In an effort to make things easier to consume, the final ratings of the season are broken up into a couple of posts. Coming early next week will be the comparison with F/+ rankings from Football Outsiders, plus a comparison with the Colley Ratings Matrix, the only part of the BCS computers made public and a comparison with Jeff Sagarin's Strength of Schedule calculations.
Bold X's are BCS teams. MTSU and LaTech being the highest ranked teams not going bowling aren't surprises. Air Force is the lowest-rated bowl team at 107th, which is also not unusual.
If you removed any sort of identifiers from the resumes of Florida State, Louisville and Northern Illinois, they would appear to be the same team. Yet, Northern Illinois is being vilified as receiving some sort of undeserved charity due to their loss against Iowa, while Louisville is there after winning a league that's at best equal to the MAC, while losing at home to a crappy UConn team. It's lazy, dishonest punditry like what has been heard this past week that caused me to start these ratings in the first place.
I'd be inclined to name Notre Dame, Kansas State, Oregon and Florida as a 4-team playoff based on their resumes here. I'm hard-pressed to include Alabama (although I can see the argument for them over K-State), who are only in ahead of Oregon due to:
a)losing one week before and
b)only falling three spots in the polls after their loss when Oregon fell four
Alabama's strength of schedule really took a beating over the last month of the season. Western Carolina and Auburn did them no favors, nor did fading Mississippi State.
Biggest gain from Week 6 to Week 14, Northwestern, 81 places
Biggest loss from Week 6 to Week 14, Tulane, 89 places
Finally, a look at each team's average placement throughout the season:
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