The Book 2016: Week 4

Through three weeks of the college football season, there seems to be little controversy around who the top three teams in the country are.  Alabama, Ohio State and now the Louisville Cardinals have somewhat separated themselves from a tier of teams like Clemson, Houston, Stanford and Michigan at roughly the quarter point of the 2016 season.

That would be the way our CFP committee style Book ranking as well as our Book power poll see it too.

The CFP method we are using this year that evaluates your wins and losses to date lists the Tide #1, OSU #2, with Louisville #5 behind Texas A&M and Houston.

The Power poll version of the Book lists #1 Ohio State, #2 Alabama, #3 Louisville, #4 Michigan and #5 Stanford.  So far, I think so good!

Not surprisingly we had another week of massive swings in ratings by looking at it this way, but we now do see how strength of your wins and losses is more important than just won/loss record.  FSU, albeit destroyed by Louisville, California, UCLA, Texas, North Carolina, LSU, South Carolina, Pittsburgh, TCU and Penn State all have greater rankings than at least one (and in most cases more than one), undefeated team, so we are starting to see how this can morph over time.

One of the interesting comparisons this week are our own Boston College Eagles, who not surprisingly took a precipitous drop all the way down to #97, interestingly seven spots behind the UMass Minutemen at #90, who they handled pretty easily just two weeks ago.

Foul you call! Well perhaps, but not in the context we are looking at it here.

In the power poll, BC sits significantly above UMass. The Eagles at #77 and the Minutemen at #119, much more in line with what you would expect if we were just talking who is better.  If the two teams happened to play again, right now BC would be a 16 1/2 point favorite on a neutral field, but when you strictly compare resumes to date, the Book actually views UMass' one win over FIU and two losses to BC and to Florida as slightly more impressive than BC's win over UMass and its two losses to Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech.  Arguable, well of course, but the margin between the two is razor thin.

As you may know, the Book doesn't produce spreads for FBS vs FCS games, so to make sure we don't lose out on capturing those results, we use the Sagarin ratings and point spreads to account for those games.  That said, say hello to Howard 2016 version as Boston College is a 46.8 point favorite over this year's punching bag, Wagner.

The Seahawks are ranked #234 out of 253 FCS programs, so very similar to Howard who was #236 in the Sagarin poll when they played BC last year and entered the game a 44.7 point underdog.

Take a look as well at the top of the poll in particular, where there is beginning to be more agreement with our method and the Sagarin and Massey polls, week by week.  We will get there!

The Book enjoyed the ultimate so-so week..exactly .500 at 26-26-1.  So while the percentage improved, we didn't cut into the sub .500 deficit for the year now at 47.1 percent through three weeks.

Enjoy the games and Go Eagles!

Note:  the Massey composite rankings are as of Tuesday night, September 20.