Top 25 posts

With Tyler's blessing, I will be posting my Top 25 (+15) and my bottom 20 teams in CFB each week.

First, a slight explanation on the rankings. They are basically without bias. I rank each team in each division, top to bottom (ties are not broken, sum of total points available are equally split). Each of the 11 conferences are ranked based on winning pct and out of conference (OOC) winning percentage. As there are only 4 independant teams, I could not create a conference for them, so I have added Notre Dame to Big East, Army and Navy to the MWC and BYU to the WAC (for ranking purposes only, they are not included in the conference winning totals).

Then each team gets positive/negative points based on the caliber of their opponents. For example, playing any team on the road (or a neutral site) is better than playing them at home. Also, playing a team from a more difficult conference is also worth more than one which is not as good (ie SEC vs Sun Belt).

After adding all the factors, the teams are ranked 1-120, with the top team worth +0.50 and the worst -0.50, with the middle 20 all worth 0. The sum of all these opponents are then added to the win total. Therefore, if two teams are 8-4, but one played Ohio St and Northern Illinois, while the other played New Mexico St and San Jose St, the first team will most likely have a better ranking (based on the other 10 games of course).

Also, FCS schools are included for calculation purposes only, but are tiered into 3 groups: >.750, between .750 and .250, and <.250. Basically the best FCS teams equate to a lower tier non-FCS school while the bad FCS schools are really penalized.

In any case, I believe my system works fairly well in showing how schools are matched. However, the system is obviously more well balanced when there are more data points (ie later in the season). Early in the year, there will be severe swings of schools moving up and down. Around Week 8, they will look closer to what one would consider "AP like". So if you see some random teams from time to time, usually that is because their early schedule is front loaded with more difficult teams.

Tyler had asked me to provide a preseason Top 25, but as my system requires data points, that is tough to do. I tried predicting all the games in the season. This is folly of course. I did try and ran the numbers for that, but my final Top 10 had 3 Big10, 3 Big 12, and no SEC teams. So I decided not to use that posting, because you and I both know, that won't happen. My prediction skills cannot be that good.

But I will provide the schools I feel will have 9 or more wins from each conference (not in order):

ACC: Fla St, NC St, VA Tech, GA Tech

Big12: Oklahoma, Okla St, Tex A&M, Texas

Big East: West VA, South Fla

Big10: Ohio St, Wisconsin, Mich St, Nebraska, Iowa

Pac12: Oregon, Stanford, Utah, USC. AZ St

SEC: South Carolina, LSU, Alabama, Arkansas

CUSA: SMU, Houston

MAC: Ohio U, Northern Illinois

MWC: TCU, Boise St, Air Force

SunBelt: None

WAC: Nevada, Fresno St

Independant: Navy (I have the Domers at 8-4, but I can see them getting to 9 as well)

Also, just for kicks, here are the teams I foresee with 2 or fewer wins: Wake Forest, Virginia, Kansas, Colorado, Ole Miss, UAB, Memphis, Tulane, Bowling Green, Central Michigan, LA_Lafayette, Western Kentucky, San Jose St.