RTT BlogPoll: Week 9 Final Ballot

by Hooper on Nov 3, 2009 4:00 PM EST Comment 4 comments

"Final" is a bit loosely defined here, as I can still make last-second switches up until tomorrow morning, but here is what will remain pending any 11th hour moves.

Rank	Team	Delta

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

Dropped Out: South Carolina (#22), Mississippi (#24), Central Michigan (#25).

Changes from the draft:

Penn State down. That was a fair consensus in the discussion.
Arizona down. Ditto. Like TCU's bump down earlier in the season, Arizona has plenty of opportunity to prove themselves; their November is brutal.

Team to Consider: Houston

Houston is determined to break the computers. Their defensive metrics are putrid, but their offensive ones are world-class. For example, their Total Offense scores at 3.31 - more than a full standard deviation ahead of Nevada at 2.26. This late in the season, that's just obscene. Is their offense that good? Were the defenses they faced that bad? I haven't threshed it out yet, but Houston bears watching. I'd like to wait one week before moving them, simply so that I'm not reacting too reflexively.

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I'd put

Boise State ahead of Iowa. That win over Oregon is really good right now, isn’t it?

Tennessee Fans: We win at teh Internet!

by bobo_the_vol on Nov 3, 2009 5:22 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I still don't understand

how Alabama is dropping during a bye week.

by HarveyBirdmanAAL on Nov 3, 2009 5:51 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Their metrics stayed the same, other people's improved

Dropping doesn’t mean you’ve gotten worse. It could mean people around you have gotten better.

by Incipient_Senescence on Nov 3, 2009 10:17 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

This.

Last week, Alabama led Texas by about a point and a half in our computer ranking, which is statistically indistinguishable from a tie. TCU was behind by less than 7 points.

This week, Texas is up by about 6 and TCU is up by about 4. Those are not big intervals at all. (Iowa, at 5 in the computer, is 17 points lower.)

Our computer rankings score on season-long quality. Alabama’s quality did not change, though their actual point tally was affected by a tiny bit because their quality relative to the mean is slightly different. (That’s because of a change in the distribution of quality.) Texas improved their quality by a very sound beating of a strong opponent and, while TCU faced a low-quality opponent in UNLV, their sheer dominance in that game earned them more quality than what they lost due to opponent quality.

Last weekend also allowed Texas and TCU to catch up to Alabama in terms of the number of opportunities to earn quality points since both Texas and TCU have already had bye weeks. (And Alabama gained quality points over both TCU and Texas when those teams had bye weeks.)

by Hooper on Nov 3, 2009 10:36 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs