UCLA Beat Oregon, and Our Own Rankings Still Had Oregon Eight Spots Ahead. Here's Why That's Wrong.
Our blend is mostly a rating that stopped updating after Week 4. We put season efficiency next to it, and the two disagree about Oregon, Texas and Penn State.
UCLA beat Oregon 17-15 on Saturday. Our own ranking still has Oregon 10th and UCLA 18th. That's wrong, and the reason is worth explaining.
WHY THE RANKING GOT IT BACKWARDS
Our blend leans mostly on an opponent-adjusted rating, and that rating hasn't updated since Week 4. It has no idea UCLA just won. On that old snapshot, Oregon is 8th and UCLA is 24th. Everything fresh points the other way. UCLA is 5-0 and Oregon is 3-2. Season efficiency, which is current through Week 6, has UCLA sixth in the country at plus 0.40 points per play and Oregon 38th at plus 0.21. And Saturday itself wasn't close. Oregon averaged minus 0.51 points per play, turned the ball over six times to UCLA's three, and gained 242 yards to 345. Efficiency says UCLA should have won by about 18.
It isn't the betting market either. As of Sunday, the title odds have Oregon at plus 6500 and UCLA at plus 8000. That's nearly a tie. The thing holding Oregon up is a rating that stopped moving two weeks ago.
OREGON ISN'T THE ONLY ONE
Texas is seventh in our blend and also seventh on the adjusted rating alone, but 55th in season efficiency at plus 0.13. Penn State is 16th in the blend and 67th in efficiency. Florida is 13th and 42nd. When two numbers disagree that much, one of them is stale or wrong, and we don't get to pick the one that tells the better story. So we're showing both.
Texas is also the AP's number one team, or was until it lost 27-24 at Oklahoma. By efficiency that game was a coin flip, and so were Alabama's loss to Georgia, LSU's loss at Kentucky and Pittsburgh's loss to North Carolina. Four of the six ranked teams that lost Saturday were within three points of even.
WHAT HOLDS UP
The top of the board is fine. Georgia, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Indiana and Miami are our top five, and they are also the top five in season efficiency, just in a different order. Miami is first in efficiency, Indiana second, Notre Dame third, Georgia fourth, Ohio State fifth. Two different systems agree on who the best teams are. They only disagree about teams like Oregon and Texas, which is exactly the middle of the table where reputation does the most work.
THE FIX
We're adding season efficiency rank next to the blend so you can see when they split. We're not changing the weights in the middle of the season to make one team look right. When that rating updates, we'll see whether Oregon was a ceiling or a mirage.
Six games is a small sample, and this is a description of one Saturday.