2024 NCAA Football Objective Ranks — Week 6 Recap & Week 7
A new #1: The landscape has shifted after the big upset — Find out by how much.
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 6 Recap
The big upset! It’s unavoidable. This week I’m flipping the order a bit to dive right into the shakeup at the top of the standings, given how commanding the previous lead was. While AP pollsters only gave Alabama one lone week at #1, here we’ve seen them atop the leaderboards for 4 weeks running. Just how much did the loss to Vanderbilt hurt the Crimson Tide? That depends on which of these featured objective metrics you care about most.
Starting with overall performance, Alabama’s commanding lead over the rest of the national landscape came crashing down — although it didn’t affect the rankings as much as you might expect. Here’s what the Top 25 looks like through the end of Week 6:
So Alabama falls …but only to #2 in PASS value, just narrowly behind Ohio State. As always, the lowest value is shown for scale and the other 108 teams reside between #25 Louisville and #134 Appalachian State. What I find most interesting in the data above is the uptick in parity we’re seeing this year. Last year in Week 6, USC had a PASS rating over 60, a full 8 points clear of #2 Michigan (The Trojans would go on to lose badly in Week 7, and would keep losing). What stood out even more: 7 teams at this point of 2023 carried a PASS value over 40, and 5 of them were above 45. After this Week 6, only two teams are above 40, none are above 45, and none have ever crested above 60 at any point yet in the season.
I wouldn’t be quick to assume this means teams are not as strong this year. The field is more tightly grouped for a reason. There was bound to be a noticeable shift after conference realignment reduced the power conferences to 4, creating more challenging groupings of teams, and more challenging schedules for many of them. It’s a good thing that the playoff expansion comes at a time where seeing four clear leaders may be murkier than in years past.
Teams like Ohio State, Texas, Iowa State and Pitt steadily rose, keeping pace. Others like Indiana were a bit stagnant. Although the Hoosiers won by 17 on the road at Northwestern, the opponent value and the performance itself clearly weren’t as challenging as games for other risers. Georgia and Mississippi were two such teams, rebounding nicely against South Carolina and Auburn after taking on losses last week. Fresh faces to the performance Top 25 like Clemson, Kansas State, and LSU are just bubbling up. Can they continue to ascend after slower starts?
Some of these teams will no doubt hold course and be in the thick of the playoff. Going by the standard of Week 7 in years past, it’s likely we’ll see at least one more of the leaders crash out against an unheralded foe this weekend. Could it be Pitt, or Iowa State? Or will a #1 curse emerge and come calling for Ohio State, on the road at Oregon? More on that in a bit.
The tWin% Top 25 — Week 7
“Wins are everything” is oft-ballyhooed by certain pundits, writers and subjective opinion-havers. To capture that essence of that statement objectively, collecting wins over FBS teams is everything and performance is the first tie-breaker. If you’re into rewarding teams for wins over performance grades, this table represents a playoff race that gives all FBS teams equal footing.
If you’re a fan of any of the other 133 FBS teams, here’s your comeuppance. While the AP dropped the Tide to #7, here they drop to #14 as plenty of teams with a better tWin% leapt ahead. Can Army and Navy keep this up, leading to an absolutely historic post-season / pre-bowl season week where they have the whole stage to themselves? Navy in particular looks more and more legit every week, carrying a PASS value higher than teams like Oregon and Oklahoma. The midshipmen have been up top at #1 in offensive rating (OSRS) over at sportsreference.com, and currently rank #2.
Yes, the easy-scheduled imposters are hanging about in plain sight, with Sam Houston being the highest ranking at #12. They may very well continue to rise, as they don’t play an FCS team this year and have the 120th-ranked oSoS (Objective Strength of Schedule). In the spirit of competitive value, you’d much rather see one of the above service academies represent the Group of 7 in the playoff.
Arizona State is teetering on the line. They’ve got a PASS value that’s closer to imposter than legitimate right now — but a perfect chance to prove they belong when they welcome Utah to Tempe on Friday night. Teams like Texas Tech, Colorado, and Virginia are racking up wins, but those narrow wins and exciting last minute plays can just as easily come back around on shootout-style teams that don’t dominate their opponents. I’d expect the law of averages to come for at least one of these Power Conference teams sporting a PASS value under 10, and sooner than later.
Highest Rise
#101 San Diego State (From #125). It’s not very often we get to talk about teams in this range as high-risers. The Aztecs likely had much higher hopes for this season, but a string of brutal losses, worst and most recently of all to Central Michigan saw the team mired at 1–3 without a win over an FBS team. After a 3-point win over Hawaii, SDSU suddenly burst upward on the table. And 2–3 looks salvageable!
Biggest Fall
#72 Arizona (From #43). Down, up, down. That’s the Wildcats season right now. They’d just beaten Utah! Ok, the pollsters love the Utes to an unreasonable degree so maybe that’s not everything. The real problem is when Arizona loses, it’s in pretty rough fashion. Falling 28–22 doesn’t look bad on the surface. But Texas Tech had given up 34.4 points/463 yards of offense a game. And the ‘Cats were at home. Heading to BYU next week likely won’t be any kinder.
The sTem Top 25 — Week 7
Maybe performance against schedule is a little dry for your tastes. Maybe pure wins aren’t always all they’re chalked up to be. Maybe you like to …go fast? The sTem Top 25 grades teams’ offenses and defenses on a per-play basis to see how efficiently they score, and prevent scoring.
In the 2024 season, sTem has been a little more chaotic in predicting winners than the above methods, at just a touch under 70% correct. Where it becomes incredibly useful is when it’s paired with the above tables.
The Buckeyes hit the triple crown this week, with sTem lending even more validity to their position atop the ranks. Another reason to track teams appearing here: Upset potential. When a Top 25 school is favored against a lower ranked team, this collection tends to be very good at defending their position (Oregon fans probably don’t want to hear that right now). If a team is listed as an underdog, but still show up here, they probably have a decent amount of upset potential. Just last week, the #25 was Vanderbilt.
Conference Ranks
Conference play is underway and these values are becoming less tempestuous. An encouraging note: Conference USA at the bottom posted a season-high value of .08 this week. That doesn’t sound like much and it may not be very impactful overall, but it signifies that the level of competition across the entire FBS in 2024 is at its best heading into Week 7.
Scoring tempos continue to flatten out as teams largely play conference foes better-aligned to their own program strength. Especially for Power Conference schools that ran roughshod through their non-conference slates, this is a natural regression as competitive value increases.
If you play the FCS and lose, you’ll see that one game reflected here, penalizing your whole conference. If you’re Conference USA, you have several of those teams! This was also the first week without one single game against the FCS, which aids in a slowdown of wild swings for conferences with full membership.
Week 7 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 10:30AM EST on Oct. 10.
#1 Ohio State (-3.5) @ #15 Oregon / PASS rank
As seen in the tables above, the disparity between these teams is likely greater than the media believes. Still, the Ducks are at home and they’re 28th-ranked in tempo. Looking closer at the actual value, that’s a scoring tempo of 0.57 points per play versus 0.20, which is significant. If you wanted to see Oregon with that much of a lead over another team, you’d have to go all the way down to 92nd-ranked Central Michigan at -0.17. Ohio State’s schedule hasn’t been very challenging, but their performance has been convincing and this current spread seems attainable.
#3 Texas (-14.5) VS #13 Oklahoma / PASS rank
Texas hasn’t earned an objective #1 rank from any of these metrics yet, but if they win in convincing fashion it could see the Longhorns make the leap to the front. They’re #2 in sTem and the Sooners are #25. The performance gap between these two teams is smaller than that seen in the game above, so Oklahoma shouldn’t be counted out entirely and may be worth a look against this kind of spread.
#7 Mississippi (-3) @ #24 LSU / PASS rank
Mississippi and Jaxson Dart have been flying high on a per play basis. LSU has been picking things up recently, but the Tigers just aren’t in the same sTem territory (#3 to #38, respectively). I’m a little surprised the spread is this small right now, given that South Carolina last week was an objectively better opponent than LSU. Vegas is likely wary given that Mississippi lost on their home field to an up-and-down Kentucky team.
#133 Kent State VS #134 Ball State (-6.5) / sTem rank
Looking at this one-of-a-kind matchup last week turned out to be exactly the barn-burner I’d imagined. Western Michigan beat Ball State, 45–42. How can you top that? With this! That was a pair of 1–3 teams who had both beaten FCS opponents. Kent State can’t even claim that, having gone 0–5 while losing to FCS school St. Francis (PA), in a matchup that sounds more at home on a basketball court. The Golden Flashes may flash that badge of shame, but just put up a season high 33 points last week against Eastern Michigan after 2 weeks of being shut out. Meanwhile, the Cardinals manage to have the worse sTem score (By the smallest of margins). There are only 4 teams left without a win over the FBS and these are 2 of them. Someone must win! Is this spread too big?
Enjoy the games, and good luck to your teams and on your bets. And an additional knock on wood that you and your loved ones can stay safe from the worst of these storms and their aftermath — that’s so much more important than a cancelled game.
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