saturdaysarebetter

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Good article Connor. Interesting stuff. In as much as I agree with you that one has a “truer” sense of how good a team is based on their final record, there are times when the games took place where the final ranking (or lack thereof) is misleading as compared to when teams faced each other. For example, last year when Alabama met Florida State in the season opener and both schools were ranked in the top five, and of course, we know the least about a team by only their pre-season ranking, but once Florida State lost their starting quarterback, they were a far-lesser team the rest of the season and were not nearly as good as they were that first game of the year. A better example might be when Oregon played Michigan years ago and Dennis Dixon was the Ducks starting qb. He was touted as a Heisman candidate and Oregon was a very good team when they faced Michigan and were ranked I believe. When Dixon went down with injury, the Ducks proceeded to lose several of their next games and ended the season unranked, although at the time they faced Michigan, they were a very good team and definitely worthy of being ranked in the top 20. By using only a team’s final ranking, Michigan would get no credit for beating a ranked Oregon team. Injuries can take its toll on a team after a team has faced them. A team could be ranked in the top 10 after week six and then get hit with injuries and fall out of the top 20, but the teams they faced prior to those injuries played a better team than what their final ranking would be, and if you go by the final ranking they are not given credit for a quality win. If you go solely by the final ranking, it doesn’t always give you a true indication of how good the team was at times during the season, just the body of season’s work.