Adam Burke shares his weekly college football power ratings
It is hard to believe that one-third of the regular season is over for a lot of teams. There are only six teams that have played just three games. Eleven teams have already played five games. College football can be the ultimate sports paradox because it still feels “early” and there are a lot of moving parts year in and year out with the programs, so you want to give them time to come together. But, then you think about the schedule and come to the realization I just talked about. Can we really call it early when 33.3% of the season is over?
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The reason I bring that up is because making power ratings has been a challenge this season with the tremendous variance from game to game for some teams. We had more of those this past week.
Akron, who was a fumble return touchdown with less than a minute left away from losing to Morgan State, should have beaten Indiana in Bloomington this past week. Indiana hung in there two weeks ago on a Louisville team who hung 56 points on a Boston College team that should have beaten Florida State two weeks ago.
Arizona State, who scored 39 points in three games to open the season, was within a touchdown of USC with eight minutes left. A USC team that had won its first three games by 126 combined points.
The list goes on, but I don’t need to. Because there are two other things I want to talk about before getting to this week’s Power Ratings.
Let’s start with box score study and why it’s important:
I’m sure people were ready to bump up Penn State after last week’s 31-0 win over Iowa, right? It was a stellar defensive performance from the Nittany Lions, but they had 397 yards on 97 offensive plays. Drew Allar had 166 passing yards on 37 attempts. Penn State had 3.8 yards per carry. Iowa lost four fumbles in the game.
Missouri beat Memphis 34-27 in a game where there was some clear interest in the Memphis side from influential bettors. Missouri went 0/8 on third down, but racked up 8.9 yards per play in the game.
Oregon State “looked” close against Washington State in the 38-35 loss, but the Beavers gained 248 yards on their final three possessions, which started trailing 35-14, 38-21, and 38-28. The Beavers had 192 yards prior to garbage time.
These are just two examples, but there are others.
Here’s what I really wanted to touch on in the intro of this week’s article – strength of schedule discrepancies. There are going to be some really big differences between the caliber of opponents that one team has played against another.
For example, Clemson has played the 59th-ranked schedule per Jeff Sagarin. Syracuse has played the 149th-ranked schedule, and remember, there are only 133 FBS teams. Central Michigan has played the 23rd-ranked schedule. Eastern Michigan has played the 173rd-ranked schedule – and they’re only 2-2. Kentucky has played the 164th-ranked schedule, while Florida has played the 75th-ranked schedule.
I think there could be some good opportunities with the strength of schedule mismatches, especially because some teams have looked really good against very weak slates and others are now finally playing teams closer to their level. Something to watch for this week.
Here are my Week 5 College Football Power Ratings:
