One Week Makes a Big Difference

Heading into this week's games, I want to use
the 4 undefeateds to highlight how big real
conference contests are at demonstrating who
are the best teams in the country.

Going into this week, we have four undefeateds
in the BCS conferences.
According to the OTFRR#5, here are the wins
ahead of a #5 team playing their schedule and
the chance a #5 team would be undefeated
right now having played those respective
schedules.
Kansas +0.703 0.4219
Ohio State +0.659 0.4872
Arizona State +0.619 0.5185
Boston College +0.461 0.6047

Now, assuming those teams all win and
using the post week 8 sagarin predictors,
we'd have the following:
Ohio State +0.951W 0.3452
Kansas +0.894W 0.3413
Arizona State +0.821W 0.4139
Boston College +0.663W 0.4828

There are quite a few things I want to
highlight from this exercise. One, notice
how each team's chances of being
undefeated are now below to way below
50% even assuming they were a #5 team.
Along with this, notice how the top teams
are nearly a full win above what one
would expect a top 5 team to be. That
means that even with one loss, they'd
almost be right on the pace of a top 5
team playing their schedule.

Secondly, the potential week 9 
numbers show Ohio St jumping Kansas
even though Kansas still has the least
chance of being undefeated. In this case,
it shows how the depth of opponents
and more games can overweigh verse a
schedule that has a few more really
tough games.

Finally, the chart lends to the argument
that perhaps the voters have gotten it
right all this time in putting undefeated
teams into the title game ahead of very
talented one loss teams. It appears that
even the softest of BCS conference
schedules separates the wheat from the
chaff.