2024 NCAA Football Objective Ranks, Week 2
A deck reshuffled: See who’s at the top of the leaderboard in key predictive metrics.
Each week, my system identifies the Top 25 FBS football programs in terms of performance against strength of schedule (PASS), scoring tempo (sTem), and a true win percentage (tWin%). To learn more, check out the season kickoff, and last year’s primer. As the 2024 season progresses I’ll visualize how top teams are trending, as well as each conference’s total value.
Week 2
Huge upsets! Wild swings in the rankings! We’ve already answered one big question: 2024 is not a year where one team will top these objective rankings from start to finish. All of the tables have new leaders in Week 2. Not all of the movement is up top. After last week’s clean sweep of the FCS the basement also grows a little larger, with Kent State, UTEP, and Wyoming accruing three more losses to lower division schools.
The CFP Committee has always been a bit clandestine in how they rank and value football programs. Are wins truly everything? Or does performance (Or more specifically recent performance!) matter more? Plenty of schools and their fans have valid gripes. Almost every year, playoff-worthy teams find themselves mired in lesser bowl games. The closed-doors committee may not value transparency, so these objective rankings are here to offer stability in their place.
The tWin% Top 25
True win percentage gets the big Week 2 shakeup. Oklahoma makes way for Alabama to claim the top spot as twelve new faces join the party.
Gone already are North Texas and UTSA, replaced by the likes of Louisiana-Monroe and Navy. With another week of stats to validate these positions, the Warhawks and Midshipmen carry a bit more clout than the schools they’ve replaced. Can they stick around another week?
I’d like to draw attention to the addition of rank change on the right, while calling out that it’s an anomalous week in terms of those changes. Last week more than half of the schools were yet to register a PASS grade for play against a fellow FBS team. UCF technically moved up more spots than South Carolina, but were getting their first grade after carrying a zero value last week. South Carolina was previously ranked ahead of that pack — at #33 — before rising twenty-four spots into the top 10. Next week these rank changes will be solidified because now we’ll be working with a complete set of data.
Only 14 teams remain with a 100% tWin value, with FCS opponents graded by performance at a fraction of one full win. We’re already down to just six schools — Ohio State, Texas, Penn State, USC, Arizona State, and UCLA —who have a shot at wire-to-wire perfection this season.
Highest Rise
#9 South Carolina, mentioned above.
Biggest Fall
Their opponents, #71 Kentucky, tumble down sixty-nine spots from #2. Losing 31–6 on your home field is as brutal as it gets, and similarly crushes Kentucky’s sTem rank (#12 all the way down to #98). Adding insult to injury, this in-conference loss buries the Wildcats at the bottom of perhaps the most competitive edition of the SEC to date.
The PASS Top 25
Similar to above, there’s a big shakeup among teams who have had the best performances to date against their individual strength of schedule.
At this early stage in the season all of the schools depicted are on the rise. The Crimson Tide took the largest leap forward after crushing a good South Florida team (But not covering their massive spread, as predicted here last week!). Last year USC was the team to take off early before falling all the way off, going just 7–5 during the season. We also see the potential legitimacy of a team like Louisiana-Monroe, standing alone amidst the power conference programs. Last year James Madison saw a steady rise from a similar position.
The sTem Top 25
It’s nearly impossible to imagine any team in this era keeping up the blistering paces of last week’s blowouts over lesser-division foes. At #1, Mississippi comes the closest to posting video game numbers, upping their total season score to 122–3. Will they keep it up and blow the doors off a Wake Forest team that doesn’t look particularly strong? Our previous sTem leader, Auburn, took a little dive to 7th after losing at home to Cal.
Conference Ranks
With two full weeks of play in the rear view mirror we can start visualizing the respective power of each conference. While this rarely impacts the sit-start/coaching-carousel manufactured chaos of many bowl games, it’s still fun to track for bragging rights, especially in inter-conference rivalry games. As the season progresses we should see tiers clearly emerge here, and those might have very real implications when it comes time for the newly expanded playoff.
The PAC12 and Independents will likely be a bit more tumultuous in these charts due to only having two or three members. It’s a lot easier to float to the top when you don’t have any struggling programs dragging you down. It’s also a lot easier to sink from one big loss.
Week 2 Games to Watch
#13 Missouri (-16.5) VS #22 Boston College / PASS rank
I’m glad to see that opinion pollsters valued both of these teams as early as they have. Not only are these two teams in the PASS Top 25, but come in at #11 and #12 in the sTem ranks, respectively. It’s a pivotal game for both programs knowing the following week’s opponents (Vanderbilt and Michigan State) also find themselves among these objective ranks. The spread may be worth a look here, unless you’re a believer in the inferiority of the ACC as seen above.
#8 Washington State VS #23 Washington (Neutral, -8.5) / sTem rank
One of this year’s earliest in-state rivalries has shaped up to be a pretty competitive one. Clearly there will be animosity after the breakup of the PAC12 and the way its members fled off into the night. The Cougars might not be the Vegas favorite, but they’ve certainly got motivation. After scoring 70 points in Week 1 and stifling Texas Tech to just 16 points in Week 2, WSU also had the objectively more impressive opening to the season. A new-look Huskies team devoid of DeBoer will aim to prove it belongs amongst the powers of the Big Ten. Covering this spread would be validating, as Washington State sits a ways back at #38 in PASS rank.
#13 Toledo @ #21 Mississippi State (-11.5) / sTem rank
I’ve still got to get used to this Group of 7 terminology. It’s nice to write about Toledo as an underdog, even if it’s not the first Group of 7 team in these ‘Games to Watch’. The team with the higher sTem rank only won 62.82% of games last week, but that included winners like Northern Illinois over Notre Dame. Mississippi State looks classically overrated after blowing out an FCS school and losing to an unheralded Arizona State team. Will the Bulldogs rebound on home field, or receive a Rockets-powered nail to the coffin?
With the first two games of Week 3 tonight, every college football weekend is a long weekend! Good luck to you, your teams, and any bets you’re chasing. Next week we’ll see which teams can build upon their early season momentum as playoff hopefuls, and who looks more likely to join a fast-growing club of pretenders.
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