2024 NCAA Football Objective Ranks — Week 4 Recap
Upsets were everywhere. How should you look at Week 5?
Opinion polls are just that: opinions, or subjective values of little worth. Each week, this system identifies the Top 25 FBS football programs in terms of objective 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 4
The previous week was full of predictable outcomes; this latest slate of games saw a natural rebalancing. PASS and sTem prediction rates fell off a cliff, but for the season are still tracking at 73.87% and 71.98%, respectively. As we see with early-season sTem scores fueled by blowouts over the FCS, unnaturally high rates are impossible to maintain. Even when PASS and sTem agree on a winner, a tight gap in value can be enough to cause pause based on the Vegas odds.
One example last week was Illinois @ Nebraska. As noted here last week, this was a top 10 matchup in terms of current performance (#9 @ #4 PASS). While PASS and sTem both revealed the Cornhuskers to be the stronger team, giving Nebraska -9.5 odds by kickoff seemed far too confident. These teams both looked great on paper (#20 @ #15 sTem), so while I was not confident in calling for an outright upset, the spread was easy to identify as suspect. The Illini snared the victory and move on with a great road win that likely havs fans buzzing with new playoff hope.
The tWin% Top 25
To evaluate the objectively most deserving playoff teams, wins over FBS teams are everything and performance is the first tie-breaker.
The reigning #1 Alabama was on a bye and saw typical fractional regression. At this point in the season teams sTem tends to slow down, while PASS victories can be worth more as the overall quality of opponent improves. You can imagine that if every team on your schedule lost, it wouldn’t be great for your own strength of schedule, or the opposite being true if all of your opponents won. All teams on a bye will likely see some natural rise or fall in value, but the Crimson Tide had an astronomical lead that was not threatened.
Looking at PASS scores here, we can easily identify some potential imposters. The military academies are unable to command objective schedule strength (oSoS) on par with power conference teams. They’d need thorough and utter destruction of their opponents to put up PASS scores that kept pace. Tracking the similar values of Navy and a team like Duke will illustrate this clearly if both teams keep winning. There are even more obvious outliers, like a school with a schedule so glaringly weak that it can’t even muster a PASS score of 1.0.
Highest Rise
#21 Louisville (From #58). The Cardinals flew up the standings with a huge leap forward in PASS following a solid win over Georgia Tech (See below). An early bye week meant that this was just their second game against the FBS; that limited data set often results in larger swings when teams play their first quality opponent.
Biggest Fall
#70 Louisiana-Monroe (From #19). One more pretender falls from up on high. Just like the birds above, the Warhawks had an early bye that left us with less data to evaluate. Their early domination of UAB looked great, but allowing Texas to cover an absolutely massive spread did not. ULM’s true value likely lies somewhere in the middle, but these kinds of blowouts are tough to recover from.
The PASS Top 25
This visualization gives us a clear picture of who is playing the best football right now.
It’s unavoidable. As much as it pains my counterculture heart, Alabama vs. Georgia is the matchup of the week here, too. Getting an early #1 versus #6 matchup at least means one of these media darlings will take a tumble in the fashion of last week’s Nebraska—currently not pictured.
One update for Week 4: Like last year, our dead last, 134th-ranked team joins the party. This is primarily to illustrate how all of the other 108 teams fill that gap between Rutgers and Wisconsin. It’s pretty close to the size of the gap between the Crimson Tide and everyone else. The Badgers might have a tough time digging out from the spotlight of shame against a USC team that wants a bounce-back win of their own.
The sTem Top 25
Ohio State tops this chart for the second straight week. Our first title defender of the year also prevents Alabama from a clean sweep of the objective leaderboards. I’m particularly curious how the quarterback news out of UNLV will impact their place in these rankings, as they’d been prolific through three games, two of which were upsets over the Big XII. sTem can also help track the value of a team like Auburn, who stumbled out of the gate with a 2–2 record but are still a very good team in terms of value per play.
Here’s James Madison! They were sTem favorites over North Carolina last week and now join the Top 25. While objectively it may have not been the biggest upset, that kind of scoring will certainly live on in the nightmares of Tar Heels’ fans for all time.
Conference Ranks
Let’s check in on which conferences are looking the most competitive right now.
In tWin% terms, the Big Ten gave up the throne. The PAC12 keeps up its tag-team chaos, as those two programs are doing a great job of shadowing the better half of power conference schools. And the also-chaotic trio of Independents rise as the most victorious in the Group of Seven. The Mountain West continued on a rebound path after being the only FBS conference to fall under .500. If you’re wondering how all of the conferences stay above water here, just look to all of those victories over the FCS (The FBS went 9–1 this past week).
It’s unsurprising that the SEC continues to rise with 5 of the top 10 teams overall. With a full slate of conference play upon us, we’ll see shortly if that has a bolstering or cannibalizing effect upon overall score. Conference USA has been in “Begging for relegation” territory all year, but the Sun Belt dipped nearly to their level of weekly weakness.
As winning percentages rise, so does tempo fall. The Sun Belt took the biggest spill, a reflection of their PASS futility above. The most surprising thing here is that the Mountain West actually picked up the pace, signaling that their scheduling actually got easier in Week 4. Sure, the Independents rose even more, but that’s much easier to do with a body of just three Universities.
Week 5 Games to Watch
Each week we’ll track some of the best matchups between the top-ranked teams of PASS and sTem. Odds are as of 4p EST on Sept. 26.
#1 Alabama VS #6 Georgia (-2) / PASS rank
Alabama is at home. Vegas and the media are saying Georgia. The stark gap the Crimson Tide have objectively over every other team screams to go against Vegas. The Tide are also #1 in sTem against the #10 Dawgs.
Arguments to the contrary? Well, USC rattled off 6 wins last year to a commanding lead in PASS, only to get absolutely gut-punched by Notre Dame (On the road, though). They followed that up by losing 4 of the 5 next games. Illinois pulled off the Top 10 win against Nebraska last week, but this is a much larger gap in PASS and sTem than between those two teams. It’s always good to remember that nothing is ever 100%.
#5 Penn State (-17) VS #16 Illinois / PASS rank
These teams are also #12 and #22 in sTem, respectively. Illinois more than covered last week. Can they simply cover a pretty big spread on the road (Again) this week, against a pundit playoff pick? Penn State has only the 79th ranked oSoS, where Illinois is 43rd.
#21 Louisville @ #24 Notre Dame (-5) / PASS rank
These teams are #4 and #17 in sTem, respectively. Vegas gives the Fighting Irish the home advantage, but Louisville should at least keep things close. ND is 44th-ranked in oSoS and Louisville is 30th, which is why the Cardinals have the current objective performance edge.
#25 Maryland @ #22 Indiana (-7) / PASS rank
sTem could be a difference-maker here. Unlike the three matchups above, the Hoosiers are #5 and the Terps are back at #40. That might just be too much to overcome on the road. It’s still got potential to be a great game!
Will the upsets continue, or will the ranks swing back towards their all-time odds of being approximately 72% correct? I hope you’ll have as much fun as I do finding out. Enjoy the games, and good luck to your teams, or on any bets you’ve got.
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