There’s no question as to who is No. 1
this year on the football field — it’s the LSU Tigers after they
thrashed Ohio State in the BCS Championship Game.
The question is, where do the other teams
fall?
Each year for probably 20 years, I have
kept a computer ranking going based on a very simple procedure. It was
actually suggested by Skip Holtz’ dad, Lou, when he was head coach at
Arkansas and didn’t win the national championship, despite having an
outstanding season.
The elder Holtz suggested giving a team
three points for every game it won, two for every game one of its
victims won, and so on into the third level of competition.
So a computer whiz friend of mine put
together such a ranking, although we had to tweak it a bit. At that
time, ties were still a part of collegiate football, so we had to
account for them and didn’t want to use half points.
We upped the total points awarded to
account for several other quirks that showed up during the first couple
of seasons.
We also didn’t feel that playing a
non-Division I-A (Bowl Subdivision) team should reward a team with the
same number of points. So, no points were allowed for the third level.
And if a team played a Division II or III
squad, it received only the first-level points.
Since its inception, only once have the
rankings failed to match the final No. 1 team on the Associated Press or
the Coaches’ polls.
However, after the top teams, there
appears to be a lot of differences.
This year, just as on the major polls,
Georgia managed a second-place finish, just beating out West Virginia,
which finished third on my rankings and sixth on the AP.
Ohio State, which took fifth on the AP
poll, managed only a dismal 12th place, despite going into the bowls
ranked No. 1 nationwide. The reason — the Buckeyes’ schedule wasn’t as
tough as it may have looked.
Missouri was my No. 4 team, followed by
Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia Tech and Southern Cal. Kansas and Boston
College rounded out the Top 10.
The second 10 in my rankings were Oregon,
Ohio State, Florida, Michigan, Brigham Young, Texas, South Florida,
Arizona State, Cincinnati and Oregon State.
Rounding out the final Top 25 were
Illinois, Auburn, Kentucky, Clemson and Virginia.
Hawaii, which played two non-Division I-A
schools, fell to 33rd, while AP No. 22 Texas Tech came in 35th and AP
No. 24 Wisconsin dropped to 40th.
East Carolina, helped along by its upset
of Boise State — which ended up 46th — tied the Badgers for 40th, just
beating out Rutgers by eight points.
Among Atlantic Coast Conference teams,
Wake Forest finished 27th, Florida State was 38th, Maryland was 52nd,
N.C. State was 66th, Georgia Tech 74th, Miami was 81st, North Carolina
was 91st, and Duke was 114th.
Conference USA brought home Central
Florida at 30th, Tulsa at 37th, Southern Miss 76th, Memphis 82nd,
Houston 83rd, Texas-El Paso 84th, Marshall 96th, Rice 106th, UAB 117th,
and Southern Methodist 118th.
Surprisingly, there were no winless teams
in the country this season, a rare occasion. Duke, SMU, Florida
International and Idaho managed one win apiece.
