2009 Week 8 Rankings: The Big Game Blowout

Because my rankings are so stats based, there is always one problem that seems to perplex me. You will notice that Texas has dropped from No. 3 to No. 4 even though they are still undefeated and new No. 3 USC has one loss.

This happens for a couple of reasons.

The first, well, Oklahoma is not that good anymore and Texas did not get the usual boost from a game against them that they would in the strength of schedule. The Longhorns got credited with less quality wins and that 1.5 point bump to their strength of schedule was certainly something out of their control.

Obviously they did not move around too much in the polls -- computer or human. So the only explanation is that big games hurt. You are playing a better team and you are going to have worse stats.

Take another curiosity, No. 2 Florida closed the gap on No. 1 Alabama by nearly two points this week even after narrowly escaping from Arkansas. The defensive rating took a dip, but was still strong. Why did the Gators do this? I would bet because they had an outlier in their passing performance that bumped them up the passing list.

As both teams go on with their schedule, I would assume things will settle down. I certainly believe Texas to be the third best team in the country as things stand -- although I think the closer margin is probably a better representation of how much better Alabama is than Florida.

But, again, playing against better opponents hurts the stat column and can cause some significant shifting in the stats.

This is not to encourage teams to play bad teams. The point of strength of schedule is to penalize teams that play poor teams -- play too many teams ranked in the 100s and you are adding 5-6 points to your score and a FCS team gets you 6.5 point to your overall total. I think strength of schedule needs to be a reduced factor, but without it I think a team like USC (who has a very strong schedule by the way and played a big game themselves against an unranked Notre Dame team last week) would probably be ranked even higher and these rankings would lose all legitimacy.

It will be interesting to see where Texas moves as things settle down this week.

Here is the top 15:

1. Alabama 53.22
2. Florida +5.719
3. USC +14.773
4. Texas +15.851
5. Cincinnati +22.015
6. Boise State
7. Oregon
8. TCU
9. Iowa
10. Penn State
11. Virginia Tech
12. Miami (Fl.)
13. Brigham Young
14. Georgia Tech
15. Oklahoma State
The rest of the Top 25: 16. West Virginia; 17. South Florida; 18. Kansas; 19. Oklahoma; 20. Pittsburgh; 21. LSU; 22. Ohio State; 23. Texas Tech; 24. Nebraska; 25. Utah