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2015 TipTop 25 Week Twelve

Welcome back again to the college football ranking system that began with a preseason top 25 that was based solely on picking teams at random out of a hat, as shown above. You can see that Duke was selected first, thereby securing our preseason #1 slot. But this week they have fallen to 6-5, and by now they are nowhere near our top 25.

As the games are played, I am ranking teams completely blind to their histories and "name" value, so that they are ranked solely based on what they do this season and, to a lesser degree each week, on where they were randomly ranked in the preseason. Eventually, where they were ranked in the preseason should have little or no impact on their current rankings.

All FBS teams are treated the same here, but this ranking assumes that FCS teams are a level below, and therefore it is unacceptable for a ranked FBS team to struggle with an FCS team, let alone lose. On the other hand, beating an FCS team, regardless of how "impressive" the score, means nothing and is treated the same as though the winner did not play a game at all.

Clemson Still #1

MS Paint of Clemson football player, 2015

Clemson remains #1 this week, mostly because they defeated #2 Notre Dame early in the season. But Alabama is bearing down on both, especially with Dame's close win over a bad Boston College team this week. Bama took an upset loss to 7-3 Mississippi, who is #17, while Notre Dame's loss was a close one at #1 Clemson, but Alabama has collected wins over 8-3 Wisconsin, 8-3 Georgia, 6-5 Arkansas, 8-3 Texas A&M, 7-4 Tennessee, 7-3 LSU, and 8-3 Mississippi State. That's pretty impressive, and I could certainly understand someone ranking them #1. Clemson doesn't have a collection of wins that is nearly as impressive. Of course, Clemson hasn't taken an upset loss either, and their wins over 10-1 Notre Dame and 9-2 Florida State might be better than all of Alabama's wins.

Top 25 After Games of Week Twelve

Last week 5 of our top 25 teams were upset by lower-ranked teams, and that followed a week when 8 of our ranked teams were upset, the most this season. This week the upsets continued, and 7 of our ranked teams lost to lower-ranked teams. Only 5 teams from our randomly selected preseason top 25 remain ranked in this week's TipTop 25:

	Team	Record	LW	This Week's Result
#1	Clemson	11-0	1	Won 33-13 over unrated Wake Forest
#2	Notre Dame	10-1	2	Won 19-16 at unrated Boston College
#3	Alabama	10-1	3	Won 56-6 over unrated Charleston Southern
#4	Iowa	11-0	4	Won 40-20 over unrated Purdue
#5	Oklahoma	10-1	8	Won 30-29 over #11 Texas Christian
#6	Baylor	9-1	9	Won 45-35 at #10 Oklahoma State
#7	Michigan State	10-1	10	Won 17-14 at #8 Ohio State
#8	Ohio State	10-1	6	Lost 17-14 to #7 Michigan State
#9	Navy	9-1	14	Won 44-21 at unrated Tulsa
#10	Oklahoma State	10-1	5	Lost 45-35 to #6 Baylor
#11	Texas Christian	9-2	7	Lost 30-29 at #5 Oklahoma
#12	Michigan	9-2	11	Won 28-16 at 7-4 Penn State
#13	Northwestern	9-2	18	Won 13-7 at #26 Wisconsin
#14	Stanford	9-2	23	Won 35-22 over 6-5 California
#15	North Carolina	10-1	20	Won 30-27 in overtime at unrated Virginia Tech
#16	Pittsburgh	8-3	25	Won 45-34 over 6-5 Louisville
#17	Florida State	9-2	21	Won 52-13 over FCS
#18	Florida	10-1	13	Won 20-14 in overtime over Florida Atlantic
#19	Temple	9-2	40	Won 31-12 over #21 Memphis
#20	Houston	10-1	15	Lost 20-17 at unrated Connecticut
#21	Memphis	8-3	16	Lost 31-12 at #19 Temple
#22	Mississippi	8-3	17	Won 38-17 over #23 Louisiana State
#23	Louisiana State	7-3	12	Lost 38-17 at #22 Mississippi
#24	West Virginia	6-4	26	Won 49-0 at unrated Kansas
#25	Texas Tech	6-5	27	Won 59-44 over unrated Kansas State

Notes on Changes to This Week's Top 25

I do not rate teams the way the AP poll does, so a team's movement up or down is not just based on winning or losing their latest game. It's also based on how they've performed (a close win over an unrated opponent is a poor performance), and on how the teams they've previously played have done this week.

A key result this week was Utah taking their 3rd "upset" loss, this one to UCLA at home. In mid-October, Utah had been 6-0 and ranked #1. Last week, they were 8-2 and #19. Now they are 8-3 and unranked, and that has resulted in a reshifting of the rankings of all PAC 12 teams. Utah had won 62-20 at Oregon in September, and when they were still ranked last week, that loss was not quite so damaging for Oregon, so I had Oregon ranked ahead of Stanford (Oregon had just won 38-36 at Stanford). However, now that Utah is unranked, Oregon drops out of the top 25 with them, and I now view Stanford's loss to Oregon as an upset. As such, Stanford is "freed" from being ranked behind Oregon, and they move up from #23 to #14 this week.

The SEC as a whole took some hits this week, headlined by 10-1 Florida going to overtime against Florida Atlantic at home, their 4th close win over a bad team. LSU was trounced by 8-3 Ole Miss, who should remain ranked behind 8-3 Memphis (as they beat Ole Miss 37-24). In addition, 8-3 Georgia was taken to overtime by Georgia Southern, and South Carolina lost to an FCS team (the Citadel). As a result of all this, LSU and Florida drop quite a bit this week.

9-1 Navy hasn't played a tough schedule, but their only loss has come to #2 Notre Dame, they defeated #21 Memphis by 25 on the road, and only 1 of their wins has been close. In comparison, 10-1 Oklahoma State has had 3 close wins over unranked teams, and so I am going ahead and moving Navy ahead of Oklahoma State.

As I noted last week, the rise of West Virginia and Texas Tech has been due to TT's win at Arkansas, who has beaten #22 Mississippi and #23 LSU. As such, WV and TT could be ranked ahead of Ole Miss and LSU as well.

Close to the Top 25

The following teams are next in line to be ranked: Wisconsin, Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Arkansas, Tennessee, Washington State, UCLA, Utah, Oregon, Toledo, and Georgia.

End of the TipTop 25

The point of this top 25 has been an experiment with random preseason ratings and with trying to ignore teams' name values. By this time, the preseason ratings mean very little, so this will be my last top 25. Starting next week, I'll be doing what I normally do this time of year, which is commenting on the AP poll top 25 each week until I fix the final AP poll top 25 in January.

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