Noblesville Illini
- Nappanee, IN
Amen Purcy!
Week 7 Polls - Illinois #17 in AP Poll
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Or, same spirit, if ND and Illinois played on a neutral field, who would be favorited and by how much?
ND is rooting for chaos to continue here. If there's a pack of 2 loss teams, and one of A&M or Miami are in the top 5, then ND's got a decent argument they're on of the top 11 team (12th going to P5). That same chaos works in Illinois' favor as well.
If the season settles down a bit, ND's schedule just has no juice left on it, and it'll very difficult to make the top 11.
Bill Connelly has updated SP+: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...aW4Q92Zpls/edit?gid=1701628868#gid=1701628868
Illinois falls to 29th, mostly due to other teams just being better, as their rating didn't change a whole lot. Defense needs to pick it up.
As far as other teams most different from their AP Poll perception:
- Notre Dame is 8th in SP+, as they've now blown out 3 teams in a row after dropping 2 games to top 10 teams by a combined 4 points.
- Miami is 12th, with two close wins over good teams (ND and FSU) and a blowout over a USF team that hasn't actually been that good despite perception (2 point win over a Florida team that isn't actually good, blew out a Boise State team that isn't actually good, and played 2 other nobodies)
- Texas Tech is 4th, where I believe they'd be if they didn't have preseason rankings, as they've played as well as almost anyone since the season started, just taking voters a while to catch up their perception.
SP+ has Ohio State as a 12 point favorite over Illinois next Saturday, which...honestly, I'd take it.
Illinois falls to 29th, mostly due to other teams just being better, as their rating didn't change a whole lot. Defense needs to pick it up.
As far as other teams most different from their AP Poll perception:
- Notre Dame is 8th in SP+, as they've now blown out 3 teams in a row after dropping 2 games to top 10 teams by a combined 4 points.
- Miami is 12th, with two close wins over good teams (ND and FSU) and a blowout over a USF team that hasn't actually been that good despite perception (2 point win over a Florida team that isn't actually good, blew out a Boise State team that isn't actually good, and played 2 other nobodies)
- Texas Tech is 4th, where I believe they'd be if they didn't have preseason rankings, as they've played as well as almost anyone since the season started, just taking voters a while to catch up their perception.
SP+ has Ohio State as a 12 point favorite over Illinois next Saturday, which...honestly, I'd take it.
Fun aside, Connelly keeps week to week top 10 rankings of Heisman performances, and will hand out his Heisman at the end of the season by total cumulative points: https://www.espn.com/college-footba...ball-recap-shifting-thoughts-penn-state-texas
The fun bit from the article:
The fun bit from the article:
The U beat ND. Any ranking that doesn’t respect head to head matchups is worthless. ND has 2 close losses they are not a top 10 team at this point of the season.
Every game matters, not just the head to head. UCLA is not a better team than Penn State.
The 4 losses of UCLA matter. ND has 2 losses. The U is undefeated and beat ND. They are better until proven otherwise
Hm? Head-to-head should only get strong consideration in tiebreaker situations. Actual ties in mathematical models or polls are going to be rare for teams that have played each other. Aside from that, if your expectation is that no ranking of sports teams is ever intransitive, your expectation is unrealistic.
We can still try to take your suggestion seriously, though. A "tie" could occasionally happen in poll entries, where an individual voter ends up with two teams landing next to each other after they've already played. It's be fair for someone to have a policy that they honor h2h in that situation. However, that shouldn't catch flak for considering things such as home field, recency, injuries/returnees, and whatnot.
ND -5.5
Neutral Field......ND by 12.5, maybe 13.5? Yes, I think they are two TD's better than us, as are Texas A & M and Miami, who they lost to in ultra close games.
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