2024 NCAA Football Objective Ranks — Week 5 Recap & Week 6
The opinion polls overestimated Georgia. Who else are they too high on?
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 5
It finally feels like Fall! Well, at least on the streets of NYC it feels closer to Autumnal football weather, and I’ll take what I can get. We’ve now seen more imposters fall right off of the objective leaderboards — mere leaves swirling down. leaving us with schools that loom like imposing trees with each passing week.
We’ve also seen Vegas odds come tumbling down. Last week at time of publication, Georgia was given -5.5 odds against Alabama. That slipped in a lot of sportsbooks to a paltry -1.5 / -1 at kickoff. I’m glad to see that the larger betting public seemed to pick up on the flaws presented by the initial offerings (Or flaws in opinion poll voting!), forcing books to close the gap.
UCF, Mississippi, Illinois, Utah, Georgia, Louisville, and Maryland are gone from the objective picture, at least for now. We’ll likely see a few of those characters show up below in our performance ratings. But as we’ve heard parroted each and every year from at least some of the op-led sports writers and the talking-head crowd: Wins are supposed to matter the most! Right?
The tWin% Top 25
To evaluate the most deserving playoff teams objectively, wins over FBS teams are everything and performance is the first tie-breaker.
If you had both Navy and Army on your potential playoff bingo card before the season started …well, not many would believe you. While the Midshipmen and Black Knights would almost certainly be ground to dust by the likes of Alabama, Ohio State, or Texas, the service academies have entered the tier of validity. You’ll note that with PASS values north of 10, they’ve both accumulated a better performance against quality of opponent than a powerhouse like Michigan. The final week of the season’s Army/Navy game might hold more weight this year than entire decades of previous installments.
Highest Rise
#38 Kansas State (From #63). The Big XII’s volatility makes it seem like their schools could be frequent recipients in this section. Kansas State and Texas Tech have bubbled upwards to where Utah is now lurking — but it’s Iowa State and BYU that currently carry the objective playoff potential. Still, Kansas State can be credited with validating these rankings. The Wildcats downed an Oklahoma State team that was pushed out as unworthy in these rankings a week earlier — also a week earlier than AP Writers and Coaches could realize.
Biggest Fall
#58 Louisville (From #21). A true boomerang. Last week Louisville was the highest rise, and here they are in the weekly hall of shame after losing at Notre Dame. The perfect case study for how a combination of early bye weeks and competition can giveth, and just as easily taketh away. Now the sample size is deeper to better understand where the Cardinals might actually finish, which is likely somewhere in the top-half-but-not-top of the ACC.
The PASS Top 25
This visualization gives us a clear picture of who is playing the best football right now.
Alabama grew their monumental lead ever so slightly after defeating Georgia, and we see a stark drop-off for the Dawgs on the other side of the ball. It’s likely their late 4th quarter rally is all that kept UGA visible in the Top 25. Ohio State and Texas kept pace, while Miami of Florida took a dip after a close win over Virginia Tech. Teams like Indiana and Pitt stepping up are likely to raise a few more eyebrows.
Last year, we started to see Oregon and Washington move up into the top tier to fill a gap left behind by a rapidly-plummeting USC. As of today, the Hoosiers and Panthers have become more dangerous dates on the schedule than imagined back in August. I certainly wouldn’t be confident betting heavily against either this week. If you’re into the intangibles: Pitt has had two narrow wins over the 11th and 14th ranked Big XII teams. Their other two wins are over an FCS cupcake and a Kent State team so bad that it lost to an FCS cupcake.
The numbers say that Pitt has performed more admirably against that schedule than all but 5 of the other teams, respectively. Louisville from above can caution how the early bye-week sample size leaves much to be desired. Especially when it comes against an opponent carrying an extra game of experience at this early point in the year. Pitt is perhaps lucky that their next opponent is the same UNC that gave up 70 to James Madison.
The sTem Top 25
There aren’t major changes near the top of the tempo board, but some teams saw harsher slow-downs in losses than others. Teams like South Alabama and UCF took significant tumbles out of the Top 25, Nebraska has notably rebounded back into the picture, and Georgia managed to hang on, only just. It’s notable that their next opponent, Auburn, will be just a touch above them in tempo. Maybe that game won’t be quite the huge blowout some pundits are expecting.
Conference Ranks
As conference play settles in for nearly every team in the landscape, these values are expected to flatten out. It’s fun to watch the three Independents and the PAC 12’s two members ping-pong about.
The SEC haven’t always lived up to their hype as the strongest football conference. This year they’ve got a pretty strong argument.
Conference USA has steadily shown a bit of improvement for 3 weeks running, unexpectedly impressive for a 10-team conference. Smoother seas ahead for what look to be the punching bags of the FBS, based on the other two metrics.
The SEC gets first-place for the first time this year. The other 3 power conferences are pretty much even. Kennesaw State’s loss to FCS Tennessee-Martin sinks Conference USA into negative territory.
Week 6 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 Noon EST on Oct. 3.
#33 Michigan @ #38 Washington (-2.5) / PASS rank
The objective ranks don’t care about brand when ranking current performance. Even with both of these teams living outside the Top 25, PASS still recognizes a great matchup. While the Wolverines have a slight edge in performance, the Huskies significantly outrank them in tempo, #38 to #68. Will that factor combined with home field, and a long flight for the away team help Washington cover a mild spread? Or will performance hold true?
#17 Louisville (-7) VS #19 SMU / PASS rank
This is also the #11th-ranked vs. #13-ranked tempo, respectively. Of opinion-poll ranked teams, this is the narrowest PASS margin of the week, so that full 7-point spread doesn’t feel like a great one to lock in. The Cardinals are volatile, as mentioned above, but they’ve also consistently been near the top of the sTem leaderboard all year. SMU has piled 100+ points up against two opponents after an early-season setback against BYU, so if riding the hot hand is your thing, look no further than the Mustangs.
On the other side of the tables, these two games feature closely matched teams in games that should be hotly contested. There might not be any impending post-season glory; instead there’s a chance to save a season.
#115 Oregon State (-14) VS #119 Colorado State / PASS rank
I was a bit surprised at this line, as these are the most evenly matched teams this week in terms of PASS. Neither team has a standout win, as San Diego State, Purdue, and UTEP are all living at or below #120 in the PASS ranks. I wouldn’t expect the spread to remain this large and it looks like it’s already trending towards -11; I still don’t love these odds in a game that looks to be a coin flip.
#106 Western Michigan (-7.5) @ #134 Ball State / sTem rank
While sTem ranks in 2024 have not been as successfully predictive as PASS, the higher ranked team has still won 70.35% of games. Both of these teams currently lack a PASS score as neither hold wins over FBS teams — a one-of-a-kind matchup this week. sTem is the best of our objective tools to differentiate between two 1–3 teams that have flailed against all FBS competition to this point. The Broncos may hold the current edge in tempo, but the Cardinals finally have their first FBS home game of the season to bolster their chances. While I’m hoping for a gritty and low-scoring game, I wouldn’t be surprised to see these teams trading blows to pile up points against a same-tier opponent.
With my own team on a bye, I’m hoping to get outside in some fresh fall air. Good luck to your teams and schools, any bets you’re chasing — or any fun fall activities — may you find the biggest, best apples and pumpkins around.
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