0 446 20 19. Vanderbilt 4-0 351 25 20. Oregon 4-1 286 22 21. Fresno State 3-1 280 24 22. Oklahoma State 4-0 229 NR 23. Connecticut 5-0 180 NR 24. Virginia Tech 4-1 161 NR 25. Wake Forest 3-1 148 15 Others Receiving Votes Northwestern 98, Michigan State 88, Kentucky 86, Ball State 43, Maryland 40, Tulsa 38, Florida State 31, TCU 25, California 20, Georgia Tech 18, Illinois 14, Nebraska 8, Oregon State 6, North Carolina 5, Clemson 5, Notre Dame 3, Cincinnati 2, Duke 1, Ole Miss 1
AP Top 25 Week 5 RANK TEAM RECORD PTS PVS 1. Oklahoma (43) 4-0 1599 2 2. Alabama (21) 5-0 1565 8 3. LSU 4-0 1466 5 4. Missouri (1) 4-0 1453 6 5. Texas 4-0 1362 7 6. Penn State 5-0 1252 12 7. Texas Tech 4-0 1105 10 8. BYU 4-0 1098 11 9. USC 2-1 1087 1 10. South Florida 5-0 1035 13 11. Georgia 4-1 1018 3 12. Florida 3-1 914 4 13. Auburn 4-1 860 15 14. Ohio State 4-1 829 14 15. Utah 5-0 713 17 16. Kansas 3-1 650 18 17. Boise State 3-0 549 19 18. Wisconsin 3-1 520 9 19. Vanderbilt 4-0 459 21 20. Virginia Tech 4-1 290 NR 21. Oklahoma State 4-0 277 NR 22. Fresno State 3-1 232 25 23. Oregon 4-1 199 NR 24. Connecticut 5-0 126 NR 25. Wake Forest 3-1 107 16 Others Receiving Votes Maryland 46, Michigan State 42, Kentucky 40, Ball State 38, Northwestern 32, Tulsa 32, TCU 30, Illinois 24, North Carolina 21, Florida State 14, Ole Miss 13, Georgia Tech 10, California 5, Nebraska 5, Oregon State 3, Boston College 3, Colorado 2
These rankings are fraudulant. None of this matters in the grand scheme of the season yet, but I found more folly in these rankings than I normally do. I know the AP ranking is meaningless, but most fans still use it to gauge their perceptions.
1. How has Alabama not been the most impressive team so far? Theres no real proof to say that they're better than OU or LSU, and the Clemson win looks less impressive as each week goes by, but no other top team can claim to have the resume that 'Bama currently has.
2. USC has still earned a top 10 ranking and has shown to be the best 1-loss team out there. Really? No offense to Oregon St, but they're barely a bowl team. I realize the voters our giving WAY more love for the Ohio St win then I believe it deserves, but wouldnt this loss be at least as bad as the Ohio St win was good? This certainly cant be a case where they think everyone ranked below them is a worse team can they?
3. Florida higher than Vanderbilt. Huh? FLA's wins over Tenn and Miami have lost luster. Vanderbilt doesnt have a "big" win either, but they're undefeated and beat the team that beat FLA. I can buy one believing that FLA is better than Vanderbilt, but shouldn't FLA have to earn a higher ranking first? Considering they have no "big" win and Ole Miss is not going to be mistaken for ranked team this year, this ranking is too high in relation to many of the teams ranked below them.
4. We all know I think OSU is ranked to high, but what galls me is the relation to where they're ranked based on where USC is ranked. Basically the coaches are telling us that only 2 teams, South Florida and Georgia, are the only 2 teams ranked below USC that could stay within 32 points of them in the Colliseum. Unless maybe were talking about the title game, there's no way that two teams with similar records that played a game decided by 32 points should be ranked within 3 spots of each other. Either rank USC up in the top2 if you are so impressed with the win over OSU, or rank OSU much lower for not even belonging on the same field as USC.
5. Wisonsin? That had to be one of the worst losses by anybody, ranked or not. Too me, that loss was every bit as bad as Maryland's loss to Middle Tennessee, maybe worse. Sorry, but that Fresno win is looking less impressive also, considering they lost to said Wisconsin at home and had to hang on against a poor UCLA.
6. Fresno St: See above.
7. Wake Forrest: Navy. Obviously they need to stay ranked ahead of Florida St, but they should be behind most of the teams in the ORV since it looks like the only win they can use to try to offset the ugliness of the loss to Navy is their rousing win over Florida St.
Its a shame to me that the voters spend so little time analyzing their rankings. Why play the games in the results arent going to matter?
While I agree with some of your comments the FLA one is off IMO. (Yes I am a UF fan) The main thing is about Ole Miss. They should have beat that Vandy team you are high on. (They fumbled on the one yard line with only a few minutes left in that game, they should have won.) They also should have beaten Wake at Wake. (I know this doesn't look like much b/c of Navy, but still Ole Miss is not a bad team) Their offensive and defensive line starters are very good because Orgeron actually recruited solid players. Further, UF imploded in that game in the second half. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. We had not turned the ball over the entire season and yet we have 5 fumbles and lost 3 of them in this game. Ole Miss had a short field for 3 of their scoring drives and it took an XP block to win that game. I have them at 14 and feel that is where they should be right now.
Dee is right on here with the UF/Vandy thing. Vandy lost because Ole Miss handed the game away by dropping the ball as they were going in for the winning touchdown (he didn't even get hit on the ball or anything, he just dropped it). Florida lost 2 fumbles on bad exchanges of a handoff, had a WR with possibly the best hands on the team drop two crucial passes including a touchdown and a crucial first down, blew a coverage on the game's most important play, and missed an extra point and still lost by 1 with a chance to win it at the end. Florida has never fumbled an exchange under Meyer, so it's pretty safe to say that fumbling two of them isn't something likely to be repeated. Likewise, Murph has less than 5 drops in two years, so it's unlikely we'll see him drop two in a game again. I think it's pretty safe to say that if Florida played Ole Miss 100 times they'd win more of them than Vandy would playing Ole Miss 100 times by quite a lot. Not that it matters, since using the transitive property in college football is pretty much impossible to backup anyway. It would be one thing if Vandy beat them by 50.
We all know you use this different system of trying to take opinion out of things, but you're alone on that so I'm not sure why you continue to act surprised when you see everyone else with different rankings. Your system is really impossible to apply over time. Team A beat team B which beat team C, and team E beat team D, but team D beat team A so team B is better than team Z, etc. With 119 teams and 11+ game seasons the permutations are just too high, and they eventually contradict themselves. Team A beat team B which beat team C, so obviously A is better than C, right? But then C plays A and beats them by 50. It just doesn't work the way you're stretching things out.
Further, you're hypocritical towards your own "who deserves it more" or "who's proved it more" attitude. E.G.:
Team A has beaten Eastern Washington, Nevada, SMU, and Massachusettes. All four of those teams are nothing teams, none of them have looked good at any point this year.
Team B has beaten Washington St, Houston, Missouri State, and Troy. Of those 4 teams, one is a BCS conference team, one has beaten a ranked team, and one stayed close with a top 20 team. Definitely a more impressive list of 4 teams than that in team A's list. And, they blew them all out.
Team A is Texas Tech, who you had ranked 12th. Team B is Oklahoma State, who you ranked allllllllllllllll the way down at 24th. Team B definitely "deserves" more at this point based on what they've done, yet you have Team A not only ranked ahead of them, but TWELVE spots ahead of them. Now, that was before this week, but I highly doubt you had bumped Ok St up over TT this week based on their win against Troy prior to reading this. Why did you have TT higher? Because you THINK they're a better team. That same THINKING that has you chastising others.
There are several more examples of this (USF 10th even though USF has beaten a team that you ranked in the top 20, while you had Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Mizzou, Alabama, and Wisconsin ahead of them while none of those teams had beaten a single team that you had ranked), and that was after 3 games for most teams. After 11 games, it's just going to be a laundry list of contradictions.
Free Bagel wrote:Dee is right on here with the UF/Vandy thing. Vandy lost because Ole Miss handed the game away by dropping the ball as they were going in for the winning touchdown (he didn't even get hit on the ball or anything, he just dropped it). Florida lost 2 fumbles on bad exchanges of a handoff, had a WR with possibly the best hands on the team drop two crucial passes including a touchdown and a crucial first down, blew a coverage on the game's most important play, and missed an extra point and still lost by 1 with a chance to win it at the end. Florida has never fumbled an exchange under Meyer, so it's pretty safe to say that fumbling two of them isn't something likely to be repeated. Likewise, Murph has less than 5 drops in two years, so it's unlikely we'll see him drop two in a game again. I think it's pretty safe to say that if Florida played Ole Miss 100 times they'd win more of them than Vandy would playing Ole Miss 100 times by quite a lot. Not that it matters, since using the transitive property in college football is pretty much impossible to backup anyway. It would be one thing if Vandy beat them by 50.
We all know you use this different system of trying to take opinion out of things, but you're alone on that so I'm not sure why you continue to act surprised when you see everyone else with different rankings. Your system is really impossible to apply over time. Team A beat team B which beat team C, and team E beat team D, but team D beat team A so team B is better than team Z, etc. With 119 teams and 11+ game seasons the permutations are just too high, and they eventually contradict themselves. Team A beat team B which beat team C, so obviously A is better than C, right? But then C plays A and beats them by 50. It just doesn't work the way you're stretching things out.
Further, you're hypocritical towards your own "who deserves it more" or "who's proved it more" attitude. E.G.:
Team A has beaten Eastern Washington, Nevada, SMU, and Massachusettes. All four of those teams are nothing teams, none of them have looked good at any point this year.
Team B has beaten Washington St, Houston, Missouri State, and Troy. Of those 4 teams, one is a BCS conference team, one has beaten a ranked team, and one stayed close with a top 20 team. Definitely a more impressive list of 4 teams than that in team A's list. And, they blew them all out.
Team A is Texas Tech, who you had ranked 12th. Team B is Oklahoma State, who you ranked allllllllllllllll the way down at 24th. Team B definitely "deserves" more at this point based on what they've done, yet you have Team A not only ranked ahead of them, but TWELVE spots ahead of them. Now, that was before this week, but I highly doubt you had bumped Ok St up over TT this week based on their win against Troy prior to reading this. Why did you have TT higher? Because you THINK they're a better team. That same THINKING that has you chastising others.
There are several more examples of this (USF 10th even though USF has beaten a team that you ranked in the top 20, while you had Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Mizzou, Alabama, and Wisconsin ahead of them while none of those teams had beaten a single team that you had ranked), and that was after 3 games for most teams. After 11 games, it's just going to be a laundry list of contradictions.
No. I'm not a hypocrite. I just missed that one and I wouldnt doubt if theres other flaws like that in my rankings. Also, despite your misconception, I do use some opinion in my rankings, I just try not to let it override obvious results. Dont be a douche bag because you disagree with how I perceive to be the correct way to try to rank teams. Its a drum I will continue to beat. If I cant get you to use some logic with your rankings I may still be able to convince someone else. I disagree with you on many topics, but cant think of any time where I've tried to be disrespectful.
Heres what I find hypocritical: You want a playoff to "settle things on the field" yet when the actual results dont match your opinion of how things should've played out, or how you think things wouldve played out if we could redo them 99 more times, you just disregard the facts and rank based on your fantasy world. The thought process your applying to the ranking would be find if youre doing that for every team, every game, but I doubt it. Youre going to base rankings off opinions of games you've seen, but only use the box score, and maybe the write up, for other games. A clear bias.
Because the real voters rank like you do is why there's so many arguments. If linear logic were applied, many may not like the results, but they'll understand that "their" team didnt take care of business like they should have even if they believe that 99 of 100 times "their" team wouldve won. For someone who wants things "settled on the field" you have a strange way of disregarding what happens on the field in your rankings. If you were in charge, and Ole Miss or Vanderbilt won a playoff game over FLA in a game that FLA shouldve won, are you going to call shennanigans and let FLA move on in the playoff? Sounds like you would.
I must have mistyped if I came off "surprised" by the rankings. In fact it was just the opposite. All I was trying to do was point out what I beleived to be clearly a case of "helmet" ranking versus results ranking, and if it started some fun, jocular discussion where someone might provide a point of view that I hadn't considered.
One thing I will agree on is that after so many games, using solely a transitive process, the logic will start to circulate. At that point, the other factors become more valuable in the process, road v home record, records of opponents, etc. Were only 5 weeks in so theres not much circular logic out there right now. The transitive property should always be used when ranking teams against unbalanced schedules. Ultimately, like them or not, those are the actual results.
HskrPwr13 wrote:Dont be a douche bag because you disagree with how I perceive to be the correct way to try to rank teams. Its a drum I will continue to beat. If I cant get you to use some logic with your rankings I may still be able to convince someone else. I disagree with you on many topics, but cant think of any time where I've tried to be disrespectful.
It was not my intent to be in the least bit disrespectful. I just read through my post again and I'm not really sure what you're keying on that you read it that way. Perhaps it's because the word "hypocritical" generally has a negative connotation, but that's not how I intended it. Perhaps "contradictory" would've been a better choice of words, but I felt like we were overusing that word. I was merely pointing out that upon looking at your rankings for 5 seconds I could find two examples of your system falling into the same traps that you were chastising others for falling into. I'm sure if I really sat down and dissected them I could find plenty more. I'm sure that's partially because you're not an actual AP voter so you're not putting a ton of time into it and miss some things, but nonentheless the further we get into the season the more those types of things are going to be unavoidable.
HskrPwr13 wrote:Heres what I find hypocritical: You want a playoff to "settle things on the field" yet when the actual results dont match your opinion of how things should've played out, or how you think things wouldve played out if we could redo them 99 more times, you just disregard the facts and rank based on your fantasy world.
...
For someone who wants things "settled on the field" you have a strange way of disregarding what happens on the field in your rankings. If you were in charge, and Ole Miss or Vanderbilt won a playoff game over FLA in a game that FLA shouldve won, are you going to call shennanigans and let FLA move on in the playoff? Sounds like you would.
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm not going to take my desire for a certain system and apply the logic that would be used in that to a system it doesn't fit into. I happen to disagree with many laws that are in place in the US, but that doesn't mean I'm going to disregard them and act as if those laws were the way I wanted them to be.
I've mentioned several times that a playoff system shows very little in determining who is actually the "best" team. But a playoff system doesn't claim to find the best team, just the team that wins the playoffs. If Ole Miss beats Florida in a playoff game then that doesn't necessarily mean they're better, but they move on.
But, in the system we have now we ARE trying to find the best teams based on what we've seen. I'm not going to take the logic from one system and apply it to another. I'm not going to treat every game like we're playing a playoff starting week 1 where all that matters are W's and L's and the two teams with the best record end up playing each other. Otherwise we would have been very close to watching Hawaii play Boise St for the National Championship last year.
HskrPwr13 wrote:The transitive property should always be used when ranking teams against unbalanced schedules. Ultimately, like them or not, those are the actual results.
This is really just a debate on which is more fallable, onto which there is no real answer. Most people see two teams, using their body of work and what they see with the "eye test", and try to figure out who would win between them. Is that fallable? Absolutely. People that do such are commonly wrong, and often right.
The transitive property is no different. We see it all the time. Team A beats Team B, and Team B beats Team C, but then Team C kills Team A when they play. The transitive property says Stanford will beat USC this year and Vanderbilt will beat Florida. It also says that Duke and Ball State will beat Wake.
Now, some of those may very well happen, but chances are that no more than 1 out of the 3 will (Ball State doesn't play Wake). So then we're left with Ball State vs. Wake, who don't play. Who would win between the two? The transitive property says Ball State, but the transitive property is clearly very fallable (as is perception and opinion) as we'll see in those other games I brought up.
Again, it'll only get worse as the season goes on, especially depending on how many degrees of seperation we go. Over time, I think that the transitive property is going to show itself far less reliable than people's sometimes flawed opinion based on what they've seen.
This all is kind of irrelevant at this point though, and we'll of course have to revisit it at the end of the year. The two systems will naturally end up with results closer and closer to each other as more data becomes available, it's just now so early in the year that they differ so much. If your system says that some unknown undefeated team is a top 15 team for beating a bunch of unknowns and it's right and that's really a top 15 team, then they'll keep winning and the other voters will move them up too. If your system is wrong, then they'll lose and drop out of your system just like they were out of the other people's system as well. The same even goes for the big name teams. I'm sure you'll have USC and Florida ranked very lowly based on their body of work thusfar. If you're system is right and they're not very good, they'll keep losing and drop further in other people's polls as well. If your system is wrong and they just had a bad day, they'll get some good wins and move up in yours.
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by HskrPwr13 » Sun Sep 28, 2008 5:27 pm 
