Here are this week's Gus Rankings. A few comments:
- Art's team, Alabama, continues to impress. It's at this point that I wish I had previous years of Gus Rankings to fall back upon. Is a 4 point lead large at this point in the season? If things shake out a certain way, could that be overcome by Texas or TCU in a week's time? (It's probably harder for Florida due to the common opponents.) I get the sense that it's probably not likely but I'd like some historical precedent.
- Congrats to Marshall and his Rice Owls-- winners over Tulane and likely removing themselves from the bottom spot at the end of the season. As Marshall mentioned last week, the Owls had the inside track for the bottom rung of the Gus ladder but righted the ship just in time.
The larger question: Can the Gus Rankings grow in popularity beyond Rhodes College?
- I did some quick calculations to get a sense for conference strength-- here's the average number of points:
SEC: 12.25 (West: 18.33, East: 6.16)
Big East: 10.00
Pac-10: 7.30
Big 10: 7.09
Big 12: 6.17 (South: 12.83, North: -0.50)
ACC: 5.25 (Coastal: 14.33, Atlantic: -3.83)
Mountain West: -1.78
WAC: -7.89
The top 6 are the BCS conferences, and the bottom two have teams in the running for an at-large BCS spot.
Surprising is the dichotomy between divisions in the three BCS conferences that have such a split. Again, it would be nice to have some sort of historical precedent. Is this usually the case, or are both sides of the conference pretty balanced? Before looking at this, I would have guessed that you might have a split in the Big 12's divisions but not in the SEC and the ACC. It's an interesting result. You could certainly slice the remaining conferences to have differences like this if you so desired, but what's par for the course? I'm intrigued.
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My prediction: Texas (possibly Florida) takes over the top spot this week because Alabama will earn no direct points by beating FCS opponent Chattanooga. Florida International is a common opponent with a 3-7 record; Florida will pick up those three points with a win, and they're already reflected in our score. The winner of the SEC championship game will be a solid #1 going into the bowls. It would be really interesting (albeit unlikely) if the #1 team--probably Alabama or Florida--is out of reach going into the bowls. The SEC title game winner will pick up 12 points directly, which is almost as many points at Texas can pick up by beating Kansas, Texas A&M, and whoever wins the B12 North.
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