Is Alabama the Best Team in College Football? The Computer Ratings and Polls are in Strong Disagreement This Year
By Jason Lisk
Alabama is rated #1 in both Jeff Sagarin’s USA Today ratings and in Chase Stuart’s first release of his college football SRS ratings. This is not exactly a wild position to take, despite the think pieces lamenting the end of the Alabama football program a few weeks back after the Ole Miss loss. Alabama has been one of the top 4 teams in college football for most of the last eight years, with the outcomes often coming down to whether they took some bad beats against some quality opponents.
Meanwhile, Ohio State and Michigan State were atop last week’s USA Today Coaches Poll. Even before this week’s results, they were not as highly considered in points-based objective computer ratings. Then, Ohio State went out and held off a last second attempt for a touchdown from Indiana to stay undefeated, while Michigan State beat Purdue by 3. Ohio State has been trying to emulate 2014 Florida State, by remaining undefeated while not impressing as much as expected. They check in at #11 in both rating systems. Michigan State, meanwhile, has not beaten their opponents as impressively as other good teams who played those same teams. They don’t even rate in the top 30 in either system.
They aren’t alone, and this will be a fascinating test going forward. The Top 10 in the polls from last week barely resembles the top in the computer ratings, which is, honestly, pretty unusual.
Here’s the full top 25 in the just-released Coaches Poll, with the Sagarin and Stuart ratings listed for those same teams.
It’s not surprising that there might be a few teams where there is a differing view. It’s early, both for the rating systems that take results and cross-compare them, and for our perceptions and comparisons. However, what is shocking is just how different they are.
The top 5 in this week’s coaches poll averages a ranking of 18.8 in the two rating systems used. That’s worse than teams 6-10 (8.9 average ranking), teams 11-15 (14.0 average ranking) and teams 16-20 (15.9 average ranking). It would also be worse than teams 21-25 but for the inclusion of Memphis in this week’s poll.
Stanford and USC are both much lower in the coaches poll; USC lost to Stanford and Stanford lost on the road to Northwestern. Or take Michigan versus Michigan State, which will be settled on the field soon. Michigan’s only loss is at Utah by a touchdown. They have held the other opponents to 14 total points. The only team they lost to went on the road and destroyed Oregon, seen by human voters as Michigan State’s keystone win. Across the board, these kind of issues will be resolved over the next two months, but it looks like it will be a wild one, and we are far less certain about who the best team is than what we thought a month ago.