Week 9 College Football Rankings Setup

Another big week of top ranked teams clashing. What are the expected changes to the rankings in the Week 10 AP Poll?

I’ve done the math and this time should be the last time we need to focus on the AP poll. In years past, it has aligned with Week 10 rankings, but this year it matches up with Week 11. Regardless of which poll we all pay attention to, it should be a great weekend of college football.

Current Rankings Predictions

Here are the current predictions of how the AP poll rankings will look after Week 9. As a reminder, here is how the Rankings Right Now algorithm figures out how to rank each team before, during, and after the games have completed.

• For games that have not yet been played, it takes the Las Vegas spread for each game to identify an “expected” score

• For games in progress, it uses the same “expected” score until the start of the second half, when it then references the live game score

• For games that have completed, it uses the final score of the game

It’s Not How You Start

At the beginning of the season, both LSU and Texas A&M lost a tough Week 1 matchup. LSU, who was ranked #13 at the time, lost to USC and dropped to
#18. TAMU, who lost to Notre Dame at home, went from #20 to unranked.

Well, times have changed. Both teams are now currently ranked higher than where the preseason started and have overcome their initial setback. Now they go head to head in College Station with huge college football playoff implications on the line.

Vegas is currently favoring the Aggies to win 28-26, but whoever wins this game will get a nice boost in the rankings. They might not be the highest AP ranked teams in their own conference, but they are at the top of the leaderboard. Everyone loves to talk about Georgia, Texas, and Tennessee, but LSU and Texas A&M are the only undefeated teams in the conference.

The current predicted outcome generates a huge jump for Texas A&M, moving them up to #8 in the rankings. This would also drop LSU, who would now have two losses on the year and two other games that could have very well been losses, down to #19.

How about if LSU can win on the road? Using the What If simulation tool, flipping the score in LSU’s favor only moves up LSU one spot. Why? Nobody ahead of them is predicted to lose, and Tennessee is on a bye week which gives a slight edge to LSU for having a high quality win. Not a big jump in terms of rankings numbers, but still moving up closer to those top four teams is always a big deal. As for the Aggies, they will be sent back to right where they started the year in the 20’s area.

BYU Is The…Underdog?

BYU is one of the last undefeated teams in the country, which would make you think going to 3-4 UCF would have them as a near certain favorite in their game.

NOT. SO. FAST.

To my surprise (and maybe a lot of other fans in Utah), BOTH ESPN and Vegas have them as underdogs. As a quick reminder, BYU is the away team, UCF is the home team. Take a look at the timeline of the win probabilities and spread of this game as time has gone on.

The win percentages have stayed roughly the same, but have always favored UCF with approximately a 54% chance of winning the game. The spread (which is from the home team’s point of view) has shifted from UCF being a +1 underdog to now being a -2.5 favorite.

Once again using the What If simulation tool, we can alter this game to be what should happen when an unbeaten, top 11 team in the country plays a unranked, sub .500 team on the road, which could be a convincing 30-17 win.

Even with a big win, the model does not anticipate BYU to gain any ground in the AP poll. For a more full understanding of BYU’s full range of expected results, I ran 10,000 simulations of Week 9 of all games to see where BYU could end up in the next rankings release. Overall, BYU with a win has a minority chance (33.6%) of moving into the top 10, but definitely not impossible. They are most likely going to stay at #11.

You Sunk My Battleship

This is where we figure out if the hype is real. The #24 Navy Midshipmen host the #12 Notre Dame Fighting Irish in what will be the inflection point of Navy’s entire season. Navy does not have another (currently) ranked team until they would play in the American Athletic Conference championship game - most likely against Army - or until they play the Armed Forces Bowl against…Army.

Currently, Vegas has ND winning 32-19. Even though the Fighting Irish would be beating a ranked team, they are currently predicted to move down one spot down to #13 due to #15 Alabama predicted to beat #21 Missouri, and Indiana continuing to move up in the polls after a forecasted convincing win against unranked Washington.

But what happens if Navy can win this game? I’d expect a low scoring game against Notre Dame and finishing with a field goal to win at the end, 20-17. This would cause some shift in the rankings, but nothing unbelievable. Both Army and Navy would crack into the top 20, with Notre Dame falling right behind them at #21.

Simulation Results

Here are some of the results from teams who are predicted to be in the top 20 of the Week 10 AP poll. There were 10,000 simulations of Week 9 games that were run, then used the trained AP poll machine learning algorithm to make predictions based on the results of that week.

Some things that stood out in the simulation

• Texas has over a 90% chance of beating Vanderbilt according to the ESPN FPI Win %, but Vandy is on a roll. With a loss, Texas is looking at somewhere in the #10-#14 range in the next rankings release. If they win, they’re predicted to stay in the #4 - #6 area

• There were 20 simulations where Illinois was ranked in the top four. They would need a convincing win against #1 Oregon to make it happen

• Tennessee doesn’t have a game this week, but if enough crazy upsets happen, there were 30 simulations where they were ranked #4

College Rank Em Challenge

Reminder for everyone to get their picks in for the College Rank Em Challenge! Deadline closes at noon ET kickoff.

Never heard of this before? Check out this video that walks through the fun competition!

What’s Next?

• Watch football all day Saturday

• Newsletter Sunday morning going through everything we watched over the weekend and the final Rankings Right Now predictions for the Week 10 AP Poll

• Newsletter Monday morning evaluating the Rankings Right Now final predictions with the true Week 10 AP poll rankings

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