Week 5 (counting from Week 0) was another week where we learned a lot about where the field is headed. Some of the notable results included:
#21 Notre Dame ruining ESPN College GameDay's first visit to Durham pushing past #14 Duke
#24 Oregon State after a tough loss at Washington State handed #13 Utah its first loss.
#48 USC, with its Charmin-soft schedule to date, got a big road win at #15 Colorado
#2 Texas knocked #30 Kansas from the unbeatens with the help of Jaylon Daniels, the Jayhawks' marvelous QB being a late scratch.
#16 Ole Miss winning a barn burner with LSU and pushing LSU into two-loss land for now. Will LSU still be able to make my fake bracket? It's a tall order.
#50 Clemson thumps #23 Syracuse. Though 3-2, Clemson has played a reasonably tough slate.
Putting this into the modeling machine, and we get this:
Now, you can sort of see how the rankings change as we learn more about the season. Notre Dame moved up to #8 after defeating Duke. But Ohio State ALSO moved up because of the increased value of their road win. Now, we expect the jumps to shrink as the season goes (as well as the spreads between the 20th and 80th round robin win %), but the volatility so far is a feature, not a bug. Again, with the season still early - we will defer to unbeatens where it makes sense.
And now, the 12 Team Bracketology
Conference Champions:
ACC: Miami-FL (4)
Big 12: Texas (1)
Pac 12: Washington State (3)
Big Ten: Ohio State (2)
SEC: Missouri (17)
MAC: Miami-OH (44)
MWC: Air Force (32)
Sun Belt: James Madison (34)
American: Memphis (41)
CUSA: Liberty (38)
At Large:
Penn State (5)
Michigan (6)
Oregon (7)
Florida State (11)
Oklahoma (12)
USC (13)
Just off the bubble
Washington (16)
North Carolina (20)
Maryland (25)
Georgia (26)
Bracket - moving first round matches as needed to avoid intraconference 1st rounds
(1) Texas
(8) Florida State v (10) USC
(4) Miami-FL
(5) Penn State v (12) Air Force
(2) Ohio State
(7) Oregon (9) v Oklahoma
(3) Washington State
(6) Michigan v (11) Missouri
Comments