Explanation of 2015 Rankings

In my next post I'll have my rankings for Week 1 now that it is finally over with Ohio St beating Virginia Tech 42-24.  As a reminder for anyone new to my blog, the rankings I came up with is solely based off of the results on the field.  If you want to get an understanding of how my rankings work, go back to my very first post on this blog. As you will notice, I have 2 polls, 'Preseason' and 'Equal'.  The 'Preseason' poll has a starting point value based on the AP Preseason rankings.  Since there are 128 FBS teams, the number 1 team starts with 128 points going down all the way to number 128 who starts with 1 point.  For the 'Equal' poll, all teams start with zero points so everyone is on the same playing field.  I did this poll to see how close the 2 polls would be at the end and also how everyone thinks there should be no preseason polls to begin with.

As a summary, there's a tier level of winning and losing.  Basically, a win on the road is worth more than a win at a neutral site, which is worth more than a win at home.  The reverse for losses, a loss at on the road is fewer deductions, as compared to a loss at a neutral site, as compared to a loss at home, which is the maximum deduction.  There are bonus points for the following items: playing a top 25 team, both teams ranked in the top 10 playing each other and strength of schedule.  There is a deduction for playing FCS teams.  The last points is related to margin of victory.    A team gets a bonus matching the margin of victory, but it is capped at 20 points.  The reverse for losing.  The number of points deducted matches the margin of victory, also capped at minus 20 points.  The only time margin of victory is not added or deducted is if the game goes to overtime.  Instead, each team is award a bonus point for every OT period played, whether the team wins or loses.  The points added or deducted based on wins/losses and location still applies.  I made this change because if margin of victory points are added and deducted, it wasn't fair since both teams were evenly matched.  This new way makes the points difference closer and more reasonable.

A new wrinkle I added this year is strength of schedule (SOS).  I added this due to Marshall last year.  In 2014, Marshall went undefeated and were in my final 4 at the end of the year.  When I readjusted my final rankings before the bowl games and added SOS, Marshall was dropped lower in the polls, like they should.  I ended up getting 3 out of the 4 teams in the playoffs last year correct.  The only one I didn't was Florida St.  The reason FSU didn't make it is because my polls are solely based on results so there's no voter bias or playing more home games than away.  As we all remember, FSU was losing in most of their games and had to come back at the end to barely win.  This meant they did not get as many margin of victory points as they could have.  The SOS will be recalculated each week since the rankings change each week.

One other note, the bonus points for top 25 and top 10 for the first week only are based off of the AP Top 25 poll and others receiving points.  The rest are ranked by an average of the preseason magazines.  After the first week, the bonus points for top 25 and top 10 are based on my rankings.