PiRate Ratings–College Football Week 4

This Week’s PiRate Rating Spreads

Thursday,	September 20
Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
Temple	Tulsa	8.4	9.6	8.3

 

Friday	September 21
Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
Central Florida	Florida Atlantic	17.3	16.5	16.6
Illinois	Penn St.	-26.8	-23.9	-28.2
USC	Washington St.	2.8	1.8	3.1

 

Saturday	September 22
Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
Iowa St.	Akron	18.5	15.2	17.5
Marshall	North Carolina St.	-16.0	-12.5	-14.4
Massachusetts	Charlotte	10.2	9.7	11.0
Indiana	Michigan St.	-20.5	-18.8	-20.5
Maryland	Minnesota	-2.4	-3.4	-3.3
Ball St.	Western Kentucky	1.6	0.6	-0.2
Purdue	Boston College	-10.2	-9.0	-11.1
Syracuse	Connecticut	33.9	32.3	34.3
Miami (Fla.)	Florida Int’l.	32.4	26.6	31.4
North Carolina	Pittsburgh	0.8	0.0	0.6
Florida St.	Northern Illinois	13.6	11.8	13.0
Bowling Green	Miami (O)	-3.6	-5.3	-4.1
Ohio St.	Tulane	37.3	34.7	38.4
Georgia Tech	Clemson	-18.0	-15.8	-19.2
Cincinnati	Ohio U	1.8	2.2	1.0
South Florida	East Carolina	15.4	18.9	17.0
Wake Forest	Notre Dame	-7.7	-6.4	-8.5
Toledo	Nevada	9.0	10.8	9.1
Virginia	Louisville	4.8	5.2	4.4
Georgia St.	Western Michigan	-11.4	-10.3	-11.3
Rutgers	Buffalo	-2.3	-5.5	-5.7
Oregon St.	Arizona	-10.1	-10.8	-11.6
Oregon	Stanford	-5.6	-3.0	-5.5
Tennessee	Florida	-10.9	-8.8	-12.0
Kentucky	Mississippi St.	-12.1	-10.6	-12.9
Michigan	Nebraska	26.9	27.2	29.8
West Virginia	Kansas St.	9.5	10.0	9.8
Ole Miss	Kent St.	26.5	25.3	28.1
Southern Miss.	Rice	14.9	15.1	16.7
Auburn	Arkansas	24.7	26.1	28.6
Oklahoma St.	Texas Tech	14.7	14.3	16.3
SMU	Navy	-1.6	-5.2	-2.3
Louisiana	Coastal Carolina	3.7	2.6	4.1
Arkansas St.	UNLV	2.6	2.3	3.9
Texas	TCU	0.2	-0.4	0.4
Oklahoma	Army	29.5	27.8	30.2
LSU	Louisiana Tech	23.0	20.4	22.9
Baylor	Kansas	4.4	3.3	5.9
Vanderbilt	South Carolina	-7.1	-5.2	-6.3
Memphis	South Alabama	26.8	27.0	27.3
Utah St.	Air Force	13.2	14.6	15.3
UTEP	New Mexico St.	-3.9	-3.1	-4.5
UTSA	Texas St.	11.1	12.4	12.5
UL-Monroe	Troy	-1.2	-2.9	-2.0
Old Dominion	Virginia Tech	-34.2	-29.7	-34.3
Liberty	North Texas	-17.1	-21.5	-17.8
Missouri	Georgia	-14.7	-12.5	-14.9
Alabama	Texas A&M	28.9	28.0	30.4
Iowa	Wisconsin	0.3	0.6	0.1
Washington	Arizona St.	22.5	21.5	25.4
San Diego St.	Eastern Michigan	10.9	10.1	11.5

 

FBS vs. FCS
Home	Visitor	PiRate
Colorado St.	Illinois St.	10.5
Central Michigan	Maine	5.0
Duke	UNC-Central	49.9
Appalachian St.	Gardner-Webb	40.9
BYU	McNeese St.	19.0
Houston	Texas Southern	45.6
Hawaii	Duquesne	27.1

 

This Week’s PiRate Ratings

PiRate Ratings
#	Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	Alabama	139.3	137.2	141.2	139.2
2	Georgia	132.2	128.4	133.6	131.4
3	Clemson	129.8	126.7	130.5	129.0
4	Ohio St.	128.7	126.2	129.3	128.1
5	Washington	126.8	124.4	129.1	126.7
6	Mississippi St.	123.8	121.1	124.4	123.1
7	Oklahoma	122.6	121.3	123.2	122.4
8	Michigan	122.3	121.1	122.8	122.0
9	Penn St.	122.7	119.8	123.2	121.9
10	Michigan St.	122.6	120.3	122.3	121.8
11	Auburn	121.4	120.2	123.6	121.7
12	Stanford	120.0	117.6	120.5	119.4
13	Notre Dame	119.4	115.8	117.8	117.6
14	Miami	117.9	116.3	117.7	117.3
15	Boston College	118.2	115.3	118.4	117.3
16	Virginia Tech	116.5	116.0	116.4	116.3
17	Wisconsin	117.0	114.3	116.6	116.0
18	Oklahoma St.	116.4	114.6	116.7	115.9
19	Duke	115.6	113.2	115.2	114.7
20	L S U	114.1	114.0	115.2	114.4
21	Missouri	114.5	113.0	115.7	114.4
22	T C U	114.2	113.3	113.2	113.5
23	Boise St.	113.5	112.7	113.9	113.4
24	Iowa	114.3	111.9	113.7	113.3
25	N. Carolina St.	113.6	113.0	113.2	113.3
26	Texas A&M	113.4	112.2	113.8	113.1
27	Central Florida	113.0	112.8	113.1	113.0
28	S. Carolina	112.3	111.1	111.7	111.7
29	Oregon	111.4	111.5	112.1	111.7
30	West Virginia	112.0	111.2	111.4	111.5
31	Utah	111.1	109.3	112.0	110.8
32	Texas	111.4	109.9	110.6	110.6
33	Florida	110.8	109.1	111.1	110.3
34	Fresno St.	110.0	108.3	109.9	109.4
35	Iowa State	110.0	108.0	109.3	109.1
36	Georgia Tech	109.3	108.3	108.7	108.8
37	Washington St.	109.1	108.2	108.0	108.4
38	Northwestern	109.1	107.2	108.9	108.4
39	California	109.4	106.6	109.0	108.3
40	Kentucky	108.8	107.6	108.5	108.3
41	Syracuse	109.0	107.6	108.1	108.2
42	U S C	108.9	107.0	108.1	108.0
43	Wake Forest	108.7	106.4	106.3	107.1
44	Arizona St.	107.3	105.9	106.6	106.6
45	Minnesota	106.7	106.2	106.6	106.5
46	Memphis	105.0	107.3	106.3	106.2
47	Florida St.	105.8	104.9	105.1	105.2
48	Kansas St.	105.5	104.1	104.5	104.7
49	Utah St.	103.5	105.0	105.1	104.5
50	Purdue	105.0	103.3	104.3	104.2
51	Ole Miss	104.0	103.7	104.8	104.1
52	Texas Tech	104.7	103.2	103.4	103.8
53	Vanderbilt	102.6	103.4	102.9	103.0
54	BYU	102.2	102.8	102.9	102.6
55	N. Texas	101.4	104.1	102.2	102.5
56	Houston	102.1	102.9	102.3	102.4
57	Colorado	101.1	102.7	102.4	102.1
58	Pittsburgh	102.3	102.0	101.7	102.0
59	Virginia	102.2	102.7	101.1	102.0
60	Baylor	102.3	100.1	101.7	101.4
61	San Diego St.	100.2	100.7	101.4	100.7
62	Arizona	101.2	99.5	101.1	100.6
63	Maryland	101.2	99.8	100.3	100.4
64	Louisville	100.4	100.4	99.8	100.2
65	N. Carolina	100.6	99.5	99.8	100.0
66	Kansas	100.9	99.8	98.9	99.9
67	South Florida	98.3	101.0	99.0	99.4
68	Indiana	99.1	98.5	98.8	98.8
69	Florida Atlantic	98.3	98.8	99.0	98.7
70	Arkansas	99.7	97.0	98.0	98.2
71	Temple	97.2	97.2	97.6	97.3
72	Toledo	96.6	98.3	96.5	97.1
73	Nebraska	98.4	96.9	96.0	97.1
74	Tennessee	96.9	97.3	96.1	96.8
75	Buffalo	95.4	97.7	96.7	96.6
76	Wyoming	96.6	96.5	96.4	96.5
77	Navy	95.5	98.3	95.2	96.4
78	Army	96.1	96.5	96.0	96.2
79	Marshall	94.6	97.5	95.8	96.0
80	Northern Illinois	95.3	96.0	95.1	95.5
81	Appalachian St.	94.5	96.0	95.8	95.4
82	U C L A	96.2	96.0	93.2	95.1
83	Akron	94.4	95.8	94.8	95.0
84	Louisiana Tech	93.6	96.1	94.8	94.8
85	Ohio U	93.9	95.1	94.7	94.6
86	Tulane	94.3	94.6	93.9	94.3
87	Cincinnati	93.2	94.8	93.2	93.7
88	Air Force	93.3	93.4	92.8	93.2
89	Eastern Michigan	92.3	93.6	92.9	92.9
90	Illinois	93.0	92.9	92.0	92.6
91	Troy	90.9	92.2	92.3	91.8
92	Western Michigan	90.9	92.5	91.7	91.7
93	Tulsa	91.3	90.1	91.8	91.1
94	Nevada	91.1	90.9	90.9	91.0
95	SMU	91.5	90.6	90.4	90.8
96	U N L V	90.0	91.6	90.5	90.7
97	Arkansas St.	89.6	91.0	91.4	90.7
98	Miami (O)	89.0	90.7	89.7	89.8
99	U A B	88.9	91.1	89.1	89.7
100	Middle Tennessee	89.0	90.2	89.9	89.7
101	Rutgers	90.5	89.6	88.6	89.6
102	Florida Int’l.	87.5	91.8	88.3	89.2
103	New Mexico	86.9	88.8	87.2	87.6
104	Georgia Southern	86.3	87.7	86.6	86.9
105	UL-Monroe	86.7	86.2	87.3	86.8
106	Oregon St.	88.0	85.7	86.5	86.7
107	East Carolina	85.9	85.1	85.0	85.3
108	Central Michigan	84.0	86.7	84.4	85.0
109	W. Kentucky	83.1	86.3	84.2	84.5
110	Massachusetts	83.2	85.2	84.4	84.3
111	Colo. State	84.0	84.8	83.9	84.2
112	Southern Miss.	82.5	85.7	83.0	83.8
113	Bowling Green	83.4	83.4	83.6	83.5
114	Ball St.	82.1	84.5	81.6	82.7
115	South Alabama	81.2	83.3	82.0	82.2
116	U T S A	79.4	83.8	80.2	81.2
117	Old Dominion	79.8	83.8	79.6	81.1
118	Hawaii	80.6	82.9	79.4	81.0
119	Liberty	81.2	79.5	81.4	80.7
120	Kent St.	80.4	81.4	79.6	80.5
121	Louisiana	79.5	81.4	80.5	80.5
122	Coastal Carolina	78.8	81.8	79.4	80.0
123	Georgia St.	77.1	79.7	77.9	78.2
124	San Jose St.	78.5	79.3	76.7	78.2
125	Connecticut	78.1	78.3	76.8	77.7
126	Charlotte	75.0	77.5	75.3	75.9
127	N. Mexico St.	74.7	76.9	74.6	75.4
128	Texas State	70.8	73.9	70.2	71.6
129	Rice	70.6	73.6	69.3	71.2
130	U T E P	68.8	71.8	68.2	69.6

 

PiRate Rating By Conference

American Athletic Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	AAC	Overall
Central Florida	113.0	112.8	113.1	113.0	1-0	2-0
South Florida	98.3	101.0	99.0	99.4	0-0	3-0
Temple	97.2	97.2	97.6	97.3	0-0	1-2
Cincinnati	93.2	94.8	93.2	93.7	0-0	3-0
East Carolina	85.9	85.1	85.0	85.3	0-0	1-1
Connecticut	78.1	78.3	76.8	77.7	0-1	1-2
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	AAC	Overall
Memphis	105.0	107.3	106.3	106.2	0-1	2-1
Houston	102.1	102.9	102.3	102.4	0-0	2-1
Navy	95.5	98.3	95.2	96.4	1-0	2-1
Tulane	94.3	94.6	93.9	94.3	0-0	1-2
Tulsa	91.3	90.1	91.8	91.1	0-0	1-2
SMU	91.5	90.6	90.4	90.8	0-0	0-3
AAC Averages	95.5	96.1	95.4	95.6
Atlantic Coast Conference
Atlantic Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	ACC	Overall
Clemson	129.8	126.7	130.5	129.0	0-0	3-0
Boston College	118.2	115.3	118.4	117.3	1-0	3-0
N. Carolina St.	113.6	113.0	113.2	113.3	0-0	2-0
Syracuse	109.0	107.6	108.1	108.2	1-0	3-0
Wake Forest	108.7	106.4	106.3	107.1	0-1	2-1
Florida St.	105.8	104.9	105.1	105.2	0-2	1-2
Louisville	100.4	100.4	99.8	100.2	0-0	2-1
Coastal Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	ACC	Overall
Miami	117.9	116.3	117.7	117.3	0-0	2-1
Virginia Tech	116.5	116.0	116.4	116.3	1-0	2-0
Duke	115.6	113.2	115.2	114.7	0-0	3-0
Georgia Tech	109.3	108.3	108.7	108.8	0-1	1-2
Pittsburgh	102.3	102.0	101.7	102.0	1-0	2-1
Virginia	102.2	102.7	101.1	102.0	0-0	2-1
N. Carolina	100.6	99.5	99.8	100.0	0-0	0-2
ACC Averages	110.7	109.5	110.2	110.1
Big 12 Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	B12	Overall
Oklahoma	122.6	121.3	123.2	122.4	1-0	3-0
Oklahoma St.	116.4	114.6	116.7	115.9	0-0	3-0
T C U	114.2	113.3	113.2	113.5	0-0	2-1
West Virginia	112.0	111.2	111.4	111.5	0-0	2-0
Texas	111.4	109.9	110.6	110.6	0-0	2-1
Iowa State	110.0	108.0	109.3	109.1	0-1	0-2
Kansas St.	105.5	104.1	104.5	104.7	0-0	2-1
Texas Tech	104.7	103.2	103.4	103.8	0-0	2-1
Baylor	102.3	100.1	101.7	101.4	0-0	2-1
Kansas	100.9	99.8	98.9	99.9	0-0	2-1
Big 12 Averages	110.0	108.5	109.3	109.3
Big Ten Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	BTen	Overall
Ohio St.	128.7	126.2	129.3	128.1	1-0	3-0
Michigan	122.3	121.1	122.8	122.0	0-0	2-1
Penn St.	122.7	119.8	123.2	121.9	0-0	3-0
Michigan St.	122.6	120.3	122.3	121.8	0-0	1-1
Maryland	101.2	99.8	100.3	100.4	0-0	2-1
Indiana	99.1	98.5	98.8	98.8	0-0	3-0
Rutgers	90.5	89.6	88.6	89.6	0-1	1-2
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	BTen	Overall
Wisconsin	117.0	114.3	116.6	116.0	0-0	2-1
Iowa	114.3	111.9	113.7	113.3	0-0	3-0
Northwestern	109.1	107.2	108.9	108.4	1-0	1-2
Minnesota	106.7	106.2	106.6	106.5	0-0	3-0
Purdue	105.0	103.3	104.3	104.2	0-1	0-3
Nebraska	98.4	96.9	96.0	97.1	0-0	0-2
Illinois	93.0	92.9	92.0	92.6	0-0	2-1
Big Ten Averages	109.3	107.7	108.8	108.6
Conference USA
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	CUSA	Overall
Florida Atlantic	98.3	98.8	99.0	98.7	0-0	2-1
Marshall	94.6	97.5	95.8	96.0	0-0	2-0
Middle Tennessee	89.0	90.2	89.9	89.7	0-0	1-2
Florida Int’l.	87.5	91.8	88.3	89.2	1-0	2-1
W. Kentucky	83.1	86.3	84.2	84.5	0-0	0-3
Old Dominion	79.8	83.8	79.6	81.1	0-2	0-3
Charlotte	75.0	77.5	75.3	75.9	1-0	2-1
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	CUSA	Overall
N. Texas	101.4	104.1	102.2	102.5	0-0	3-0
Louisiana Tech	93.6	96.1	94.8	94.8	0-0	2-0
U A B	88.9	91.1	89.1	89.7	0-0	2-1
Southern Miss.	82.5	85.7	83.0	83.8	0-0	1-1
U T S A	79.4	83.8	80.2	81.2	0-0	0-3
Rice	70.6	73.6	69.3	71.2	0-0	1-2
U T E P	68.8	71.8	68.2	69.6	0-0	0-3
CUSA Averages	85.2	88.0	85.7	86.3
FBS Independents
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	Conf.	Overall
Notre Dame	119.4	115.8	117.8	117.6	x	3-0
BYU	102.2	102.8	102.9	102.6	x	2-1
Army	96.1	96.5	96.0	96.2	x	2-1
Massachusetts	83.2	85.2	84.4	84.3	x	1-3
Liberty	81.2	79.5	81.4	80.7	x	1-1
N. Mexico St.	74.7	76.9	74.6	75.4	x	0-4
Indep. Averages	92.8	92.8	92.9	92.8
Mid-American Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MAC	Overall
Buffalo	95.4	97.7	96.7	96.6	1-0	3-0
Akron	94.4	95.8	94.8	95.0	0-0	2-0
Ohio U	93.9	95.1	94.7	94.6	0-0	1-1
Miami (O)	89.0	90.7	89.7	89.8	0-0	0-3
Bowling Green	83.4	83.4	83.6	83.5	0-0	1-2
Kent St.	80.4	81.4	79.6	80.5	0-0	1-2
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MAC	Overall
Toledo	96.6	98.3	96.5	97.1	0-0	1-1
Northern Illinois	95.3	96.0	95.1	95.5	1-0	1-2
Eastern Michigan	92.3	93.6	92.9	92.9	0-1	2-1
Western Michigan	90.9	92.5	91.7	91.7	0-0	1-2
Central Michigan	84.0	86.7	84.4	85.0	0-1	0-3
Ball St.	82.1	84.5	81.6	82.7	0-0	1-2
MAC Averages	89.8	91.3	90.1	90.4
Mountain West Conference
Mountain Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MWC	Overall
Boise St.	113.5	112.7	113.9	113.4	0-0	2-1
Utah St.	103.5	105.0	105.1	104.5	0-0	2-1
Wyoming	96.6	96.5	96.4	96.5	0-0	2-2
Air Force	93.3	93.4	92.8	93.2	0-0	1-1
New Mexico	86.9	88.8	87.2	87.6	0-0	2-1
Colo. State	84.0	84.8	83.9	84.2	0-1	1-3
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MWC	Overall
Fresno St.	110.0	108.3	109.9	109.4	0-0	2-1
San Diego St.	100.2	100.7	101.4	100.7	0-0	2-1
Nevada	91.1	90.9	90.9	91.0	0-0	2-1
U N L V	90.0	91.6	90.5	90.7	0-0	2-1
Hawaii	80.6	82.9	79.4	81.0	1-0	3-1
San Jose St.	78.5	79.3	76.7	78.2	0-0	0-3
MWC Averages	94.0	94.6	94.0	94.2
Pac-12 Conference
North Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	P12	Overall
Washington	126.8	124.4	129.1	126.7	1-0	2-1
Stanford	120.0	117.6	120.5	119.4	1-0	3-0
Oregon	111.4	111.5	112.1	111.7	0-0	3-0
Washington St.	109.1	108.2	108.0	108.4	0-0	3-0
California	109.4	106.6	109.0	108.3	0-0	3-0
Oregon St.	88.0	85.7	86.5	86.7	0-0	1-2
South Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	P12	Overall
Utah	111.1	109.3	112.0	110.8	0-1	2-1
U S C	108.9	107.0	108.1	108.0	0-1	1-2
Arizona St.	107.3	105.9	106.6	106.6	0-0	2-1
Colorado	101.1	102.7	102.4	102.1	0-0	3-0
Arizona	101.2	99.5	101.1	100.6	0-0	1-2
U C L A	96.2	96.0	93.2	95.1	0-0	0-3
Pac-12 Averages	107.5	106.2	107.4	107.0
Southeastern Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SEC	Overall
Georgia	132.2	128.4	133.6	131.4	1-0	3-0
Missouri	114.5	113.0	115.7	114.4	0-0	3-0
S. Carolina	112.3	111.1	111.7	111.7	0-1	1-1
Florida	110.8	109.1	111.1	110.3	0-1	2-1
Kentucky	108.8	107.6	108.5	108.3	1-0	3-0
Vanderbilt	102.6	103.4	102.9	103.0	0-0	2-1
Tennessee	96.9	97.3	96.1	96.8	0-0	2-1
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SEC	Overall
Alabama	139.3	137.2	141.2	139.2	1-0	3-0
Mississippi St.	123.8	121.1	124.4	123.1	0-0	3-0
Auburn	121.4	120.2	123.6	121.7	0-1	2-1
L S U	114.1	114.0	115.2	114.4	1-0	3-0
Texas A&M	113.4	112.2	113.8	113.1	0-0	2-1
Ole Miss	104.0	103.7	104.8	104.1	0-1	2-1
Arkansas	99.7	97.0	98.0	98.2	0-0	1-2
SEC Averages	113.8	112.5	114.3	113.6
Sunbelt Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SBC	Overall
Appalachian St.	94.5	96.0	95.8	95.4	0-0	1-1
Troy	90.9	92.2	92.3	91.8	0-0	2-1
Georgia Southern	86.3	87.7	86.6	86.9	0-0	2-1
Coastal Carolina	78.8	81.8	79.4	80.0	0-0	2-1
Georgia St.	77.1	79.7	77.9	78.2	0-0	1-2
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SBC	Overall
Arkansas St.	89.6	91.0	91.4	90.7	0-0	2-1
UL-Monroe	86.7	86.2	87.3	86.8	0-0	2-1
South Alabama	81.2	83.3	82.0	82.2	1-0	1-2
Louisiana	79.5	81.4	80.5	80.5	0-0	1-1
Texas State	70.8	73.9	70.2	71.6	0-1	1-2
Sun Belt Averages	83.5	85.3	84.3	84.4

 

PiRate Ratings By Conference
#	League	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	SEC	113.8	112.5	114.3	113.6
2	ACC	110.7	109.5	110.2	110.1
3	B12	110.0	108.5	109.3	109.3
4	BTEN	109.3	107.7	108.8	108.6
5	P-12	107.5	106.2	107.4	107.0
6	AAC	95.5	96.1	95.4	95.6
7	MWC	94.0	94.6	94.0	94.2
8	IND	92.8	92.8	92.9	92.8
9	MAC	89.8	91.3	90.1	90.4
10	CUSA	85.2	88.0	85.7	86.3
11	SUN	83.5	85.3	84.3	84.4

This Week’s Top 5 Group of 5 Teams

1. South Florida
2. Central Florida
3. North Texas
4. Cincinnati
5. Buffalo

 

This Week’s Playoff and Bowl Projections

Bowl	Conferences		Team 1	Team 2
New Mexico	MWC	CUSA	San Diego St.	[Northern Illinois]
Cure	AAC	SBC	Central Florida	Appalachian St.
Las Vegas	MWC	Pac-12	Fresno St.	Arizona St.
Camellia	MAC	SBC	Akron	Georgia Southern
New Orleans	CUSA	SBC	UAB	UL-Monroe
Boca Raton	MAC	CUSA	Marshall	Western Michigan
Frisco	AAC	MAC	[Utah]	Toledo
Gasparilla	AAC	CUSA	South Florida	Florida Atlantic
Bahamas	AAC	CUSA	Houston	Florida Int’l.
Idaho Potato	MAC	MWC	Buffalo	Utah St.
Birmingham	AAC	SEC	Memphis	Vanderbilt
Armed Forces	AAC	Big 12	Navy	[BYU]
Dollar General	MAC	SBC	Ohio U	Troy
Hawaii	CUSA	MWC	Louisiana Tech	Hawaii
Heart of Dallas	Big Ten	CUSA	[Army]	Southern Miss.
Quick Lane	ACC	Big Ten	Wake Forest	Indiana
Cactus	Big 12	Pac-12	Texas Tech	California
Independence	ACC	SEC	Virginia	[Coastal Carolina]
Pinstripe	ACC	Big Ten	Boston College	Wisconsin
Texas	Big 12	SEC	Iowa St.	South Carolina
Music City	ACC/Big Ten	SEC	Duke	Missouri
Camping World	ACC	Big 12	Notre Dame	West Virginia
Arizona	MWC	SBC	Boise St.	Arkansas St.
Alamo	Big 12	Pac-12	TCU	Washington
Belk	ACC	SEC	North Carolina St.	Auburn
Peach	At-large	At-large	Virginia Tech	Oklahoma St.
Military	AAC	ACC	Cincinnati	Pittsburgh
Sun	ACC	Pac-12	Syracuse	Colorado
San Francisco	Big Ten	Pac-12	Minnesota	USC
Liberty	Big 12	SEC	Texas	Kentucky
Holiday	Big Ten	Pac-12	Iowa	Stanford
Gator	ACC/Big Ten	SEC	Michigan	Florida
Outback	Big Ten	SEC	Michigan St.	LSU
Fiesta	At-large	At-large	Oregon	North Texas
Citrus	ACC/Big Ten	SEC	Miami (Fla.)	Texas A&M
Rose	Big Ten	Pac-12	Ohio St.	Washington St.
Sugar	Big 12	SEC	Oklahoma	Mississippi St.
PLAYOFFS
Cotton	FBS	PLAYOFF	Penn St.	Georgia
Orange	FBS	PLAYOFF	Alabama	Clemson
Champ. Game		Winners	Alabama	Georgia
Teams in [Brackets] are at-large selections

Sweet 16 Games on TV This Week

All times given are Eastern Daylight

Friday Night

Washington State at USC  10:30 PM  on ESPN

USC has dropped consecutive road games, the most previous not being all that close.  With a true freshman quarterback and his top receiver also being a true freshman, can the Trojans score enough points against the Air Raid offense of the Pirate, Mike Leach.

Washington State is 3-0 but has yet to face strong competition, but if the Cougars can win this game, they become a contender for the Pac-12 North Division title.

Saturday
12:00 Noon

Georgia at Missouri  ESPN

Georgia should win this game by playing smashmouth football against a Missouri defense that just gave up a lot of points and yards against Purdue.  However, the Tigers may have overlooked an 0-2 team.  Still, Georgia looks invincible at least until they travel to the Bayou later in the season.

Minnesota at Maryland  BTN

All of a sudden, the Big Ten West looks open for more than one team.  Minnesota is a silent 3-0, and a win in College Park could find the Gophers ranked and in contention for the division flag.

Maryland’s win over Texas would have meant a lot more had they not gotten their Terrapin shell handed to them by lowly Temple.  The Terps must win this game to have any chance at becoming bowl eligible.

Notre Dame at Wake Forest ABC

Notre Dame is a very soft 3-0, and they have played all three games at home.  This will be the Irish’s first road game and first ACC opponent of the season.  They play at a Wake Forest team that made a valiant comeback that came up a bit short against Boston College.  Notre Dame must go 12-0 or 11-1 with a lot of help to have any chance of making the playoffs.

3:30 PM

Clemson at Georgia Tech ABC

We are not going to tell you that this game should be close, but…..

Clemson has not really fired on all cylinders yet.  It can be hard to play two separate offensive game plans every week, and the two quarterback system may prove to be a liability at some point.

The Tigers have been upset both of the last two years in conference play.  We don’t expect this to be one of those games, but we are anxious to see how CU uses their two QBs in conference play.

Georgia Tech’s multiple option offense should be forced into more passing situations against the top defensive front in the nation, but should Clemson’s offense not sustain a good number of drives, the Tigers may give up some points in the second half.

Kansas St. at West Virginia ESPN

West Virginia missed Saturday’s game, and so far teams that had games cancelled have not been all that sharp.  They face a Kansas State team that is going to need to pick up an upset or two to reach bowl eligibility this year.  The Mountaineers need to pick up a statement win in conference play to strike fear in the Oklahoma’s, Oklahoma State’s, and TCU’s.

Texas A&M at Alabama CBS

This week, the Crimson Tide have done something that has not been done in 17 years.  At the end of the 2001 season, National Champion Miami of Florida rated 9.6 points ahead of #2 Oregon.  Alabama is the first team since to be more than a touchdown ahead of the number two team in our ratings.

At this point, we’re not sure the Buffalo Bills could beat Alabama at New Era Field in the snow.  Alabama looked as good if not better than the 1995 Nebraska team that won the national championship with ease.

What makes this game so inviting is that Texas A&M played Clemson a couple weeks ago.  In that game, the Aggies looked like they belonged on the same field with a top 10 team.  If Alabama makes this another laugher, that will tell us all just how far ahead of another potential playoff team they have advanced.

TCU at Texas Fox

These teams don’t particularly care much for each other, and with TCU coming into this game with doubts, while the Longhorns are sky high, it should be quite interesting.  Prior last Saturday, TCU looked like a cinch to win this game according to the ratings.  After the ‘Horns clobbered USC and TCU blew up in a four-minute stretch against Ohio State, this game becomes a toss-up in the ratings.

What’s up for grabs in this game is a chance to become a key contender for the number two spot in the conference standings, which in the Big 12 will get you in the Conference Championship Game.

4 PM

South Carolina at Vanderbilt SEC

South Carolina is another team that had a game cancelled unexpectedly due to the weather.  They have not played since Georgia mutilated them in Columbia.  At this point, the Gamecocks are playing for a Citrus Bowl bid, as Georgia is not going to lose two conference games.

Vanderbilt did everything but outscore Notre Dame in South Bend, Saturday.  The Commodores outgained the Irish by 40 yards, but they suffered a loss of at least 11 points due not being able to hang onto the ball.  If the Commodores can come out with a chip on their shoulders, this can be a close game that could be decided in the final minutes.  However, as long time Commodore fans know, Vanderbilt has been known to come out flat and not show up the week after they experienced a moral victory.

7 PM

Florida at Tennessee ESPN

The winner of this game will earn a bowl bid this year.  That’s more than enough to make a game important, but this is the first chance for two new coaches to get the upper hand over their rival in this big rivalry game.

Tennessee’s defense has looked strong the last two weeks against an FCS team and the #130 FBS team.  How will they look against a better than average SEC offense?  Better yet, if you can only score 24 points at home against UTEP, how are you going to score enough to beat the Gators?

Mississippi St. at Kentucky ESPN2

One of these two teams will be 4-0 after this game, almost assuredly ranked in the top 25, and a serious contender for the Citrus or even Sugar Bowl should Alabama and Georgia both make the playoffs.

The win over Florida in Gainesville is looking mighty good for the Wildcats, while Mississippi State looked a lot like Penn State in their last two games, which shouldn’t surprise many people that know that Coach Joe Moorhead was the offensive coordinator in Happy Valley.

Texas Tech at Oklahoma St. FS1

After getting pasted by Ole Miss in week one, Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury was square in the middle of a hot seat in Lubbock.  The 63-point showing in a win over Houston has cooled the seat a bit, but the Red Raiders have an uphill climb to find four more wins and get bowl eligible.  Anything short of a bowl bid would most likely be the end of the Kingsbury era.

Oklahoma State looked like a playoff contender in their comfortable win over Boise State.  The Cowboys look like the top contender to their rival Sooners in the Big 12, and if they slow down the Red Raiders and hold them to 28 points or less, while winning by double digits, OSU could move on to a 9-0 start when they go to Norman in November.

 

7:30 PM

Michigan St. at Indiana BTN

Michigan State has been a major disappointment to start this season.  The Spartans had the most experience returning in FBS football this year, off a team that won 10 games last year.  A much closer than expected opening win over Utah State was followed by a loss at Arizona State.  After a week off, they now find themselves travelling into a potential ambush in Bloomington.

Indiana is 3-0 for the first time since 2015 and just the second time in the last nine seasons.  The Hoosiers look like a potential bowl eligible squad, and they basically need to pull off one conference upset to get to 3-6 in the league and guarantee six wins.  Their rebuilt defense is looking strong enough to keep them in this game, and if MSU hasn’t snapped out of their funk, the Hoosiers could surprise and move to 4-0.  The last three times IU began 4-0, they made it to a bowl game.

8:00 PM

Stanford at Oregon ABC

This may be the top game of the weekend.  The winner of this game will be the co-contender with Washington and possibly Washington State for the Pac-12 North flag.  Neither team has been exceptionally strong so far, and Stanford’s win over USC lost a lot of its oomph when USC was clobbered by Texas.  The key to this game may be the health of Bryce Love.  Love did not play against UC-Davis after rushing for 136 yards against USC.  Last year, he torched Oregon with 147 yards and two touchdowns.

Oregon’s defense against the run has looked solid this year, while the Ducks’ passing game behind Justin Herbert has been spectacular at times.  The Ducks have had this game circled on their schedule since Spring practice.  The Cardinal have embarrassed the Ducks with consecutive slaughters the last two seasons, and the Ducks will be inspired to shut down Stanford’s running game and force the Cardinal out of their game plan.

8:30 PM

Wisconsin at Iowa Fox

If Wisconsin continues to look lifeless on offense for 20 minutes per game, the Badgers are not going to win the Big Ten West.  They are in a precarious position having to come to Iowa City for a prime time game, where the Hawkeyes enjoy an incredible home field advantage.

Iowa rarely puts up flashy offensive yardage numbers.  But, when you limit opponents to 42 rushing yards and 209 total yards per game, you can win by scoring 24 points and gaining 380 total yards.  They gang tackle and rarely let an opponent get many yards after contact.

10:30 PM

Arizona St. at Washington ESPN

The late game on ESPN is usually exciting, because it involves two teams with wide open offenses from the West Coast.  Also, frequently, these teams cannot play a lot of defense.  This mold was broken Saturday night, when in Washington’s win over Utah in Salt Lake City, the Huskies looked more like their 1959 and 1960 teams that went 10-1.  UW gained just 330 yards and gave up 261 to the Utes.

Arizona State did nothing on the ground against San Diego State, and if the Sun Devils don’t correct this Saturday night, they will get pasted in Seattle.  The ASU passing game cannot pass for 300 yards against the Huskies’ secondary, so if UW can limit ASU’s running game, this could be another one of those 1960-style defensive victories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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PiRate Ratings–College Football Week 3

This Week’s PiRate Rating Spreads

Thursday,	September 13
Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
Wake Forest	Boston College	-6.6	-5.7	-9.3

 

Friday	September 14
Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
Memphis	Georgia St.	29.4	28.6	29.4

 

Saturday	September 15
Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
Tennessee	UTEP	31.7	28.9	31.8
Indiana	Ball St.	16.8	13.2	16.6
Maryland	Temple	15.9	14.3	14.8
Florida Int’l.	Massachusetts	-2.0	0.7	-2.7
Toledo	Miami (Fla.)	-17.1	-13.1	-16.6
Army	Hawaii	20.9	19.0	22.6
Penn St.	Kent St.	42.6	38.1	43.4
North Carolina	Central Florida	-9.3	-10.2	-10.2
Charlotte	Old Dominion	-4.0	-6.0	-3.9
Syracuse	Florida St.	0.5	-0.4	-0.3
Iowa St.	Oklahoma	-9.6	-10.3	-10.9
Nebraska	Troy	13.5	10.4	9.3
Kansas	Rutgers	3.3	3.1	3.2
Virginia Tech	East Carolina	33.5	33.8	34.3
Pittsburgh	Georgia Tech	-6.6	-5.9	-7.0
Notre Dame	Vanderbilt	22.1	17.4	20.3
Virginia	Ohio U	9.9	8.8	7.1
Michigan	SMU	35.4	35.3	37.8
Appalachian St.	Southern Miss.	14.8	13.1	15.6
Oklahoma St.	Boise St.	0.4	-1.0	-0.5
Wisconsin	BYU	25.2	21.6	24.3
North Carolina St.	West Virginia	4.6	4.9	4.8
Minnesota	Miami (O)	20.5	17.7	19.3
Auburn	LSU	13.4	11.8	15.3
Illinois	South Florida	-1.7	-5.1	-3.8
Northern Illinois	Central Michigan	15.6	13.4	15.4
Clemson	Georgia Southern	48.6	44.0	48.9
New Mexico St.	New Mexico	-8.7	-8.0	-8.3
UAB	Tulane	-5.5	-3.2	-4.9
Baylor	Duke	-9.8	-9.6	-9.8
Florida	Colorado St.	28.6	25.0	28.6
Texas Tech	Houston	3.6	0.6	1.0
Kansas St.	UTSA	29.8	23.4	28.0
Arkansas	North Texas	12.0	6.3	9.5
Oregon	San Jose St.	41.4	40.7	43.9
Buffalo	Eastern Michigan	5.3	6.4	5.9
Nevada	Oregon St.	6.5	9.3	8.2
Ole Miss	Alabama	-23.4	-21.5	-24.4
Tulsa	Arkansas St.	7.6	4.6	6.5
South Alabama	Texas St.	13.7	12.6	15.4
Georgia	Middle Tennessee	45.6	39.6	46.0
South Carolina	Marshall	20.5	16.5	18.7
Purdue	Missouri	-7.4	-7.5	-10.0
Northwestern	Akron	25.6	21.8	25.4
Mississippi St.	Louisiana	46.8	41.6	46.4
Texas A&M	UL-Monroe	28.8	27.9	28.3
Louisville	Western Kentucky	23.3	19.7	21.5
Texas	USC	-0.4	-0.2	-0.8
TCU	Ohio St.	-11.5	-9.4	-13.1
Utah	Washington	-12.5	-11.6	-14.1
UCLA	Fresno St.	-6.2	-4.8	-8.3
San Diego St.	Arizona St.	-7.1	-5.0	-5.3

 

FBS vs. FCS
Home	Visitor	PiRate
Utah St.	Tennessee Tech	38.6
Kentucky	Murray St.	36.1
Connecticut	Rhode Island	10.2
Stanford	UC-Davis	36.9
Navy	Lehigh	29.8
Wyoming	Wofford	17.5
Bowling Green	Eastern Kentucky	13.5
Colorado	New Hampshire	30.3
California	Idaho St.	32.1
Liberty	Norfolk St.	18.5
Florida Atlantic	Bethune-Cookman	38.5
Coastal Carolina	Campbell	17.7
Cincinnati	Alabama A&M	36.0
Western Michigan	Delaware St.	39.7
Iowa	Northern Iowa	32.2
Washington St.	Eastern Wash.	23.7
UNLV	Prairie-View	21.2
Arizona	Southern Utah	24.3

 

This Week’s PiRate Ratings

PiRate Ratings
#	Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	Alabama	133.8	131.7	135.7	133.7
2	Georgia	131.9	127.6	133.3	130.9
3	Clemson	130.8	127.7	131.5	130.0
4	Ohio St.	128.7	125.9	129.3	128.0
5	Washington	126.7	124.2	129.1	126.6
6	Auburn	123.2	121.8	125.8	123.6
7	Mississippi St.	123.8	120.8	124.4	123.0
8	Michigan	123.1	122.0	124.0	123.0
9	Oklahoma	122.6	121.3	123.2	122.4
10	Michigan St.	122.3	120.0	122.0	121.5
11	Penn St.	121.2	118.0	121.5	120.2
12	Wisconsin	121.2	118.3	120.9	120.1
13	Stanford	120.5	118.1	121.0	119.9
14	Notre Dame	120.7	116.9	119.1	118.9
15	Boston College	118.2	115.2	118.5	117.3
16	Miami	117.3	115.3	116.9	116.5
17	Boise St.	116.4	115.8	117.2	116.5
18	Virginia Tech	116.2	115.7	116.1	116.0
19	Missouri	115.2	113.7	116.8	115.2
20	Oregon	114.5	114.6	115.2	114.8
21	Duke	115.2	112.7	114.7	114.2
22	T C U	114.2	113.6	113.2	113.6
23	Iowa	114.2	111.8	113.6	113.2
24	Oklahoma St.	113.8	111.8	113.7	113.1
25	L S U	112.8	112.9	113.5	113.1
26	N. Carolina St.	113.3	112.7	112.9	113.0
27	Central Florida	112.7	112.5	112.8	112.7
28	Texas A&M	113.0	111.7	113.2	112.6
29	Northwestern	112.9	110.8	112.9	112.2
30	S. Carolina	112.0	110.8	111.4	111.4
31	U S C	112.1	110.3	111.5	111.3
32	West Virginia	111.7	110.9	111.1	111.2
33	Utah	111.2	109.5	112.0	110.9
34	Georgia Tech	110.6	109.6	110.2	110.2
35	Florida	110.2	108.0	110.3	109.5
36	Iowa State	110.0	108.0	109.3	109.1
37	California	109.7	106.9	109.3	108.6
38	Florida St.	109.0	108.3	108.6	108.6
39	Kentucky	108.7	107.5	108.4	108.2
40	Washington St.	108.8	107.9	107.7	108.1
41	Arizona St.	108.8	107.3	108.1	108.1
42	Texas	108.7	107.1	107.7	107.8
43	Ole Miss	107.5	107.2	108.3	107.6
44	Fresno St.	107.9	106.3	107.4	107.2
45	Wake Forest	108.7	106.5	106.2	107.1
46	Minnesota	106.6	105.8	106.3	106.2
47	Syracuse	106.5	104.9	105.3	105.6
48	Memphis	104.2	106.3	105.3	105.3
49	Maryland	105.9	104.4	105.1	105.1
50	Kansas St.	106.0	104.3	105.0	105.1
51	Purdue	104.8	103.1	103.7	103.9
52	Houston	103.1	104.3	103.8	103.7
53	Utah St.	102.5	104.0	104.1	103.5
54	Arkansas	104.9	102.0	103.2	103.4
55	Louisville	102.9	102.7	102.3	102.6
56	Texas Tech	103.7	101.8	101.9	102.5
57	Colorado	101.1	102.7	102.4	102.1
58	Vanderbilt	101.5	102.5	101.8	102.0
59	Baylor	102.4	100.2	101.9	101.5
60	Virginia	101.5	101.8	99.9	101.1
61	Pittsburgh	101.0	100.7	100.2	100.7
62	Arizona	101.0	99.3	100.9	100.4
63	N. Carolina	100.4	99.3	99.6	99.8
64	BYU	99.0	99.8	99.6	99.4
65	Florida Atlantic	99.0	99.5	99.7	99.4
66	South Florida	98.0	101.0	98.9	99.3
67	San Diego St.	98.7	99.3	99.9	99.3
68	Nebraska	100.1	98.4	97.5	98.6
69	Toledo	97.2	99.3	97.3	97.9
70	U C L A	98.8	98.5	96.2	97.8
71	Indiana	98.0	97.1	97.5	97.5
72	Wyoming	97.4	97.3	97.2	97.3
73	N. Texas	95.9	98.8	96.7	97.1
74	Tennessee	97.2	97.5	96.5	97.1
75	Army	96.3	96.7	96.5	96.5
76	Buffalo	95.3	97.6	96.5	96.5
77	Navy	95.5	98.3	95.2	96.4
78	Northern Illinois	96.1	96.7	96.1	96.3
79	Marshall	94.4	97.3	95.6	95.8
80	Tulane	95.6	95.7	95.2	95.5
81	Ohio U	94.6	96.0	95.9	95.5
82	Appalachian St.	94.2	95.7	95.5	95.1
83	Kansas	96.1	95.0	94.1	95.1
84	Rutgers	95.8	94.9	93.9	94.9
85	Louisiana Tech	93.4	95.9	94.6	94.6
86	Eastern Michigan	92.4	93.7	93.1	93.1
87	Air Force	93.0	93.1	92.5	92.9
88	Illinois	93.3	92.9	92.1	92.8
89	Tulsa	93.0	91.6	93.6	92.7
90	Temple	92.5	92.6	92.8	92.6
91	Cincinnati	92.0	93.6	92.0	92.5
92	Nevada	91.3	91.4	91.3	91.3
93	Akron	90.3	91.9	90.5	90.9
94	Western Michigan	89.9	91.5	90.7	90.7
95	Troy	89.5	91.0	91.1	90.5
96	U N L V	89.5	91.1	90.0	90.2
97	Middle Tennessee	89.3	91.0	90.2	90.2
98	Miami (O)	89.1	91.1	90.0	90.1
99	SMU	90.7	89.7	89.2	89.9
100	Massachusetts	88.2	90.0	89.6	89.3
101	Arkansas St.	87.9	89.5	89.6	89.0
102	U A B	87.6	90.0	87.8	88.5
103	UL-Monroe	87.1	86.7	87.9	87.3
104	New Mexico	86.4	88.1	86.3	86.9
105	Oregon St.	87.8	85.2	86.1	86.4
106	Georgia Southern	85.3	86.7	85.6	85.9
107	East Carolina	85.7	84.9	84.8	85.1
108	Colo. State	84.6	85.9	84.7	85.1
109	Florida Int’l.	83.2	87.7	83.8	84.9
110	Central Michigan	83.5	86.3	83.7	84.5
111	Ball St.	83.2	85.9	82.9	84.0
112	Bowling Green	83.7	83.7	83.9	83.8
113	Southern Miss.	82.3	85.5	82.8	83.6
114	W. Kentucky	81.6	85.0	82.7	83.1
115	Old Dominion	81.0	85.2	81.0	82.4
116	South Alabama	81.3	83.4	82.3	82.3
117	Kent St.	81.6	82.9	81.0	81.8
118	U T S A	79.2	83.9	80.0	81.1
119	Louisiana	79.5	81.7	80.5	80.6
120	Liberty	81.0	79.3	81.2	80.5
121	Hawaii	79.9	82.2	78.4	80.2
122	Coastal Carolina	78.5	81.5	79.1	79.7
123	Georgia St.	77.9	80.7	78.9	79.2
124	Connecticut	78.5	78.7	77.2	78.1
125	N. Mexico St.	75.7	78.1	76.0	76.6
126	San Jose St.	76.1	76.9	74.3	75.8
127	Charlotte	74.5	76.8	74.6	75.3
128	Texas State	70.7	73.8	69.9	71.5
129	Rice	70.4	73.4	69.1	71.0
130	U T E P	68.5	71.6	67.8	69.3

 

PiRate Ratings By Conference

American Athletic Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	AAC	Overall
Central Florida	112.7	112.5	112.8	112.7	1-0	2-0
South Florida	98.0	101.0	98.9	99.3	0-0	2-0
Temple	92.5	92.6	92.8	92.6	0-0	0-2
Cincinnati	92.0	93.6	92.0	92.5	0-0	2-0
East Carolina	85.7	84.9	84.8	85.1	0-0	1-1
Connecticut	78.5	78.7	77.2	78.1	0-1	0-2
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	AAC	Overall
Memphis	104.2	106.3	105.3	105.3	0-1	1-1
Houston	103.1	104.3	103.8	103.7	0-0	2-0
Navy	95.5	98.3	95.2	96.4	1-0	1-1
Tulane	95.6	95.7	95.2	95.5	0-0	1-1
Tulsa	93.0	91.6	93.6	92.7	0-0	1-1
SMU	90.7	89.7	89.2	89.9	0-0	0-2
AAC Averages	95.1	95.7	95.1	95.3
Atlantic Coast Conference
Atlantic Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	ACC	Overall
Clemson	130.8	127.7	131.5	130.0	0-0	2-0
Boston College	118.2	115.2	118.5	117.3	0-0	2-0
N. Carolina St.	113.3	112.7	112.9	113.0	0-0	2-0
Florida St.	109.0	108.3	108.6	108.6	0-1	1-1
Wake Forest	108.7	106.5	106.2	107.1	0-0	2-0
Syracuse	106.5	104.9	105.3	105.6	0-0	2-0
Louisville	102.9	102.7	102.3	102.6	0-0	1-1
Coastal Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	ACC	Overall
Miami	117.3	115.3	116.9	116.5	0-0	1-1
Virginia Tech	116.2	115.7	116.1	116.0	1-0	2-0
Duke	115.2	112.7	114.7	114.2	0-0	2-0
Georgia Tech	110.6	109.6	110.2	110.2	0-0	1-1
Virginia	101.5	101.8	99.9	101.1	0-0	1-1
Pittsburgh	101.0	100.7	100.2	100.7	0-0	1-1
N. Carolina	100.4	99.3	99.6	99.8	0-0	0-2
ACC Averages	110.8	109.5	110.2	110.2
Big 12 Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	B12	Overall
Oklahoma	122.6	121.3	123.2	122.4	0-0	2-0
T C U	114.2	113.6	113.2	113.6	0-0	2-0
Oklahoma St.	113.8	111.8	113.7	113.1	0-0	2-0
West Virginia	111.7	110.9	111.1	111.2	0-0	2-0
Iowa State	110.0	108.0	109.3	109.1	0-0	0-1
Texas	108.7	107.1	107.7	107.8	0-0	1-1
Kansas St.	106.0	104.3	105.0	105.1	0-0	1-1
Texas Tech	103.7	101.8	101.9	102.5	0-0	1-1
Baylor	102.4	100.2	101.9	101.5	0-0	2-0
Kansas	96.1	95.0	94.1	95.1	0-0	1-1
Big 12 Averages	108.9	107.4	108.1	108.1
Big Ten Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	BTen	Overall
Ohio St.	128.7	125.9	129.3	128.0	1-0	2-0
Michigan	123.1	122.0	124.0	123.0	0-0	1-1
Michigan St.	122.3	120.0	122.0	121.5	0-0	1-1
Penn St.	121.2	118.0	121.5	120.2	0-0	2-0
Maryland	105.9	104.4	105.1	105.1	0-0	2-0
Indiana	98.0	97.1	97.5	97.5	0-0	2-0
Rutgers	95.8	94.9	93.9	94.9	0-1	1-1
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	BTen	Overall
Wisconsin	121.2	118.3	120.9	120.1	0-0	2-0
Iowa	114.2	111.8	113.6	113.2	0-0	2-0
Northwestern	112.9	110.8	112.9	112.2	1-0	1-1
Minnesota	106.6	105.8	106.3	106.2	0-0	2-0
Purdue	104.8	103.1	103.7	103.9	0-1	0-2
Nebraska	100.1	98.4	97.5	98.6	0-0	0-1
Illinois	93.3	92.9	92.1	92.8	0-0	2-0
Big Ten Averages	110.6	108.8	110.0	109.8
Conference USA
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	CUSA	Overall
Florida Atlantic	99.0	99.5	99.7	99.4	0-0	1-1
Marshall	94.4	97.3	95.6	95.8	0-0	2-0
Middle Tennessee	89.3	91.0	90.2	90.2	0-0	1-1
Florida Int’l.	83.2	87.7	83.8	84.9	1-0	1-1
W. Kentucky	81.6	85.0	82.7	83.1	0-0	0-2
Old Dominion	81.0	85.2	81.0	82.4	0-1	0-2
Charlotte	74.5	76.8	74.6	75.3	0-0	1-1
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	CUSA	Overall
N. Texas	95.9	98.8	96.7	97.1	0-0	2-0
Louisiana Tech	93.4	95.9	94.6	94.6	0-0	2-0
U A B	87.6	90.0	87.8	88.5	0-0	1-1
Southern Miss.	82.3	85.5	82.8	83.6	0-0	1-1
U T S A	79.2	83.9	80.0	81.1	0-0	0-2
Rice	70.4	73.4	69.1	71.0	0-0	1-2
U T E P	68.5	71.6	67.8	69.3	0-0	0-2
CUSA Averages	84.3	87.3	84.8	85.4
FBS Independents
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	Conf.	Overall
Notre Dame	120.7	116.9	119.1	118.9	x	2-0
BYU	99.0	99.8	99.6	99.4	x	1-1
Army	96.3	96.7	96.5	96.5	x	1-1
Massachusetts	88.2	90.0	89.6	89.3	x	1-2
Liberty	81.0	79.3	81.2	80.5	x	1-1
N. Mexico St.	75.7	78.1	76.0	76.6	x	0-3
Ind. Averages	93.5	93.5	93.7	93.5
Mid-American Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MAC	Overall
Buffalo	95.3	97.6	96.5	96.5	0-0	2-0
Ohio U	94.6	96.0	95.9	95.5	0-0	1-0
Akron	90.3	91.9	90.5	90.9	0-0	1-0
Miami (O)	89.1	91.1	90.0	90.1	0-0	0-2
Bowling Green	83.7	83.7	83.9	83.8	0-0	0-2
Kent St.	81.6	82.9	81.0	81.8	0-0	1-1
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MAC	Overall
Toledo	97.2	99.3	97.3	97.9	0-0	1-0
Northern Illinois	96.1	96.7	96.1	96.3	0-0	0-2
Eastern Michigan	92.4	93.7	93.1	93.1	0-0	2-0
Western Michigan	89.9	91.5	90.7	90.7	0-0	0-2
Central Michigan	83.5	86.3	83.7	84.5	0-0	0-2
Ball St.	83.2	85.9	82.9	84.0	0-0	1-1
MAC Averages	89.8	91.4	90.1	90.4
Mountain West Conference
Mountain Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MWC	Overall
Boise St.	116.4	115.8	117.2	116.5	0-0	2-0
Utah St.	102.5	104.0	104.1	103.5	0-0	1-1
Wyoming	97.4	97.3	97.2	97.3	0-0	1-2
Air Force	93.0	93.1	92.5	92.9	0-0	1-1
New Mexico	86.4	88.1	86.3	86.9	0-0	1-1
Colo. State	84.6	85.9	84.7	85.1	0-1	1-2
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MWC	Overall
Fresno St.	107.9	106.3	107.4	107.2	0-0	1-1
San Diego St.	98.7	99.3	99.9	99.3	0-0	1-1
Nevada	91.3	91.4	91.3	91.3	0-0	1-1
U N L V	89.5	91.1	90.0	90.2	0-0	1-1
Hawaii	79.9	82.2	78.4	80.2	1-0	3-0
San Jose St.	76.1	76.9	74.3	75.8	0-0	0-2
MWC Averages	93.6	94.3	93.6	93.8
Pac-12 Conference
North Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	P12	Overall
Washington	126.7	124.2	129.1	126.6	0-0	1-1
Stanford	120.5	118.1	121.0	119.9	1-0	2-0
Oregon	114.5	114.6	115.2	114.8	0-0	2-0
California	109.7	106.9	109.3	108.6	0-0	2-0
Washington St.	108.8	107.9	107.7	108.1	0-0	2-0
Oregon St.	87.8	85.2	86.1	86.4	0-0	1-1
South Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	P12	Overall
U S C	112.1	110.3	111.5	111.3	0-1	1-1
Utah	111.2	109.5	112.0	110.9	0-0	2-0
Arizona St.	108.8	107.3	108.1	108.1	0-0	2-0
Colorado	101.1	102.7	102.4	102.1	0-0	2-0
Arizona	101.0	99.3	100.9	100.4	0-0	0-2
U C L A	98.8	98.5	96.2	97.8	0-0	0-2
Pac-12 Averages	108.4	107.0	108.3	107.9
Southeastern Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SEC	Overall
Georgia	131.9	127.6	133.3	130.9	1-0	2-0
Missouri	115.2	113.7	116.8	115.2	0-0	2-0
S. Carolina	112.0	110.8	111.4	111.4	0-1	1-1
Florida	110.2	108.0	110.3	109.5	0-1	1-1
Kentucky	108.7	107.5	108.4	108.2	1-0	2-0
Vanderbilt	101.5	102.5	101.8	102.0	0-0	2-0
Tennessee	97.2	97.5	96.5	97.1	0-0	1-1
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SEC	Overall
Alabama	133.8	131.7	135.7	133.7	0-0	2-0
Auburn	123.2	121.8	125.8	123.6	0-0	2-0
Mississippi St.	123.8	120.8	124.4	123.0	0-0	2-0
L S U	112.8	112.9	113.5	113.1	0-0	2-0
Texas A&M	113.0	111.7	113.2	112.6	0-0	1-1
Ole Miss	107.5	107.2	108.3	107.6	0-0	2-0
Arkansas	104.9	102.0	103.2	103.4	0-0	1-1
SEC Averages	114.0	112.5	114.5	113.7
Sunbelt Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SBC	Overall
Appalachian St.	94.2	95.7	95.5	95.1	0-0	1-1
Troy	89.5	91.0	91.1	90.5	0-0	1-1
Georgia Southern	85.3	86.7	85.6	85.9	0-0	2-0
Coastal Carolina	78.5	81.5	79.1	79.7	0-0	1-1
Georgia St.	77.9	80.7	78.9	79.2	0-0	1-1
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SBC	Overall
Arkansas St.	87.9	89.5	89.6	89.0	0-0	1-1
UL-Monroe	87.1	86.7	87.9	87.3	0-0	2-0
South Alabama	81.3	83.4	82.3	82.3	0-0	0-2
Louisiana	79.5	81.7	80.5	80.6	0-0	1-0
Texas State	70.7	73.8	69.9	71.5	0-0	1-1
Sun Belt Averages	83.2	85.1	84.0	84.1

 

Conference Ratings

#	League	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	SEC	114.0	112.5	114.5	113.7
2	ACC	110.8	109.5	110.2	110.2
3	BTEN	110.6	108.8	110.0	109.8
4	B12	108.9	107.4	108.1	108.1
5	P-12	108.4	107.0	108.3	107.9
6	AAC	95.1	95.7	95.1	95.3
7	MWC	93.6	94.3	93.6	93.8
8	IND	93.5	93.5	93.7	93.5
9	MAC	89.8	91.4	90.1	90.4
10	CUSA	84.3	87.3	84.8	85.4
11	SUN	83.2	85.1	84.0	84.1

This Week’s Playoff and Bowl Projections

Bowl	Conferences		Team 1	Team 2
New Mexico	MWC	CUSA	Utah St.	Southern Miss.
Cure	AAC	SBC	Central Florida	Appalachian St.
Las Vegas	MWC	Pac-12	Fresno St.	Colorado
Camellia	MAC	SBC	Buffalo	Troy
New Orleans	CUSA	SBC	Louisiana Tech	UL-Monroe
Boca Raton	MAC	CUSA	Toledo	Marshall
Frisco	AAC	MAC	Tulsa	Western Michigan
Gasparilla	AAC	CUSA	South Florida	Florida Atlantic
Bahamas	AAC	CUSA	Houston	North Texas
Idaho Potato	MAC	MWC	Eastern Michigan	UNLV
Birmingham	AAC	SEC	Memphis	[Virginia]
Armed Forces	AAC	Big 12	Navy	[California]
Dollar General	MAC	SBC	Ohio U	Louisiana
Hawaii	CUSA	MWC	Florida Int’l.	Hawaii
Heart of Dallas	Big Ten	CUSA	[BYU]	Middle Tennessee
Quick Lane	ACC	Big Ten	Louisville	Indiana
Cactus	Big 12	Pac-12	[Army]	Arizona St.
Independence	ACC	SEC	Georgia Tech	[UAB]
Pinstripe	ACC	Big Ten	Duke	Maryland
Texas	Big 12	SEC	[Utah]	Texas A&M
Music City	ACC/Big Ten	SEC	North Carolina St.	Missouri
Camping World	ACC	Big 12	Notre Dame	Iowa St.
Arizona	MWC	SBC	San Diego St.	Arkansas St.
Alamo	Big 12	Pac-12	Oklahoma St.	Washington
Belk	ACC	SEC	Boston College	South Carolina
Peach	At-large	At-large	West Virginia	Virginia Tech
Military	AAC	ACC	Cincinnati	Syracuse
Sun	ACC	Pac-12	Miami (Fla.)	Washington St.
San Francisco	Big Ten	Pac-12	Iowa	Oregon
Liberty	Big 12	SEC	[Georgia Southern]	Kentucky
Holiday	Big Ten	Pac-12	Michigan	USC
Gator	ACC/Big Ten	SEC	Wisconsin	Florida
Outback	Big Ten	SEC	Minnesota	LSU
Fiesta	At-large	At-large	Boise St.	TCU
Citrus	ACC/Big Ten	SEC	Michigan St.	Mississippi St.
Rose	Big Ten	Pac-12	Penn St.	Stanford
Sugar	Big 12	SEC	Oklahoma	Auburn
FBS PLAYOFFS
Cotton	FBS	PLAYOFF	Alabama	Ohio St.
Orange	FBS	PLAYOFF	Clemson	Georgia
Championship	Semifinal	Winners	Alabama	Georgia
Teams in [Brackets] are at-large selections

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PiRate Ratings Money Line Parlays for September 6-10, 2018

With the NFL kicking off Thursday night, this is the first weekend where the handicappers have both college and pro regular season football to consider when making their selections.

It has been a custom at the PiRate Ratings that we make the maximum number of picks on this week of the season.  We will be going with 11 selections this week, using a combination of straight wagers, money line parlays, and 10-point teasers.

As usual, please be advised that every selection made on this website is absolutely free to you, and you should consider the value of the information to struggle to meet the monetary cost you pay to receive it.  In other words, unless you are a sharp in the Caribbean that knows how to use our picks and make a fortune, please do not wager your hard-earned money on games using this site as your sole reference.  The PiRates do this strictly for mathematical fun.

Here are this week’s PiRate Picks.

Favorite	Underdog	Spread	Pick
Michigan St.	Arizona St.	5 1/2	Mich. St.
BYU	California	3 1/2	California
Indiana	Virginia	7	Virginia
Georgia Tech	South Florida	3	Ga. Tech
Stanford	USC	4	Stanford

Money Line Parlay	@+238
Winner	Loser
North Carolina	East Carolina
Maryland	Bowling Green
Florida	Kentucky
Stanford	USC
Michigan St.	Arizona St.

Money Line Parlay	@ +182
Winner	Loser
Purdue	Eastern Michigan
Georgia	South Carolina
Appalachian St.	Charlotte
UAB	Coastal Carolina
Penn St.	Pittsburgh

Money Line Parlay	@+237
Winner	Loser
Pittsburgh	Cleveland
Baltimore	Buffalo
New Orleans	Tampa Bay
New England	Houston

Money Line Game	@+140
Winner	Loser
Cincinnati	Indianapolis

10-point teaser	3-team parlay -110
Favorite	Underdog	Spread	Pick
Coastal Carolina	UAB	1	UAB
Indiana	Virginia	17	Virginia
Purdue	Eastern Mich.	5 1/2	Purdue

10-point teaser	3-team parlay -110
Favorite	Underdog	Spread	Pick
Georgia	South Carolina	Pk	Georgia
USC	Stanford	6	Stanford
Clemson	Texas A&M	2	Clemson

The PiRates are adding some buckaroos to the ship this season for their expertise in picking football games. In addition to our own picks, each of the buckaroos and buckarettes will supply his or her own picks to us each week. If they prove their worth, we’ll run their picks up the flagpole every week, but if they lose too much, they’ll walk the plank.

To start off, each has been granted an unlimited bank account to wager an odd number of games of 3, 5, 7, or 9 selections each week isolated to just college football. All pretend wagers will be $100 a game, so it will be easy to calculate. If they win, they earn another $100 to their imaginary account. If they lose, then $110 will be deducted.

Our guest players have all chosen their user names for this event, so here is a brief introduction on each player–in alphabetical order.

1. Buckeye Michelle lives in Florida, after growing up in the Cleveland area. Don’t let her gender fool you; she knows football. She can recognize coverage zones by the defense, but most of all, she sees what most of us don’t see–value. If you ever need a personal shopper, Michie is the one for you. She’ll find you a lot of bargains.

2. Cal Gal Tiffy lives on the West Coast, and yes, she is another member of the fairer sex. A tomboy who played tackle football with the boys growing up, she matured into a model and now is a makeup artist that never misses a Stanford home game.

3. Dean 615 is a former college football star and played in the NFL for a decade. Dean knows how to evaluate talent and can watch a game and see all 22 players and know who missed his assignment. Dean has a room full of trophies in his home.

4. Friday Dog 13 is a rabid football fan and friend of the Captains for 40+ years. Friday Dog has seen more than 100 football games in person, many at Vanderbilt’s Dudley Field and many at Peden Stadium in Athens, Ohio. Friday Dog is an expert in hometown football.

5. Stewed Meat is a professional sharp. Stewed has cashed some rather expensive tickets in Las Vegas and has been banned in some places or been forced to play no more than a certain amount on college games. Stewed is the Captain’s source for receiving the “Outlaw” line as well as how quickly the lines flattened and which games saw sharps playing both sides for the middle. Stewed has placed a grand on one parlay and won $10K when the parlay came in. Stewed has also watched a botched extra point kill a $25K wager. Stewed plays money line parlays almost exclusively and has admitted that playing individual games against the spread is not Stewed’s expertise.
Note–The odds chosen were the best available at Oddshark.com at the time of the submission to the Captain.

Here are the picks this week for each player.
1. Buckeye Michelle
Rice +17 1/2 vs. Hawaii
Louisiana-Monroe + 6 1/2 vs. Southern Miss.
Colorado St. +13 1/2 vs. Arkansas
Kentucky +14 1/2 vs. Florida
Tulsa +23 vs. Texas

2. Cal Gal Tiffy
Stanford -4 vs. USC
California +3 1/2 vs. BYU
Iowa -3 1/3 vs. Iowa St.
Notre Dame -34 vs. Ball St.
Army -8 1/2 vs. Liberty
Central Michigan -4 vs. Kansas
Georgia -10 vs. South Carolina

3. Dean 73
Notre Dame -34 vs. Ball St.
Appalachian St. -13 1/2 vs. Charlotte
UAB -9 vs. Coastal Carolina

4. Friday Dog 13
Vanderbilt -8 1/2 vs. Nevada
Ohio St. -34 1/2 vs. Rutgers
Mississippi St. -9 1/2 vs. Kansas St.

5. Stewed Meat
Western Michigan +28 vs. Michigan
Stanford -4 vs. USC
Rutgers +35 1/2 vs. Ohio St.
Iowa -3 1/2 vs. Iowa St.
Wyoming +18 vs. Missouri

 

PiRate Ratings–College Football Week 2

This Week’s PiRate Ratings

#	Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	Alabama	133.5	131.2	135.4	133.4
2	Clemson	131.9	128.6	132.8	131.1
3	Georgia	131.1	126.5	132.6	130.0
4	Washington	126.9	124.4	129.3	126.8
5	Ohio St.	126.2	123.5	126.8	125.5
6	Michigan St.	124.7	122.4	124.8	124.0
7	Notre Dame	125.7	121.9	124.1	123.9
8	Auburn	123.2	121.8	125.8	123.6
9	Oklahoma	122.5	121.1	123.1	122.2
10	Mississippi St.	122.8	119.5	123.0	121.8
11	Michigan	121.6	120.2	122.3	121.3
12	Wisconsin	121.7	118.6	121.7	120.7
13	Stanford	120.1	117.5	120.7	119.4
14	Boston College	118.1	115.1	118.4	117.2
15	Miami	117.1	115.1	116.7	116.3
16	Virginia Tech	116.1	115.6	116.0	115.9
17	Penn St.	116.7	113.5	117.0	115.7
18	Oregon	114.5	114.6	115.2	114.8
19	Missouri	114.6	112.9	116.2	114.5
20	Northwestern	114.8	112.8	115.2	114.3
21	Boise St.	113.3	112.8	114.3	113.5
22	N. Carolina St.	113.6	112.8	113.4	113.3
23	L S U	112.8	112.9	113.5	113.1
24	Central Florida	113.0	112.8	113.1	113.0
25	Florida	113.4	111.1	113.8	112.7
26	Iowa	113.7	111.2	112.9	112.6
27	T C U	112.9	112.2	111.7	112.2
28	Oklahoma St.	113.2	110.8	112.7	112.2
29	Duke	113.3	110.7	112.4	112.2
30	Georgia Tech	112.5	111.2	112.1	112.0
31	S. Carolina	112.3	111.4	111.6	111.8
32	U S C	112.3	110.7	111.6	111.5
33	Utah	111.5	109.5	112.4	111.2
34	West Virginia	111.6	110.8	111.0	111.1
35	Texas A&M	111.2	110.1	111.2	110.8
36	Iowa State	110.5	108.6	110.0	109.7
37	Florida St.	109.7	109.0	109.3	109.3
38	Texas	109.8	108.3	108.9	109.0
39	California	110.0	107.2	109.6	108.9
40	Ole Miss	107.8	107.5	108.6	107.9
41	Washington St.	108.6	107.7	107.5	107.9
42	Fresno St.	108.5	106.9	108.2	107.9
43	Arkansas	109.4	106.5	107.7	107.9
44	Wake Forest	108.7	106.5	106.2	107.1
45	Purdue	107.9	106.1	106.8	106.9
46	Memphis	105.2	107.3	106.7	106.4
47	Kansas St.	106.8	105.4	106.2	106.1
48	Arizona St.	106.7	105.2	105.6	105.8
49	Minnesota	106.0	105.2	105.5	105.6
50	Kentucky	106.0	104.9	105.4	105.4
51	Arizona	106.1	104.1	106.0	105.4
52	Syracuse	106.3	104.7	105.1	105.4
53	Pittsburgh	105.5	105.2	104.7	105.2
54	N. Carolina	105.3	104.3	104.7	104.8
55	Maryland	104.6	102.8	103.4	103.6
56	Louisville	103.6	103.4	103.0	103.3
57	Texas Tech	103.2	101.3	101.4	102.0
58	Baylor	102.7	100.4	102.1	101.7
59	Colorado	100.6	102.3	102.0	101.6
60	Virginia	101.9	102.4	100.3	101.5
61	Utah St.	100.3	101.5	101.9	101.2
62	Houston	99.1	100.6	99.8	99.8
63	Florida Atlantic	99.3	99.9	100.3	99.8
64	Vanderbilt	99.1	100.1	99.2	99.5
65	San Diego St.	98.9	99.5	100.1	99.5
66	BYU	99.0	99.8	99.6	99.4
67	Nebraska	100.3	98.5	97.6	98.8
68	U C L A	98.9	98.7	96.3	97.9
69	Wyoming	98.0	98.1	97.8	97.9
70	Toledo	97.0	99.1	97.1	97.7
71	South Florida	95.8	99.1	96.7	97.2
72	Rutgers	98.1	97.1	96.2	97.1
73	Indiana	97.6	96.5	97.1	97.1
74	N. Texas	95.8	98.7	96.6	97.0
75	Tennessee	96.9	97.2	96.2	96.8
76	Marshall	94.7	97.6	95.9	96.1
77	Northern Illinois	95.8	96.7	95.7	96.1
78	Army	95.6	96.1	95.5	95.8
79	Buffalo	94.5	96.9	95.6	95.7
80	Tulane	95.5	95.6	95.1	95.4
81	Ohio U	94.4	95.8	95.7	95.3
82	Navy	94.5	97.3	93.8	95.2
83	Louisiana Tech	93.3	95.8	94.5	94.5
84	Nevada	93.7	93.8	93.9	93.8
85	Temple	93.3	93.3	93.7	93.4
86	U A B	91.8	94.3	92.2	92.8
87	Air Force	92.7	92.7	91.9	92.4
88	Western Michigan	91.4	93.3	92.4	92.4
89	Illinois	92.9	92.5	91.7	92.4
90	Miami (O)	91.1	93.4	92.5	92.3
91	Appalachian St.	91.5	92.8	92.8	92.3
92	Kansas	93.5	91.9	91.2	92.2
93	Massachusetts	90.5	92.5	92.3	91.8
94	Tulsa	91.9	90.4	92.4	91.6
95	SMU	92.0	91.1	90.7	91.3
96	Akron	90.3	91.9	90.5	90.9
97	Eastern Michigan	89.6	91.0	90.3	90.3
98	Troy	89.2	90.7	90.8	90.2
99	Middle Tennessee	89.1	90.8	90.0	90.0
100	U N L V	89.3	90.8	89.8	90.0
101	Cincinnati	89.7	91.0	89.2	89.9
102	Arkansas St.	88.0	89.8	89.7	89.2
103	UL-Monroe	87.1	86.5	87.9	87.2
104	Central Michigan	85.6	88.9	86.1	86.9
105	New Mexico	85.9	87.8	85.5	86.4
106	Oregon St.	87.4	84.8	85.7	86.0
107	Bowling Green	85.0	85.3	85.6	85.3
108	Florida Int’l.	82.2	86.6	82.8	83.9
109	W. Kentucky	82.3	85.7	83.4	83.8
110	Southern Miss.	82.3	85.7	82.8	83.6
111	Old Dominion	82.0	86.3	82.0	83.5
112	South Alabama	81.9	84.4	83.3	83.2
113	Georgia Southern	82.7	83.9	82.6	83.1
114	East Carolina	82.3	81.4	81.2	81.6
115	Connecticut	81.9	82.0	80.4	81.4
116	Liberty	81.7	79.9	82.2	81.3
117	Colo. State	80.6	81.9	80.7	81.1
118	Kent St.	80.8	82.1	80.2	81.0
119	U T S A	78.9	83.7	79.8	80.8
120	Louisiana	79.3	81.5	80.3	80.4
121	Hawaii	79.8	82.0	78.3	80.0
122	N. Mexico St.	78.9	81.6	79.2	79.9
123	Ball St.	78.2	80.9	77.9	79.0
124	Georgia St.	77.6	80.6	78.4	78.9
125	Charlotte	76.7	79.2	76.8	77.6
126	San Jose St.	76.3	77.1	74.5	76.0
127	Coastal Carolina	73.8	76.7	74.2	74.9
128	Texas State	70.7	73.8	69.9	71.5
129	Rice	70.5	73.6	69.2	71.1
130	U T E P	68.7	71.9	68.0	69.5

PiRate Ratings By Conference

American Athletic Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	AAC	Overall
Central Florida	113.0	112.8	113.1	113.0	1-0	1-0
South Florida	95.8	99.1	96.7	97.2	0-0	1-0
Temple	93.3	93.3	93.7	93.4	0-0	0-1
Cincinnati	89.7	91.0	89.2	89.9	0-0	1-0
East Carolina	82.3	81.4	81.2	81.6	0-0	0-1
Connecticut	81.9	82.0	80.4	81.4	0-1	0-1
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	AAC	Overall
Memphis	105.2	107.3	106.7	106.4	0-0	1-0
Houston	99.1	100.6	99.8	99.8	0-0	1-0
Tulane	95.5	95.6	95.1	95.4	0-0	0-1
Navy	94.5	97.3	93.8	95.2	0-0	0-1
Tulsa	91.9	90.4	92.4	91.6	0-0	1-0
SMU	92.0	91.1	90.7	91.3	0-0	0-1
AAC Averages	94.5	95.1	94.4	94.7
Atlantic Coast Conference
Atlantic Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	ACC	Overall
Clemson	131.9	128.6	132.8	131.1	0-0	1-0
Boston College	118.1	115.1	118.4	117.2	0-0	1-0
N. Carolina St.	113.6	112.8	113.4	113.3	0-0	1-0
Florida St.	109.7	109.0	109.3	109.3	0-1	0-1
Wake Forest	108.7	106.5	106.2	107.1	0-0	1-0
Syracuse	106.3	104.7	105.1	105.4	0-0	1-0
Louisville	103.6	103.4	103.0	103.3	0-0	0-1
Coastal Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	ACC	Overall
Miami	117.1	115.1	116.7	116.3	0-0	0-1
Virginia Tech	116.1	115.6	116.0	115.9	1-0	1-0
Duke	113.3	110.7	112.4	112.2	0-0	1-0
Georgia Tech	112.5	111.2	112.1	112.0	0-0	1-0
Pittsburgh	105.5	105.2	104.7	105.2	0-0	1-0
N. Carolina	105.3	104.3	104.7	104.8	0-0	0-1
Virginia	101.9	102.4	100.3	101.5	0-0	1-0
ACC Averages	111.7	110.3	111.1	111.0
Big 12 Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	B12	Overall
Oklahoma	122.5	121.1	123.1	122.2	0-0	1-0
T C U	112.9	112.2	111.7	112.2	0-0	1-0
Oklahoma St.	113.2	110.8	112.7	112.2	0-0	1-0
West Virginia	111.6	110.8	111.0	111.1	0-0	1-0
Iowa State	110.5	108.6	110.0	109.7	0-0	0-0
Texas	109.8	108.3	108.9	109.0	0-0	0-1
Kansas St.	106.8	105.4	106.2	106.1	0-0	1-0
Texas Tech	103.2	101.3	101.4	102.0	0-0	0-1
Baylor	102.7	100.4	102.1	101.7	0-0	1-0
Kansas	93.5	91.9	91.2	92.2	0-0	0-1
Big 12 Averages	108.7	107.1	107.8	107.9
Big Ten Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	BTen	Overall
Ohio St.	126.2	123.5	126.8	125.5	0-0	1-0
Michigan St.	124.7	122.4	124.8	124.0	0-0	1-0
Michigan	121.6	120.2	122.3	121.3	0-0	0-1
Penn St.	116.7	113.5	117.0	115.7	0-0	1-0
Maryland	104.6	102.8	103.4	103.6	0-0	1-0
Rutgers	98.1	97.1	96.2	97.1	0-0	1-0
Indiana	97.6	96.5	97.1	97.1	0-0	1-0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	BTen	Overall
Wisconsin	121.7	118.6	121.7	120.7	0-0	1-0
Northwestern	114.8	112.8	115.2	114.3	1-0	1-0
Iowa	113.7	111.2	112.9	112.6	0-0	1-0
Purdue	107.9	106.1	106.8	106.9	0-1	0-1
Minnesota	106.0	105.2	105.5	105.6	0-0	1-0
Nebraska	100.3	98.5	97.6	98.8	0-0	0-0
Illinois	92.9	92.5	91.7	92.4	0-0	1-0
Big Ten Averages	110.5	108.6	109.9	109.7
Conference USA
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	CUSA	Overall
Florida Atlantic	99.3	99.9	100.3	99.8	0-0	0-1
Marshall	94.7	97.6	95.9	96.1	0-0	1-0
Middle Tennessee	89.1	90.8	90.0	90.0	0-0	0-1
Florida Int’l.	82.2	86.6	82.8	83.9	0-0	0-1
W. Kentucky	82.3	85.7	83.4	83.8	0-0	0-1
Old Dominion	82.0	86.3	82.0	83.5	0-0	0-1
Charlotte	76.7	79.2	76.8	77.6	0-0	1-0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	CUSA	Overall
N. Texas	95.8	98.7	96.6	97.0	0-0	1-0
Louisiana Tech	93.3	95.8	94.5	94.5	0-0	1-0
U A B	91.8	94.3	92.2	92.8	0-0	1-0
Southern Miss.	82.3	85.7	82.8	83.6	0-0	1-0
U T S A	78.9	83.7	79.8	80.8	0-0	0-1
Rice	70.5	73.6	69.2	71.1	0-0	1-1
U T E P	68.7	71.9	68.0	69.5	0-0	0-1
CUSA Averages	84.8	87.8	85.3	86.0
FBS Independents
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	Conf.	Overall
Notre Dame	125.7	121.9	124.1	123.9	x	1-0
BYU	99.0	99.8	99.6	99.4	x	1-0
Army	95.6	96.1	95.5	95.8	x	0-1
Massachusetts	90.5	92.5	92.3	91.8	x	1-1
Liberty	81.7	79.9	82.2	81.3	x	1-0
N. Mexico St.	78.9	81.6	79.2	79.9	x	0-2
Indep.  Averages	95.2	95.3	95.5	95.3
Mid-American Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MAC	Overall
Buffalo	94.5	96.9	95.6	95.7	0-0	1-0
Ohio U	94.4	95.8	95.7	95.3	0-0	1-0
Miami (O)	91.1	93.4	92.5	92.3	0-0	0-1
Akron	90.3	91.9	90.5	90.9	0-0	0-0
Bowling Green	85.0	85.3	85.6	85.3	0-0	0-1
Kent St.	80.8	82.1	80.2	81.0	0-0	0-1
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MAC	Overall
Toledo	97.0	99.1	97.1	97.7	0-0	1-0
Northern Illinois	95.8	96.7	95.7	96.1	0-0	0-1
Western Michigan	91.4	93.3	92.4	92.4	0-0	0-1
Eastern Michigan	89.6	91.0	90.3	90.3	0-0	1-0
Central Michigan	85.6	88.9	86.1	86.9	0-0	0-1
Ball St.	78.2	80.9	77.9	79.0	0-0	1-0
MAC Averages	89.5	91.3	90.0	90.2
Mountain West Conference
Mountain Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MWC	Overall
Boise St.	113.3	112.8	114.3	113.5	0-0	1-0
Utah St.	100.3	101.5	101.9	101.2	0-0	0-1
Wyoming	98.0	98.1	97.8	97.9	0-0	1-1
Air Force	92.7	92.7	91.9	92.4	0-0	1-0
New Mexico	85.9	87.8	85.5	86.4	0-0	1-0
Colo. State	80.6	81.9	80.7	81.1	0-1	0-2
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MWC	Overall
Fresno St.	108.5	106.9	108.2	107.9	0-0	1-0
San Diego St.	98.9	99.5	100.1	99.5	0-0	0-1
Nevada	93.7	93.8	93.9	93.8	0-0	1-0
U N L V	89.3	90.8	89.8	90.0	0-0	0-1
Hawaii	79.8	82.0	78.3	80.0	1-0	2-0
San Jose St.	76.3	77.1	74.5	76.0	0-0	0-1
MWC Averages	93.1	93.7	93.1	93.3
Pac-12 Conference
North Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	P12	Overall
Washington	126.9	124.4	129.3	126.8	0-0	0-1
Stanford	120.1	117.5	120.7	119.4	0-0	1-0
Oregon	114.5	114.6	115.2	114.8	0-0	1-0
California	110.0	107.2	109.6	108.9	0-0	1-0
Washington St.	108.6	107.7	107.5	107.9	0-0	1-0
Oregon St.	87.4	84.8	85.7	86.0	0-0	0-1
South Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	P12	Overall
U S C	112.3	110.7	111.6	111.5	0-0	1-0
Utah	111.5	109.5	112.4	111.2	0-0	1-0
Arizona St.	106.7	105.2	105.6	105.8	0-0	1-0
Arizona	106.1	104.1	106.0	105.4	0-0	0-1
Colorado	100.6	102.3	102.0	101.6	0-0	1-0
U C L A	98.9	98.7	96.3	97.9	0-0	0-1
Pac-12 Averages	108.6	107.2	108.5	108.1
Southeastern Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SEC	Overall
Georgia	131.1	126.5	132.6	130.0	0-0	1-0
Missouri	114.6	112.9	116.2	114.5	0-0	1-0
Florida	113.4	111.1	113.8	112.7	0-0	1-0
S. Carolina	112.3	111.4	111.6	111.8	0-0	1-0
Kentucky	106.0	104.9	105.4	105.4	0-0	1-0
Vanderbilt	99.1	100.1	99.2	99.5	0-0	1-0
Tennessee	96.9	97.2	96.2	96.8	0-0	0-1
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SEC	Overall
Alabama	133.5	131.2	135.4	133.4	0-0	1-0
Auburn	123.2	121.8	125.8	123.6	0-0	1-0
Mississippi St.	122.8	119.5	123.0	121.8	0-0	1-0
L S U	112.8	112.9	113.5	113.1	0-0	1-0
Texas A&M	111.2	110.1	111.2	110.8	0-0	1-0
Ole Miss	107.8	107.5	108.6	107.9	0-0	1-0
Arkansas	109.4	106.5	107.7	107.9	0-0	1-0
SEC Averages	113.9	112.4	114.3	113.5
Sunbelt Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SBC	Overall
Appalachian St.	91.5	92.8	92.8	92.3	0-0	0-1
Troy	89.2	90.7	90.8	90.2	0-0	0-1
Georgia Southern	82.7	83.9	82.6	83.1	0-0	1-0
Georgia St.	77.6	80.6	78.4	78.9	0-0	1-0
Coastal Carolina	73.8	76.7	74.2	74.9	0-0	0-1
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SBC	Overall
Arkansas St.	88.0	89.8	89.7	89.2	0-0	1-0
UL-Monroe	87.1	86.5	87.9	87.2	0-0	1-0
South Alabama	81.9	84.4	83.3	83.2	0-0	0-1
Louisiana	79.3	81.5	80.3	80.4	0-0	1-0
Texas State	70.7	73.8	69.9	71.5	0-0	0-1
Sun Belt Averages	82.2	84.1	83.0	83.1

Conference Ratings

PiRate Ratings By Conference
#	League	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	SEC	113.9	112.4	114.3	113.5
2	ACC	111.7	110.3	111.1	111.0
3	BTEN	110.5	108.6	109.9	109.7
4	P-12	108.6	107.2	108.5	108.1
5	B12	108.7	107.1	107.8	107.9
6	IND	95.2	95.3	95.5	95.3
7	AAC	94.5	95.1	94.4	94.7
8	MWC	93.1	93.7	93.1	93.3
9	MAC	89.5	91.3	90.0	90.2
10	CUSA	84.8	87.8	85.3	86.0
11	SBC	82.2	84.1	83.0	83.1

This Week’s PiRate Ratings’ Spreads

Friday	September 7
Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
SMU	TCU	-19.4	-19.5	-19.5

Saturday	September 8
Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
Army	Liberty	16.4	18.7	15.8
Coastal Carolina	UAB	-15.5	-15.1	-15.6
South Florida	Georgia Tech	-13.7	-9.1	-12.4
Michigan	Western Michigan	32.7	29.3	32.3
Charlotte	Appalachian St.	-12.7	-11.6	-13.9
Purdue	Eastern Michigan	21.3	18.2	19.5
Wisconsin	New Mexico	38.8	33.8	39.2
Florida Atlantic	Air Force	9.6	10.2	11.4
Old Dominion	Florida Int’l.	2.3	2.3	1.7
Northwestern	Duke	4.6	5.0	5.8
Kansas St.	Mississippi St.	-13.1	-11.1	-13.8
Houston	Arizona	-3.9	-0.5	-3.2
Vanderbilt	Nevada	8.4	9.3	8.3
North Carolina St.	Georgia St.	39.1	35.2	38.0
Oklahoma	UCLA	26.6	25.4	29.8
Utah St.	New Mexico St.	24.4	22.9	25.7
Central Michigan	Kansas	-4.9	0.0	-2.1
UNLV	UTEP	23.6	22.0	24.9
Navy	Memphis	-7.7	-7.0	-9.9
East Carolina	North Carolina	-21.0	-20.9	-21.5
Ohio St.	Rutgers	31.0	29.4	33.6
Temple	Buffalo	0.8	-1.6	0.1
South Carolina	Georgia	-15.8	-12.1	-18.0
UTSA	Baylor	-21.3	-14.2	-19.8
Alabama	Arkansas St.	48.6	44.4	48.6
Nebraska	Colorado	2.6	-0.8	-1.4
Southern Miss.	UL-Monroe	-2.3	1.7	-2.6
Notre Dame	Ball St.	50.4	44.0	49.2
Iowa	Iowa St.	4.8	4.1	4.3
Bowling Green	Maryland	-17.1	-15.0	-15.2
Georgia Southern	Massachusetts	-4.8	-5.6	-6.7
Texas A&M	Clemson	-17.8	-15.5	-18.6
Missouri	Wyoming	19.6	17.8	21.4
Indiana	Virginia	-1.3	-2.9	-0.2
Florida	Kentucky	10.4	9.2	11.4
Northern Illinois	Utah	-12.8	-9.8	-13.7
Minnesota	Fresno St.	0.5	1.3	0.3
Colorado St.	Arkansas	-25.8	-21.6	-24.0
Miami (O)	Cincinnati	2.9	3.9	4.8
Texas	Tulsa	20.9	20.9	19.4
Oklahoma St.	South Alabama	34.3	29.4	32.3
Pittsburgh	Penn St.	-8.7	-5.7	-9.7
Stanford	USC	10.8	9.7	12.2
BYU	California	-8.0	-4.4	-7.0
Boise St.	Connecticut	34.4	33.8	36.9
Arizona St.	Michigan St.	-15.1	-14.3	-16.2
Washington St.	San Jose St.	35.3	33.6	36.0
Hawaii	Rice	13.3	12.4	13.1

This Week’s Bowl and Playoff Projections

Bowl	Conferences		Team 1	Team 2
New Mexico	MWC	CUSA	Wyoming	Louisiana Tech
Cure	AAC	SBC	Navy	Appalachian St.
Las Vegas	MWC	Pac-12	Fresno St.	Arizona St.
Camellia	MAC	SBC	Northern Illinois	Georgia Southern
New Orleans	CUSA	SBC	Western Kentucky	Louisiana-Lafayette
Boca Raton	MAC	CUSA	Ohio U	Florida Int’l.
Frisco	AAC	MAC	Cincinnati	Buffalo
Gasparilla	AAC	CUSA	Memphis	Marshall
Bahamas	AAC	CUSA	Central Florida	North Texas
Idaho Potato	MAC	MWC	Toledo	Utah St.
Birmingham	AAC	SEC	[UAB]	[UL-Monroe]
Armed Forces	AAC	Big 12	Houston	[BYU]
Dollar General	MAC	SBC	Western Michigan	Troy
Hawaii	CUSA	MWC	Florida Atlantic	Hawaii
Heart of Dallas	Big Ten	CUSA	[California]	Southern Miss.
Quick Lane	ACC	Big Ten	Virginia	[Army]
Cactus	Big 12	Pac-12	[Air Force]	Colorado
Independence	ACC	SEC	Miami (Fla.)	[Middle Tennessee]
Pinstripe	ACC	Big Ten	North Carolina St.	Minnesota
Texas	Big 12	SEC	Iowa St.	Texas A&M
Music City	ACC/Big Ten	SEC	Louisville	Arkansas
Camping World	ACC	Big 12	Boston College	West Virginia
Arizona	MWC	SBC	San Diego St.	Arkansas St.
Alamo	Big 12	Pac-12	Oklahoma St.	Oregon
Belk	ACC	SEC	Virginia Tech	South Carolina
Peach	At-large	At-large	TCU	Boise St.
Military	AAC	ACC	South Florida	Duke
Sun	ACC	Pac-12	Georgia Tech	Utah
San Francisco	Big Ten	Pac-12	Iowa	Washington St.
Liberty	Big 12	SEC	Kansas St.	Missouri
Holiday	Big Ten	Pac-12	Michigan	Stanford
Gator	ACC/Big Ten	SEC	Northwestern	LSU
Outback	Big Ten	SEC	Penn St.	Auburn
Fiesta	At-large	At-large	USC	Ohio St.
Citrus	ACC/Big Ten	SEC	Wisconsin	Mississippi St.
Rose	Big Ten	Pac-12	Michigan St.	Washington
Sugar	Big 12	SEC	Oklahoma	Florida
FBS PLAYOFFS
Cotton	FBS	PLAYOFF	Alabama	Notre Dame
Orange	FBS	PLAYOFF	Clemson	Georgia
National Championship Game	Semifinal	Winners	Alabama	Clemson
Teams in [Brackets] are at-large selections

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PiRate Ratings–College Football Week 0

It’s here!  After a long hot, humid Summer that still wears on, the college football season has a dress rehearsal weekend where you are invited to see a couple of FBS games on Saturday, plus a couple more FBS vs. FCS games.

We still have no word from the two coaches in limbo.  As of this writing, neither Urban Meyer nor D.J. Durkin know their fate for the 2018 season and beyond.  Because of these two coaches being in limbo, so are the PiRate Ratings for Week 1.

We are calling this Week 0, and we are keeping the preseason ratings about where they were when we previewed each of the 10 conferences and the independents.  The six FBS teams in action this weekend have had their ratings tweaked minimally due to some injuries and suspensions, but this has amounted to tenths of a point for each team.

Without further adieu, the PiRates are ready to officially debut with the ratings.

This Week’s PiRate Ratings Spreads

August 25, 2018
Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
New Mexico St.	Wyoming	-13.9	-10.8	-13.7
Colorado St.	Hawaii	14.7	14.2	17.4

FBS vs. FCS
Home	Visitor	PiRate
Massachusetts	Duquesne	17.4
Rice	Prairie View	13.7

This Week’s PiRate Ratings 

Note: We will not offer retrodictive rankings this season–it is too time-consuming to use this algorithm.

PiRate Ratings
#	Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	Alabama	132.0	129.3	133.8	131.7
2	Clemson	131.7	128.4	132.6	130.9
3	Georgia	130.9	126.3	132.4	129.8
4	Washington	128.1	125.0	130.7	127.9
5	Michigan St.	127.7	125.1	128.1	127.0
6	Ohio St.	125.1	122.3	125.6	124.3
7	Notre Dame	125.6	121.5	123.7	123.6
8	Auburn	122.0	121.2	124.4	122.5
9	Wisconsin	123.1	119.2	123.4	121.9
10	Michigan	121.7	120.6	122.7	121.6
11	Mississippi St.	122.5	119.2	122.7	121.5
12	Penn St.	121.2	117.7	121.6	120.2
13	Stanford	120.3	117.5	121.0	119.6
14	Miami	120.3	118.2	120.0	119.5
15	Oklahoma	119.5	117.7	119.8	119.0
16	Boston College	117.3	113.7	117.2	116.1
17	Oregon	114.4	114.5	115.1	114.7
18	Missouri	114.4	112.7	116.0	114.3
19	Northwestern	114.8	112.6	115.4	114.3
20	Virginia Tech	114.3	113.7	114.0	114.0
21	N. Carolina St.	113.8	113.0	113.6	113.5
22	Texas	113.2	111.9	112.8	112.6
23	S. Carolina	112.9	111.7	112.2	112.3
24	Florida	112.9	110.6	113.3	112.2
25	Oklahoma St.	113.2	110.8	112.7	112.2
26	Duke	113.3	110.4	112.4	112.1
27	T C U	112.7	112.0	111.5	112.0
28	Iowa	113.2	110.0	112.0	111.7
29	Georgia Tech	112.2	110.9	111.8	111.7
30	U S C	112.5	110.7	111.8	111.7
31	Florida St.	111.5	110.9	111.3	111.2
32	Utah	111.0	109.0	111.9	110.7
33	Central Florida	110.8	110.4	110.7	110.6
34	L S U	110.1	110.3	110.7	110.4
35	Texas A&M	110.7	109.6	110.7	110.3
36	Boise St.	110.2	109.3	110.9	110.1
37	Iowa State	110.7	108.8	110.2	109.9
38	California	110.3	107.5	110.1	109.3
39	West Virginia	110.0	108.8	109.1	109.3
40	Arizona	109.9	107.6	110.0	109.1
41	Wake Forest	109.8	107.5	107.3	108.2
42	Arkansas	109.3	106.4	107.6	107.8
43	Purdue	107.9	106.3	106.6	106.9
44	Kansas St.	107.4	106.0	106.8	106.7
45	Fresno St.	107.0	105.4	106.7	106.4
46	Kentucky	106.8	105.3	106.3	106.1
47	Washington St.	107.0	105.8	105.4	106.1
48	Ole Miss	105.3	105.1	106.1	105.5
49	Memphis	104.2	106.3	105.7	105.4
50	Pittsburgh	105.5	105.2	104.7	105.2
51	Louisville	105.1	105.3	104.6	105.0
52	Syracuse	106.2	104.2	104.6	105.0
53	Texas Tech	106.0	104.0	104.2	104.7
54	N. Carolina	105.3	104.3	104.5	104.7
55	Arizona St.	105.4	103.3	103.8	104.2
56	Minnesota	104.7	103.6	104.0	104.1
57	Florida Atlantic	102.0	103.0	103.3	102.8
58	Baylor	102.9	100.6	102.3	101.9
59	U C L A	102.5	102.2	100.0	101.5
60	Virginia	101.5	102.0	99.9	101.1
61	Maryland	102.2	100.2	100.5	101.0
62	Houston	99.9	101.4	101.0	100.8
63	Colorado	98.9	100.4	100.1	99.8
64	Navy	98.7	101.7	98.5	99.7
65	San Diego St.	98.7	99.5	99.8	99.3
66	Nebraska	100.5	98.7	97.8	99.0
67	Tennessee	98.8	99.5	98.4	98.9
68	Wyoming	98.5	98.6	98.8	98.6
69	Utah St.	96.8	98.3	98.1	97.7
70	South Florida	96.0	99.3	96.9	97.4
71	Rutgers	98.4	97.0	96.2	97.2
72	Indiana	97.8	96.3	97.3	97.1
73	Toledo	96.3	98.4	96.4	97.0
74	Northern Illinois	96.3	97.9	96.6	96.9
75	Vanderbilt	96.8	97.5	96.2	96.9
76	BYU	95.9	97.0	96.3	96.4
77	Ohio U	95.1	96.5	96.4	96.0
78	Temple	95.8	95.8	96.2	95.9
79	Army	95.6	96.4	95.5	95.9
80	Marshall	94.3	97.1	95.0	95.5
81	Buffalo	94.3	96.7	95.4	95.5
82	Louisiana Tech	93.8	96.4	95.2	95.1
83	Tulane	94.4	94.6	94.0	94.3
84	SMU	95.1	93.8	94.0	94.3
85	N. Texas	93.0	96.3	93.6	94.3
86	Illinois	94.0	93.5	92.9	93.5
87	Troy	91.8	93.7	93.7	93.1
88	Miami (O)	91.5	93.9	93.4	92.9
89	Western Michigan	91.5	93.8	92.9	92.8
90	Middle Tennessee	91.4	93.4	93.0	92.6
91	Kansas	93.9	92.3	91.6	92.6
92	Nevada	92.4	92.5	92.6	92.5
93	U A B	91.1	93.6	91.5	92.1
94	Tulsa	91.8	90.3	92.3	91.5
95	Air Force	91.7	91.7	90.9	91.4
96	Massachusetts	89.8	92.4	92.0	91.4
97	Akron	90.5	92.1	90.7	91.1
98	U N L V	89.1	90.8	89.6	89.8
99	Eastern Michigan	89.1	90.5	89.8	89.8
100	Old Dominion	87.5	91.3	89.0	89.3
101	Arkansas St.	88.0	89.8	89.7	89.2
102	Appalachian St.	87.5	89.1	88.7	88.4
103	UL-Monroe	87.3	86.7	88.1	87.4
104	Cincinnati	87.1	88.5	86.5	87.3
105	Oregon St.	88.5	86.0	86.9	87.1
106	Colo. State	85.6	87.1	86.1	86.3
107	New Mexico	85.7	87.6	85.3	86.2
108	Central Michigan	84.8	88.5	85.2	86.2
109	Bowling Green	85.1	85.4	85.7	85.4
110	Florida Int’l.	82.0	86.8	82.6	83.8
111	Connecticut	84.1	84.4	82.8	83.8
112	N. Mexico St.	82.0	85.3	82.5	83.3
113	Southern Miss.	81.6	85.0	82.1	82.9
114	Georgia Southern	82.5	83.7	82.4	82.9
115	South Alabama	81.4	83.8	82.6	82.6
116	U T S A	80.2	85.6	81.6	82.5
117	East Carolina	83.1	82.2	82.0	82.4
118	W. Kentucky	80.4	84.6	81.2	82.1
119	Kent St.	80.2	81.6	79.5	80.4
120	Louisiana	78.9	81.1	79.9	80.0
121	Georgia St.	77.6	80.6	78.4	78.9
122	Ball St.	77.7	80.4	77.4	78.5
123	Charlotte	76.2	78.7	76.3	77.1
124	San Jose St.	76.6	77.4	74.8	76.3
125	Liberty	75.2	73.9	74.2	74.5
126	Coastal Carolina	73.2	76.4	73.6	74.4
127	Hawaii	74.4	76.4	72.2	74.3
128	Rice	71.4	74.5	69.7	71.9
129	Texas State	70.4	73.9	69.9	71.4
130	U T E P	69.3	72.5	68.6	70.1

PiRate Ratings By Conference

American Athletic Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	AAC	Overall
Central Florida	110.8	110.4	110.7	110.6	0-0	0-0
South Florida	96.0	99.3	96.9	97.4	0-0	0-0
Temple	95.8	95.8	96.2	95.9	0-0	0-0
Cincinnati	87.1	88.5	86.5	87.3	0-0	0-0
Connecticut	84.1	84.4	82.8	83.8	0-0	0-0
East Carolina	83.1	82.2	82.0	82.4	0-0	0-0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	AAC	Overall
Memphis	104.2	106.3	105.7	105.4	0-0	0-0
Houston	99.9	101.4	101.0	100.8	0-0	0-0
Navy	98.7	101.7	98.5	99.7	0-0	0-0
Tulane	94.4	94.6	94.0	94.3	0-0	0-0
SMU	95.1	93.8	94.0	94.3	0-0	0-0
Tulsa	91.8	90.3	92.3	91.5	0-0	0-0
AAC Averages	95.1	95.7	95.1	95.3
Atlantic Coast Conference
Atlantic Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	ACC	Overall
Clemson	131.7	128.4	132.6	130.9	0-0	0-0
Boston College	117.3	113.7	117.2	116.1	0-0	0-0
N. Carolina St.	113.8	113.0	113.6	113.5	0-0	0-0
Florida St.	111.5	110.9	111.3	111.2	0-0	0-0
Wake Forest	109.8	107.5	107.3	108.2	0-0	0-0
Louisville	105.1	105.3	104.6	105.0	0-0	0-0
Syracuse	106.2	104.2	104.6	105.0	0-0	0-0
Coastal Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	ACC	Overall
Miami	120.3	118.2	120.0	119.5	0-0	0-0
Virginia Tech	114.3	113.7	114.0	114.0	0-0	0-0
Duke	113.3	110.4	112.4	112.1	0-0	0-0
Georgia Tech	112.2	110.9	111.8	111.7	0-0	0-0
Pittsburgh	105.5	105.2	104.7	105.2	0-0	0-0
N. Carolina	105.3	104.3	104.5	104.7	0-0	0-0
Virginia	101.5	102.0	99.9	101.1	0-0	0-0
ACC Averages	112.0	110.6	111.3	111.3
Big 12 Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	B12	Overall
Oklahoma	119.5	117.7	119.8	119.0	0-0	0-0
Texas	113.2	111.9	112.8	112.6	0-0	0-0
Oklahoma St.	113.2	110.8	112.7	112.2	0-0	0-0
T C U	112.7	112.0	111.5	112.0	0-0	0-0
Iowa State	110.7	108.8	110.2	109.9	0-0	0-0
West Virginia	110.0	108.8	109.1	109.3	0-0	0-0
Kansas St.	107.4	106.0	106.8	106.7	0-0	0-0
Texas Tech	106.0	104.0	104.2	104.7	0-0	0-0
Baylor	102.9	100.6	102.3	101.9	0-0	0-0
Kansas	93.9	92.3	91.6	92.6	0-0	0-0
Big 12 Averages	108.9	107.3	108.1	108.1
Big Ten Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	BTen	Overall
Michigan St.	127.7	125.1	128.1	127.0	0-0	0-0
Ohio St.	125.1	122.3	125.6	124.3	0-0	0-0
Michigan	121.7	120.6	122.7	121.6	0-0	0-0
Penn St.	121.2	117.7	121.6	120.2	0-0	0-0
Maryland	102.2	100.2	100.5	101.0	0-0	0-0
Rutgers	98.4	97.0	96.2	97.2	0-0	0-0
Indiana	97.8	96.3	97.3	97.1	0-0	0-0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	BTen	Overall
Wisconsin	123.1	119.2	123.4	121.9	0-0	0-0
Northwestern	114.8	112.6	115.4	114.3	0-0	0-0
Iowa	113.2	110.0	112.0	111.7	0-0	0-0
Purdue	107.9	106.3	106.6	106.9	0-0	0-0
Minnesota	104.7	103.6	104.0	104.1	0-0	0-0
Nebraska	100.5	98.7	97.8	99.0	0-0	0-0
Illinois	94.0	93.5	92.9	93.5	0-0	0-0
Big Ten Averages	110.9	108.8	110.3	110.0
Conference USA
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	CUSA	Overall
Florida Atlantic	102.0	103.0	103.3	102.8	0-0	0-0
Marshall	94.3	97.1	95.0	95.5	0-0	0-0
Middle Tennessee	91.4	93.4	93.0	92.6	0-0	0-0
Old Dominion	87.5	91.3	89.0	89.3	0-0	0-0
Florida Int’l.	82.0	86.8	82.6	83.8	0-0	0-0
W. Kentucky	80.4	84.6	81.2	82.1	0-0	0-0
Charlotte	76.2	78.7	76.3	77.1	0-0	0-0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	CUSA	Overall
Louisiana Tech	93.8	96.4	95.2	95.1	0-0	0-0
N. Texas	93.0	96.3	93.6	94.3	0-0	0-0
U A B	91.1	93.6	91.5	92.1	0-0	0-0
Southern Miss.	81.6	85.0	82.1	82.9	0-0	0-0
U T S A	80.2	85.6	81.6	82.5	0-0	0-0
Rice	71.4	74.5	69.7	71.9	0-0	0-0
U T E P	69.3	72.5	68.6	70.1	0-0	0-0
CUSA Averages	85.3	88.5	85.9	86.6
FBS Independents
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average		Overall
Notre Dame	125.6	121.5	123.7	123.6		0-0
BYU	95.9	97.0	96.3	96.4		0-0
Army	95.6	96.4	95.5	95.9		0-0
Massachusetts	89.8	92.4	92.0	91.4		0-0
N. Mexico St.	82.0	85.3	82.5	83.3		0-0
Liberty	75.2	73.9	74.2	74.5		0-0
Indep. Averages	94.0	94.4	94.0	94.2
Mid-American Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MAC	Overall
Ohio U	95.1	96.5	96.4	96.0	0-0	0-0
Buffalo	94.3	96.7	95.4	95.5	0-0	0-0
Miami (O)	91.5	93.9	93.4	92.9	0-0	0-0
Akron	90.5	92.1	90.7	91.1	0-0	0-0
Bowling Green	85.1	85.4	85.7	85.4	0-0	0-0
Kent St.	80.2	81.6	79.5	80.4	0-0	0-0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MAC	Overall
Toledo	96.3	98.4	96.4	97.0	0-0	0-0
Northern Illinois	96.3	97.9	96.6	96.9	0-0	0-0
Western Michigan	91.5	93.8	92.9	92.8	0-0	0-0
Eastern Michigan	89.1	90.5	89.8	89.8	0-0	0-0
Central Michigan	84.8	88.5	85.2	86.2	0-0	0-0
Ball St.	77.7	80.4	77.4	78.5	0-0	0-0
MAC Averages	89.4	91.3	90.0	90.2
Mountain West Conference
Mountain Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MWC	Overall
Boise St.	110.2	109.3	110.9	110.1	0-0	0-0
Wyoming	98.5	98.6	98.8	98.6	0-0	0-0
Utah St.	96.8	98.3	98.1	97.7	0-0	0-0
Air Force	91.7	91.7	90.9	91.4	0-0	0-0
Colo. State	85.6	87.1	86.1	86.3	0-0	0-0
New Mexico	85.7	87.6	85.3	86.2	0-0	0-0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	MWC	Overall
Fresno St.	107.0	105.4	106.7	106.4	0-0	0-0
San Diego St.	98.7	99.5	99.8	99.3	0-0	0-0
Nevada	92.4	92.5	92.6	92.5	0-0	0-0
U N L V	89.1	90.8	89.6	89.8	0-0	0-0
San Jose St.	76.6	77.4	74.8	76.3	0-0	0-0
Hawaii	74.4	76.4	72.2	74.3	0-0	0-0
MWC Averages	92.2	92.9	92.2	92.4
Pac-12 Conference
North Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	P12	Overall
Washington	128.1	125.0	130.7	127.9	0-0	0-0
Stanford	120.3	117.5	121.0	119.6	0-0	0-0
Oregon	114.4	114.5	115.1	114.7	0-0	0-0
California	110.3	107.5	110.1	109.3	0-0	0-0
Washington St.	107.0	105.8	105.4	106.1	0-0	0-0
Oregon St.	88.5	86.0	86.9	87.1	0-0	0-0
South Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	P12	Overall
U S C	112.5	110.7	111.8	111.7	0-0	0-0
Utah	111.0	109.0	111.9	110.7	0-0	0-0
Arizona	109.9	107.6	110.0	109.1	0-0	0-0
Arizona St.	105.4	103.3	103.8	104.2	0-0	0-0
U C L A	102.5	102.2	100.0	101.5	0-0	0-0
Colorado	98.9	100.4	100.1	99.8	0-0	0-0
Pac-12 Averages	109.1	107.4	108.9	108.5
Southeastern Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SEC	Overall
Georgia	130.9	126.3	132.4	129.8	0-0	0-0
Missouri	114.4	112.7	116.0	114.3	0-0	0-0
S. Carolina	112.9	111.7	112.2	112.3	0-0	0-0
Florida	112.9	110.6	113.3	112.2	0-0	0-0
Kentucky	106.8	105.3	106.3	106.1	0-0	0-0
Tennessee	98.8	99.5	98.4	98.9	0-0	0-0
Vanderbilt	96.8	97.5	96.2	96.9	0-0	0-0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SEC	Overall
Alabama	132.0	129.3	133.8	131.7	0-0	0-0
Auburn	122.0	121.2	124.4	122.5	0-0	0-0
Mississippi St.	122.5	119.2	122.7	121.5	0-0	0-0
L S U	110.1	110.3	110.7	110.4	0-0	0-0
Texas A&M	110.7	109.6	110.7	110.3	0-0	0-0
Arkansas	109.3	106.4	107.6	107.8	0-0	0-0
Ole Miss	105.3	105.1	106.1	105.5	0-0	0-0
SEC Averages	113.2	111.8	113.6	112.9
Sunbelt Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SBC	Overall
Troy	91.8	93.7	93.7	93.1	0-0	0-0
Appalachian St.	87.5	89.1	88.7	88.4	0-0	0-0
Georgia Southern	82.5	83.7	82.4	82.9	0-0	0-0
Georgia St.	77.6	80.6	78.4	78.9	0-0	0-0
Coastal Carolina	73.2	76.4	73.6	74.4	0-0	0-0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	SBC	Overall
Arkansas St.	88.0	89.8	89.7	89.2	0-0	0-0
UL-Monroe	87.3	86.7	88.1	87.4	0-0	0-0
South Alabama	81.4	83.8	82.6	82.6	0-0	0-0
Louisiana	78.9	81.1	79.9	80.0	0-0	0-0
Texas State	70.4	73.9	69.9	71.4	0-0	0-0
Sun Belt Averages	81.9	83.9	82.7	82.8

PiRate Ratings By Conference
#	League	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	SEC	113.2	111.8	113.6	112.9
2	ACC	112.0	110.6	111.3	111.3
3	BTEN	110.9	108.8	110.3	110.0
4	P-12	109.1	107.4	108.9	108.5
5	B12	108.9	107.3	108.1	108.1
6	AAC	95.1	95.7	95.1	95.3
7	IND	94.0	94.4	94.0	94.2
8	MWC	92.2	92.9	92.2	92.4
9	MAC	89.4	91.3	90.0	90.2
10	CUSA	85.3	88.5	85.9	86.6
11	SBC	81.9	83.9	82.7	82.8

This Week’s Bowl Projections

Bowl	Conferences		Team 1	Team 2
New Mexico	MWC	CUSA	Nevada	Southern Miss.
Cure	CUSA	SBC	Navy	Georgia Southern
Las Vegas	MWC	Pac-12	Fresno St.	Arizona
Camellia	MAC	SBC	Buffalo	Appalachian St.
New Orleans	CUSA	SBC	UAB	UL-Monroe
Boca Raton	MAC	CUSA	Toledo	Marshall
Frisco	AAC	MAC	Tulane	Western Michigan
Gasparilla	AAC	CUSA	USF	North Texas
Bahamas	AAC	CUSA	UCF	Florida Atlantic
Idaho Potato	MAC	MWC	Northern Illinois	Utah St.
Birmingham	AAC	SEC	Memphis	[Army]
Armed Forces	AAC	Big 12	Houston	[UCLA]
Doll. General	MAC	SBC	Ohio	Troy
Hawaii	CUSA	MWC	Louisiana Tech	Wyoming
Ht. of Dallas	Big Ten	CUSA	[BYU]	Middle Tennessee
Quick Lane	ACC	Big Ten	Louisville	Minnesota
Cactus	Big 12	Pac-12	Iowa St.	Washington St.
Independence	ACC	SEC	Duke	LSU
Pinstripe	ACC	Big Ten	Georgia Tech	Purdue
Texas	Big 12	SEC	TCU	Mississippi St.
Music City	ACC/B10	SEC	Virginia Tech	Tennessee
Camp. World	ACC	Big 12	Boston College	West Virginia
Arizona	MWC	SBC	San Diego St.	Arkansas St.
Alamo	Big 12	Pac-12	Oklahoma St.	USC
Belk	ACC	SEC	North Carolina St.	South Carolina
Peach	At-large	At-large	Miami (Fl)	Texas
Military	AAC	ACC	Temple	Wake Forest
Sun	ACC	Pac-12	Florida St.	California
San Francisco	Big Ten	Pac-12	Iowa	Oregon
Liberty	Big 12	SEC	Kansas St.	Texas A&M
Holiday	Big Ten	Pac-12	Michigan	Utah
Gator	ACC/B10	SEC	Northwestern	Florida
Outback	Big Ten	SEC	Penn St.	Missouri
Fiesta	At-large	At-large	Ohio St.	Boise St.
Citrus	ACC/B10	SEC	Wisconsin	Auburn
Rose	Big Ten	Pac-12	Michigan St.	Stanford
Sugar	Big 12	SEC	Oklahoma	Georgia
FBS PLAYOFFS
Cotton	FBS	FBS	Alabama	Washington
Orange	FBS	FBS	Clemson	Notre Dame
Nat’l Champ.	Orange	Cotton	Clemson	Alabama
Teams in [Brackets] are at-large selections

This Week’s Selections–This will normally run on Thursdays and include both NCAA and NFL selections.  Since there are only 2 possible games this week, we will not make any selections.  We will not limit ourselves to just Money Line Parlays this season.  We will go with whatever we feel least indecisive about publicly listing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2018 Southeastern Conference Preview

Note: The preseason ratings you see in the previews may not be the same as the ratings you see for the first game. We update every team’s rating based on player injuries, changes to the depth charts, and other factors that may change during preseason practice.
Our Power 5 Conference preseason ratings and won-loss predictions were figured before knowing the outcome of recent suspensions to Coaches Urban Meyer and D.J. Durkin at Ohio State and Maryland. Because our ratings set 100.0 as average, and the mean of all 130 teams must be 100.0, taking points away from Ohio State and Maryland require redistributing points to the other 128 teams. Expect these ratings to change prior to August 25.

 
There is an old saying that the three toughest conferences in football are the NFC, the AFC, and the SEC. The Southeastern Conference is the big dog of college football. It is followed by zealots who treat it like a religion. The fans know more about an incoming freshman than most businesses know about new employees. Some fans basically take off from work on Wednesday to take their RVs on the road for a Saturday game. Tailgating in the SEC could be a regular TV program on the Food Network. SEC Football is one of the most successful industries in the world!

 

 

In an effort to show you a little more about how the PiRate Ratings are made, we are going to reveal one of the pre-season rating scores we apply to each team. We will show you the scores of each unit on the 14 teams. These include, the Offensive Line, Quarterbacks, Running Backs, Wide Receivers, Defensive Line, Linebackers, Defensive Backs, and Special Teams. This does not make up the entire rating. This is just one look at each team, but it is the one you don’t need to understand any advanced analytics to fully understand and appreciate.

 
Each unit is graded on a scale of 60-100 at the FBS level. The grades are 95% mechanical and could be performed by anybody that has the key to how the mechanical grading is made. The other 5% is a minor adjustment based on the players’ original recruiting rankings, which sometimes can predict a player to improve by more than another.
These scores look like school grades, but in this system, the difference between 70 and 90 is much less than the difference in test grades in schools. The difference in a 90 offensive line and a 70 offensive line can be as little as 3-4 points of PiRate Rating.

 
We take these grades and assign a weighting to the units. Obviously the quarterback is much more important than the long snapper. We add or subtract points based on depth, coaching changes, and other intangibles to come up with one part of the three PiRate Ratings. Each PiRate Rating has 5 to 7 different systems that measure talent and coaching of the 130 teams, which is why it takes basically 130 days to rate 130 teams. We start as soon as a team wraps up Spring Practice and sends out their Spring Media Guide. Last year’s final rating is the starting point, and all the preseason work presents a plus or minus adjustment to the PiRate, Mean, and Bias Ratings.

 
Remember that these rankings include starters and reserves, and these are not Pro football draft ratings; an option quarterback might be rated ahead of a potential 1st round NFL selection, because we are only concerned with how the players affect the college game. Starters count for about 80% and reserves about 20% for each unit, unless the position has co-starters or the starting QB has yet to be named; there is a different algorithm for these instances. Also, these ratings do not include injuries incurred in August practices, so the sad news about Alabama losing outstanding outside linebacker Terrell Lewis is included in their score, but the recent loss of Christopher Allen is not. His injury will be reflected in Alabama’s opening rating against Louisville a week from Tuesday.

 
About the units: Tight ends are included in both the receivers and offensive line. Running backs are included as part of the receivers. When there is a true blocking fullback, he is part of the offensive line rating and contributes almost nothing to the running back score. If he is used as a receiver like an H-Back, then he is treated the same way as a tight end.

 
The style of defense factors minimally in the ratings for each unit. A 3-4 linebacker unit will be more important than a 4-2-5, so the linebackers will be given more weight in the algorithm at the end of the ratings’ process.

 

EAST

Florida
Quarterback: 80
Receivers: 83
Offensive Line: 82
Running Backs: 91
Defensive Line: 94
Linebackers: 88
Defensive Backs: 93
Special Teams: 86

Outlook: The recovery period for the Gators will be brief. This team quit on the previous staff after narrow losses to LSU and Texas A&M. The defense is better than it played last year, and Mullen brought Todd Grantham with him from Mississippi State, where the Bulldogs were much better defensively than their talent level predicted.
The schedule is almost a dream. Three cupcakes in non-conference play, home games with Kentucky, LSU, Missouri, and South Carolina, and road games against Tennessee and Vanderbilt make nine wins possible and eight wins probable. The Gators aren’t ready to challenge Georgia for the East Division championship, but they figure to compete for number two in Mullen’s first year back at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

The Captain Says: 5-3 in the conference and 8-4 overall

Georgia
Quarterback: 89
Receivers: 91
Offensive Line: 96
Running Backs: 97
Defensive Line: 93
Linebackers: 91
Defensive Backs: 94
Special Teams: 95

Outlook: Normally, a team that lost as much as Georgia lost on defense would be expected to fall back by at least two wins if not more. Also, when a team that lost first and second round-drafted running backs, the offense lost might decline enough to cost the team another win. That is far from the case with Georgia. With potential future All-American Jake Fromm returning at quarterback after an incredible freshman year that saw him finish a close second in passing efficiency, Fromm should top 3,000 yards passing behind a top-notch offensive line. The defense returns more than enough talent to keep holding opponents to around 17 points per game, and the schedule gives the Bulldogs a chance to run the table to the SEC Championship Game.

The Captain Says: 7-1 in the SEC and 11-1 overall and berth in SEC Championship Game

Kentucky
Quarterback: 77
Receivers: 82
Offensive Line: 82
Running Backs: 92
Defensive Line: 78
Linebackers: 90
Defensive Backs: 90
Special Teams: 84

Outlook: Mark Stoops has slowly increased the talent level in Lexington to the point where the Wildcats are just a little behind the teams competing for second place. Close losses to Florida and Ole Miss kept Kentucky from playing in the Outback or Gator Bowl last year. Depth concerns will hurt this team, just like it did last year, when the Wildcats ran out of gas following a 5-1 start.

The Captain Says: 2-6 in the SEC and 5-7 overall

Missouri
Quarterback: 94
Receivers: 89
Offensive Line: 94
Running Backs: 92
Defensive Line: 85
Linebackers: 86
Defensive Backs: 77
Special Teams: 93

Outlook: Missouri will go as far as the passing game takes them. Drew Lock had a 202.9 passer efficiency ratings in the 7 wins, all against teams with losing records or an FCS member. His efficiency rating fell to 124.9 in the six losses, all to teams that played in bowls. The Tigers might win a game or two with their special teams.

The Captain Says: 3-5 in the SEC and 7-5 overall

South Carolina
Quarterback: 85
Receivers: 94
Offensive Line: 84
Running Backs: 84
Defensive Line: 86
Linebackers: 88
Defensive Backs: 88
Special Teams: 93

Outlook: Will Muschamp has this team in contention for second place in the East, but the Gamecocks do not have a strong enough offensive or defensive line to compete with the Georgia’s and Alabama’s in this conference. South Carolina rarely dominates the stat box.

They were outgained by 258 yards in a season-opening win over North Carolina State, by 64 yards the following week in a win over Missouri, and by 54 yards in a win over Vanderbilt. Expect a better yardage output this year, but the Gamecocks are not likely to be +11 in turnovers, so the final outcome should be about the same.

The Captain Says: 5-3 in the SEC and 8-4 overall

Tennessee
Quarterback: 81
Receivers: 82
Offensive Line: 76
Running Backs: 79
Defensive Line: 80
Linebackers: 86
Defensive Backs: 83
Special Teams: 89

Outlook: Tennessee last competed for the SEC Championship in 2007. Derek Dooley and Butch Jones failed to make this program great again, and now the job is in the hands of Jeremy Pruitt. Pruitt is a tough disciplinarian with the ability to teach kindergarten, a rare combination. He’s also a top-notch recruiter, so it is only a matter of time before the talent level moves upward. 2018 will be a tough introduction to the head coaching world.

The Vols have decent talent on the defensive side of the ball, not enough to make noise in the SEC, but enough to win a couple times in the league and to lose games by fewer points. It’s up to the offense to move the ball and keep the defense off the field, and we don’t think the offense is up to the task.

The Captain says: 3-5 in the SEC and 6-6 overall

Vanderbilt
Quarterback: 83
Receivers: 80
Offensive Line: 81
Running Backs: 74
Defensive Line: 76
Linebackers: 75
Defensive Backs: 81
Special Teams: 82

Outlook: Derek Mason’s defensive Midas Touch turned from gold to balsa wood last year. Coming off a bowl season, the Commodores were expected to compete for another in 2017. A 3-0 start looked like Vanderbilt might have been on its way to its third 8-win regular season of the decade. Three tough games with Alabama, Florida, and Georgia left the team battered and bruised, and the Commodore ship took on too much water. That great defense gave up 505 yards and 46 points per game in the seven conference losses.

The Commodores lost seven starters off that defense, and the 2018 edition could be a little weaker. The offense could not run the ball in SEC play, averaging just 79 yards per game in the seven losses.

The Captain Says: 1-7 in the SEC and 4-8 overall
WEST

Alabama
Quarterback: 96
Receivers: 86
Offensive Line: 96
Running Backs: 99
Defensive Line: 96
Linebackers: 95
Defensive Backs: 93
Special Teams: 89

Outlook: For anybody else in the league, maybe including Georgia, when a team lost as much talent as the Tide, they would be picked to drop from the national championship to maybe 9-3. When a team plugs new All-Americans into the lineup to replace those that just left, the only thing that changes are the names in the program.

Make no mistake about it: Alabama could be vulnerable against an excellent mobile quarterback that can evade the pass rush and find an open receiver (isn’t everybody vulnerable in this case). The Johnny Manziel, Deshaun Watson, and Chad Kelly type beat other Alabama defenses, so this could be the case in 2018. Who on the schedule has this type of quarterback with an offensive line that can protect him, and with receivers that can get open and pick up big yards? Well, they aren’t officially on the schedule, as least not until game number 15–Clemson.

The Captain says: 8-0 in the SEC and 12-0 overall and berth in SEC Championship Game
Arkansas
Quarterback: 78
Receivers: 81
Offensive Line: 82
Running Backs: 87
Defensive Line: 79
Linebackers: 83
Defensive Backs: 79
Special Teams: 91

Outlook: The Bret Bielema era is over in Fayetteville, and grocers and restaurant owners are in mourning. Chad Morris brings his spread offense where the Razorbacks have been a pro-style power team in recent years. The talent level on both sides of the ball has fallen below the top teams in the league, and Arkansas is about on par with Kentucky in the other division. The two quarterbacks competing for the starting nod, Ty Storey and Cole Kelley, are both pro-style quarterbacks not necessarily equipped to run the Morris offense. The defense lacks a lot of quality talent, but new coordinator John Chavis will get more out of this unit than last year’s showing.

The Captain says: 2-6 in the SEC and 6-6 overall

Auburn
Quarterback: 92
Receivers: 90
Offensive Line: 83
Running Backs: 87
Defensive Line: 94
Linebackers: 91
Defensive Backs: 92
Special Teams: 87

Outlook: Auburn has the talent to win the SEC Championship, but the schedule will prevent the Tigers from doing so. The Tigers must play the two division favorites plus dark horse Mississippi State on the road, and we wouldn’t pick the Cam Newton Auburn team to win all three games.
This could be the year where Auburn passes the ball for more than 250 yards per game. Jarrett Stidham has a stable full of race horse receivers and an offensive line that may be better at pass blocking than run blocking. The defense is still quite strong, so Auburn will compete in every game; it’s just that they will lose some close ones away from Jordan-Hare Stadium.

The Captain says: 6-2 in the SEC and 9-3 overall

LSU
Quarterback: 78
Receivers: 82
Offensive Line: 85
Running Backs: 80
Defensive Line: 90
Linebackers: 92
Defensive Backs: 94
Special Teams: 87

Outlook: On paper, this might look like a team that is in danger of falling down to the bottom of the division. But, the Tigers still have a lot of talent, especially on defense, where it would not surprise us if LSU gives up less than 300 yards per game this year.

The offense looked to be a large negative with so much talent lost, but a little bird told us that recent Ohio State quarterback Joe Burrow is wowing the coaches in Baton Rouge. Since his arrival post Spring ball, two of the three quarterbacks expected to contend for a starting spot have transferred. Burrow had a 153.1 passer rating in very limited action with the Buckeyes. He has an accurate arm and plays with poise, but he has minimal game experience and dumped the ball to his backs even when he had open receivers downfield.

The Captain says: 3-5 in the SEC and 6-6 overall

Mississippi
Quarterback: 81
Receivers: 96
Offensive Line: 88
Running Backs: 80
Defensive Line: 84
Linebackers: 79
Defensive Backs: 94
Special Teams: 89

Outlook: Matt Luke should have been given a special award for keeping the Ole Miss team together and bringing normalcy back to the program. Old-timers like us see a lot of John Vaught in his ability to lead a team and play an open style of offense. Ole Miss is still on probation with a bowl-ban, and it will likely cost this team a bowl game for the second consecutive season, because the Rebels can pass the ball and defend the pass well enough to win half of their games.

Quarterback Jordan Ta’amu was quite effective when he finally took over as the starter. In the final five games, his 167.3 passer rating was the best in the league over the time period, and he averaged 321 yards per game in that stretch. Of course, it is a lot easier to have great passing stats when your receiving corps is more talented than three or four NFL teams. A.J. Brown might be a leading Heisman Trophy contender if he played for Notre Dame, Oklahoma, or USC.

The Captain says: 2-6 in the SEC and 6-6 overall

Mississippi St.
Quarterback: 91
Receivers: 82
Offensive Line: 92
Running Backs: 90
Defensive Line: 93
Linebackers: 82
Defensive Backs: 90
Special Teams: 81

Outlook: Joe Moorhead comes to Starkville at the perfect time. He inherits all the pieces he needs to run a potent offense and play aggressive, smart defense. Except for the Alabama game, the Bulldogs can compete in the other 11. If Moorhead and defensive coordinator Bob Shoop can get improved play from the linebackers, and a couple of serviceable receivers can come forth to help take the heat off the running game, State could make a run at an 11-win season.

All this comes with a major caveat. Quarterback Nick Fitzgerald must be 100% healthy and able to do the same thing this year that he did prior to the injury last year. If he stays healthy for 12 games, then State should have two, 1000-yard rushers.

The Captain says: 5-3 in the SEC and 9-3 overall

Texas A&M
Quarterback: 84
Receivers: 83
Offensive Line: 84
Running Backs: 86
Defensive Line: 88
Linebackers: 91
Defensive Backs: 85
Special Teams: 93

Outlook: Jimbo Fisher figures to make a lot of changes in year one compared to how Kevin Sumlin ran the team. The offense will go from a spread passing game to a pro-style with more power running. Fisher is a great mentor of quarterbacks, but as of this writing, the starter for 2018 has not been decided. NIck Starkel is the better passer, while Kellen Mond adds a running aspect that Starkel does not have.

The Aggies are solid at all positions but not spectacular at any. They have experience at linebacker with Tyrel Dodson and Otaro Alaka back after combining for 182 tackles with 22 for loss and 11 sacks.

The Captain says: 4-4 in the SEC and 7-5 overall

Here is how the SEC Media voted in the preseason poll

SEC
East	1st Place	Points
Georgia	271	1977
South Carolina	8	1535
Florida	4	1441
Missouri	0	1057
Kentucky	1	874
Tennessee	1	704
Vanderbilt	0	392
West	1st Place	Points
Alabama	263	1971
Auburn	19	1664
Mississippi St.	2	1239
Texas A&M	0	1091
LSU	0	1025
Ole Miss	0	578
Arkansas	0	412

The PiRate Ratings differ minimally

Southeastern Conference
East Division
Team	SEC	Overall	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Georgia	0-0	0-0	130.9	126.3	132.4	129.8
Missouri	0-0	0-0	114.4	112.7	116.0	114.3
S. Carolina	0-0	0-0	112.9	111.7	112.2	112.3
Florida	0-0	0-0	112.9	110.6	113.3	112.2
Kentucky	0-0	0-0	106.8	105.3	106.3	106.1
Tennessee	0-0	0-0	98.8	99.5	98.4	98.9
Vanderbilt	0-0	0-0	96.8	97.5	96.2	96.9
West Division
Team	SEC	Overall	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Alabama	0-0	0-0	132.0	129.3	133.8	131.7
Auburn	0-0	0-0	122.0	121.2	124.4	122.5
Mississippi St.	0-0	0-0	122.5	119.2	122.7	121.5
L S U	0-0	0-0	110.1	110.3	110.7	110.4
Texas A&M	0-0	0-0	110.7	109.6	110.7	110.3
Arkansas	0-0	0-0	109.3	106.4	107.6	107.8
Ole Miss	0-0	0-0	105.3	105.1	106.1	105.5
SEC Averages			113.2	111.8	113.6	112.9

New Coaches
Dan Mullen isn’t a new coach to the league, but he is a new head coach at Florida. Mullen has a storied history with his new team. He tutored Tim Tebow during the Urban Meyer years when Florida won two national championships. He left Mississippi State stocked with incredible talent, and his recruiting efforts in Gainesville will quickly bring the Gators back to prominence.
Jeremy Pruitt has an incredible resume as a defensive genius, and he takes over a Tennessee team that did not play a lot of defense in recent years. Pruitt has produced top defenses at Georgia, Florida State, and Alabama, and he comes to Knoxville with multiple championship rings. His recruiting strengths in the Deep South should give the Volunteers a decent chance of returning to glory, but not for a few years.

Arkansas welcomes Chad Morris to Fayetteville after he turned the SMU program back into a bowl team. Morris brings his up-tempo,spread offense to the SEC West, where it has worked just fine at Auburn. The style is a complete contrast to former coach Bret Bielema’s power offense. Morris previously was offensive coordinator at Clemson and helped develop Deshaun Watson into a star.
Joe Moorhead takes over for Mullen at Mississippi State. Moorhead most recently was offensive coordinator for Penn State, where his offenses took off the last two years. He was the head coach of the Fordham Rams from 2012 to 2015, taking the Rams to three consecutive FCS Playoffs.

Jimbo Fisher takes over at Texas A&M after a brilliant career at Florida State, first as a coach-in-waiting under Bobby Bowden, and then as a national championship-winning head coach. His previous SEC experience included six years as quarterback coach under Tommy Tuberville at Auburn.

Predicted Won-Loss Records
Note: These predicted won-loss records are strictly mechanical based on the initial PiRate Ratings. No upsets are factored in these predictions. Additionally, our PiRate Ratings are only useful for the next week of games and cannot really be used to forecast past that point. Part of our weekly adjustment to our ratings includes a factor where depth issues or non-issues have been pre-set. In other words, a team without talented second stringers may lose ratings points as the season progresses even if they win games by the predicted margin, whereas a team with exceptional depth (like Alabama) will improve during the season and see its rating rise even if they win games by a little less than the predicted margin. Ohio State and Maryland could see their ratings change by large amounts depending on the outcome of the two coaching investigations.  The predicted won-loss records in the team capsules are more realistic.

SEC
Team	Conference	Overall
East
Georgia	8-0	12-1
Florida	6-2	9-3
South Carolina	6-2	9-3
Missouri	4-4	8-4
Kentucky	2-6	5-7
Vanderbilt	1-7	4-8
Tennessee	0-8	3-9
West
Alabama	8-0	13-0 *
Mississippi St.	7-1	11-1
Auburn	5-3	8-4
Texas A&M	4-4	7-5
Arkansas	3-5	7-5
Ole Miss	1-7	5-7
LSU	1-7	4-8

Bowl Tie-ins
1. Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, LA
2. Citrus Bowl in Orlando, FL
3. Outback Bowl in Tampa, FL
3. Texas Bowl in Houston, TX
3. Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, FL
3. Belk Bowl in Charlotte, NC
3. Liberty Bowl in Memphis, TN
3. Music City Bowl in Nashville, TN
9. Independence Bowl in Shreveport, LA
9. Birmingham Bowl in Birmingham, AL

Coming Tuesday–The PiRate Ratings return to the in-season format. Our first ratings for the pre-week one schedule debut for the 2018 season. A couple of early games begin the college football season on Saturday, August 25.

The PiRates Are Hard At Work For Football Season

Hello Mates.

This is the head PiRate telling you that we have set sail and are on our way out to the green sea, otherwise known as the Football Field.

We have already begun to update our college football ratings for the 2018 season.  We have a unique way of updating our ratings from the end of the previous season to the beginning of the new season.  We have point values assigned to every starting and backup position on offense and defense plus an overall rating for the components of special teams.

For instance, as it should be obvious, the Quarterback is the most important position in college football.  So, we take special care in determining how many points better or worse each of the 130 teams is in week one compared to their final game of the year before by adding or subtracting points based on the QB.  We look at certain analytics data, just like baseball teams look at advanced statistics.  We actually have our own version of WAR for college football.  Instead of Batting, Fielding, and Pitching WAR, we have offense, defense, and special teams WAR, only instead of putting the final numbers into wins above average, we use points per game above average.  In the PiRate Ratings, a rating of 100.0 is average.  If a quarterback is worth 6.3 points better than an average QB, then before we look at the reserves, a team that is totally average at every other position would begin the season at 106.3 for this particular piece of the ratings’ puzzle.  If a quarterback has been determined to be 3.8 points below average, it would reduce the average team from 100.0 to 96.2.

On offense, the receiving corps is the next most important part of the equation, while the offensive line and running back corps are equal in importance as the last two parts.

Defensively, we look at all three units as they play against the run and the pass.  Stopping the pass is more important these days than stopping the run.  Interceptions, Passes Broken Up, Sacks, and Hurries are all parts of the Pass defense stats we look at.  We also have special ratings for nose guards that have the responsibility of taking up space and keeping blockers away from the linebackers, as these heroes of the trenches rarely show up in box scores, until one of the behemoths gets injured, and his replacement prevents the star will linebacker from making his usual 14 tackles with 2 for loss.

We have an intangible part of this equation as well.  Say a team has a change in coaches.  The old coach was a spread option or flexbone disciple, while the new coach is an air raid disciple.  It’s going to take 2-4 years to fully implement the changes, as that five foot nine inch triple option QB is not going to work as a dropback passer.

Another example in an intangible is the team that had 9 key injuries the year before, and 8 of the 9 return at 100% after missing parts or all of the year before.

In 2018, there will be a case where a potential all-star junior quarterback will transfer from one Power 5 school to another and be immediately eligible.  This will have major effects on his new team, much more than if he were the top incoming freshman in the nation.  This QB has already proven himself in a power conference, while the top incoming freshman only proved himself in Georgia high school action.  There is a difference as deep as the Grand Canyon in comparing the two, even though the incoming freshman might eventually become the next John Elway.  The seasoned starter showed what he could do when he passed for close to 350 yards against Auburn, while the freshman threw for 220 yards against Troup County High School.

This is just one piece of a 5-prong process.  We rate each team against every other team using 5 different processes.  Once we are done, we use three different algorithms to come up with a PiRate, Mean, and Bias rating for each of the 130 teams.  The PiRate and Bias differ by very little, so they will frequently be highly correlated, while the Mean rating is somewhat different than the other two, because it takes the equally-weighted average of the five ratings, while the other two apply heavier weights to some of the five components.  Because they share the exact same weighting of the prong we showed you above, these two tend to stay correlated.

We know we have a lot of advanced mathematicians reading our blog, and we are grateful for your patronage.  We try to make this more analytically dominated than you might get from other sports rating sites and even break down the fourth wall from time to time to show you what we do.

If you are not a math fan and just love football, then fear not.  We still hope to have computer ratings that are as accurate as possible, and we still will make fools of ourselves weekly to issue free picks that you can then take and gift to Las Vegas if you are foolish enough to not realize that these picks are worth exactly what you pay for them.

We have 10 weeks to go.  With a lot of late night work, we hope to have the ratings ready for you in 9 weeks max.

Thanks,

The Captain

PiRate Ratings 2017-18 College Football Final Polls

Congratulations go to Coach Nick Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide for winning the National Championship in a thrilling overtime victory over the Georgia Bulldogs.  Alabama wins the top spot in all three ratings, plus the retro rankings.  Here’s how the final numbers crunched.

Retrodictive Rankings

PiRate Retrodictive
#	Team
1	Alabama
2	Georgia
3	Ohio St.
4	Wisconsin
5	Central Florida
6	Penn St.
7	Clemson
8	Oklahoma
9	Notre Dame
10	Auburn
11	TCU
12	Michigan St.
13	Miami (Fla)
14	USC
15	Washington
16	Oklahoma St.
17	Northwestern
18	North Carolina St.
19	Iowa
20	Stanford
21	Virginia Tech
22	Mississippi St.
23	LSU
24	Memphis
25	Boise St.
26	Michigan
27	Iowa St.
28	Wake Forest
29	South Florida
30	Louisville
31	South Carolina
32	Washington St.
33	Toledo
34	Florida Atlantic
35	Boston College
36	Florida St.
37	Texas
38	Purdue
39	Kansas St.
40	San Diego St.
41	Fresno St.
42	Troy
43	Army
44	Navy
45	Texas A&M
46	Duke
47	Georgia Tech
48	Oregon
49	Utah
50	West Virginia
51	Missouri
52	Arizona St.
53	Houston
54	Texas Tech
55	Kentucky
56	Arizona
57	UCLA
58	Appalachian St.
59	Ohio
60	Indiana
61	Ole Miss
62	Pittsburgh
63	California
64	Northern Illinois
65	Temple
66	SMU
67	Minnesota
68	Marshall
69	North Texas
70	Virginia
71	Wyoming
72	Florida
73	Syracuse
74	Maryland
75	Central Michigan
76	Colorado
77	Colorado St.
78	Nebraska
79	Western Michigan
80	Louisiana Tech
81	Tulane
82	Vanderbilt
83	Arkansas St.
84	Southern Miss.
85	Florida Int’l.
86	Arkansas
87	Akron
88	Buffalo
89	Middle Tennessee
90	Utah St.
91	Tennessee
92	North Carolina
93	UAB
94	Eastern Michigan
95	Rutgers
96	Air Force
97	New Mexico St.
98	UTSA
99	Miami (O)
100	Cincinnati
101	Tulsa
102	UNLV
103	Western Kentucky
104	Baylor
105	BYU
106	East Carolina
107	Nevada
108	Georgia St.
109	Massachusetts
110	Connecticut
111	Illinois
112	Old Dominion
113	UL-Monroe
114	Bowling Green
115	New Mexico
116	Idaho
117	South Alabama
118	UL-Lafayette
119	Oregon St.
120	Hawaii
121	Coastal Carolina
122	Georgia Southern
123	Kansas
124	Kent St.
125	Ball St.
126	Rice
127	Charlotte
128	Texas St.
129	San Jose St.
130	UTEP

The PiRate, Mean, and Bias Ratings

PiRate Ratings
#	Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	Alabama	136.9	133.5	135.8	135.4
2	Ohio St.	132.3	130.2	132.6	131.7
3	Georgia	130.8	130.0	131.4	130.7
4	Clemson	131.3	128.6	130.9	130.3
5	Penn St.	129.4	128.1	129.8	129.1
6	Oklahoma	128.2	126.7	129.4	128.1
7	Auburn	127.0	125.2	127.2	126.5
8	Washington	126.2	124.2	126.1	125.5
9	Wisconsin	126.4	123.9	125.5	125.3
10	Oklahoma St.	121.2	120.4	121.6	121.1
11	Stanford	120.6	119.0	119.9	119.8
12	U S C	120.1	119.2	119.8	119.7
13	L S U	118.5	116.3	118.8	117.9
14	Virginia Tech	118.1	117.6	117.9	117.8
15	Miami	118.6	117.4	117.5	117.8
16	T C U	118.0	116.5	118.2	117.6
17	N. Carolina St.	117.1	116.2	117.0	116.8
18	Central Florida	116.0	116.9	117.2	116.7
19	Louisville	116.8	116.0	116.5	116.4
20	Notre Dame	116.6	115.4	116.8	116.2
21	Florida St.	116.9	116.0	115.7	116.2
22	Northwestern	115.4	114.2	115.5	115.0
23	Iowa	114.3	114.5	113.6	114.2
24	Michigan	114.2	114.0	113.4	113.9
25	Mississippi St.	113.5	113.3	113.3	113.4
26	Memphis	113.2	112.5	114.0	113.2
27	Iowa State	112.8	112.8	113.9	113.2
28	Texas	112.9	112.9	113.5	113.1
29	Kansas St.	112.9	112.7	113.0	112.9
30	Boston College	112.6	112.3	112.6	112.5
31	Michigan St.	111.0	111.6	112.1	111.6
32	Wake Forest	112.1	110.4	112.2	111.6
33	Duke	111.1	110.0	110.4	110.5
34	Utah	109.9	109.9	110.1	110.0
35	Oregon	110.5	108.6	109.9	109.7
36	Georgia Tech	110.2	108.4	108.7	109.1
37	Washington St.	109.8	107.7	109.3	108.9
38	South Florida	109.0	108.2	109.3	108.8
39	S. Carolina	109.1	108.3	108.2	108.5
40	Pittsburgh	108.8	108.1	108.7	108.5
41	Missouri	108.5	107.1	107.8	107.8
42	Boise St.	107.5	106.1	107.6	107.1
43	Texas A&M	107.9	106.0	107.0	107.0
44	West Virginia	106.7	107.4	106.7	106.9
45	Arizona St.	106.4	105.3	106.0	105.9
46	Kentucky	106.4	105.7	105.0	105.7
47	Purdue	105.6	105.4	106.1	105.7
48	Indiana	105.5	105.6	105.9	105.7
49	Ole Miss	106.3	105.0	105.4	105.6
50	Florida	105.7	105.4	105.1	105.4
51	Arizona	106.0	104.9	104.9	105.3
52	Texas Tech	105.2	104.9	104.8	105.0
53	Florida Atlantic	103.4	104.9	105.3	104.5
54	California	105.3	103.2	103.8	104.1
55	Navy	103.5	104.1	103.7	103.8
56	Colorado	104.5	103.4	102.4	103.4
57	U C L A	103.0	102.4	102.3	102.6
58	N. Carolina	102.9	102.0	102.0	102.3
59	San Diego St.	101.5	101.5	102.5	101.8
60	Houston	101.4	101.1	101.5	101.3
61	Syracuse	102.0	100.8	101.1	101.3
62	Army	100.9	100.8	101.3	101.0
63	Appalachian St.	101.2	100.0	101.4	100.9
64	Toledo	100.1	100.1	102.1	100.8
65	Minnesota	100.3	101.2	99.2	100.2
66	Vanderbilt	100.8	99.8	99.7	100.1
67	Troy	99.7	99.8	99.9	99.8
68	Fresno St.	99.9	98.6	100.8	99.8
69	Colo. State	99.8	99.1	99.7	99.5
70	Virginia	99.6	98.6	99.9	99.4
71	Ohio U	98.3	99.6	99.3	99.1
72	Arkansas	99.4	98.5	99.2	99.1
73	Baylor	98.1	99.4	98.2	98.6
74	Temple	98.2	98.5	98.8	98.5
75	Wyoming	97.8	96.9	97.2	97.3
76	Tennessee	97.3	95.9	95.3	96.2
77	Western Michigan	95.8	95.2	96.5	95.8
78	Northern Illinois	95.0	95.0	95.8	95.2
79	Nebraska	94.9	95.4	94.4	94.9
80	Eastern Michigan	94.7	94.8	95.1	94.9
81	Maryland	94.5	95.8	93.9	94.7
82	Arkansas St.	93.8	95.0	94.7	94.5
83	Tulane	94.2	94.4	94.6	94.4
84	SMU	94.0	94.5	94.3	94.3
85	Utah St.	94.0	93.3	93.7	93.7
86	Marshall	92.4	93.5	93.8	93.3
87	Central Michigan	92.8	93.1	93.4	93.1
88	Tulsa	93.1	92.8	92.7	92.9
89	Air Force	92.2	92.5	92.2	92.3
90	Louisiana Tech	90.8	92.4	91.6	91.6
91	Middle Tennessee	90.4	91.4	91.6	91.1
92	Rutgers	91.1	91.1	90.7	91.0
93	BYU	90.0	89.9	89.9	89.9
94	Nevada	88.9	90.5	90.0	89.8
95	Miami (O)	88.7	90.7	89.9	89.8
96	Oregon St.	90.0	89.9	88.4	89.4
97	Massachusetts	88.9	88.4	89.0	88.8
98	U T S A	87.6	90.0	88.4	88.6
99	Buffalo	87.3	89.3	89.3	88.6
100	Florida Int’l.	87.6	88.0	88.4	88.0
101	Illinois	87.9	89.0	86.8	87.9
102	Southern Miss.	87.5	88.4	87.8	87.9
103	N. Texas	86.4	87.8	86.9	87.0
104	U N L V	86.2	87.7	86.3	86.8
105	N. Mexico St.	86.8	85.7	86.9	86.5
106	W. Kentucky	85.7	86.2	86.1	86.0
107	Connecticut	84.5	86.3	84.8	85.2
108	Akron	84.2	86.1	84.9	85.1
109	Cincinnati	83.9	85.7	84.6	84.7
110	New Mexico	84.4	84.4	84.9	84.6
111	East Carolina	83.2	84.5	83.3	83.7
112	Georgia St.	82.7	82.7	82.5	82.7
113	Kansas	81.8	85.1	80.5	82.5
114	Bowling Green	81.5	82.6	81.8	82.0
115	Hawaii	81.8	82.9	81.1	81.9
116	UL-Monroe	81.9	82.8	81.0	81.9
117	S. Alabama	81.1	83.0	81.3	81.8
118	Idaho	80.8	81.6	81.7	81.3
119	Old Dominion	80.3	82.7	80.5	81.2
120	UAB	79.6	79.9	81.3	80.3
121	UL-Lafayette	79.3	80.5	79.0	79.6
122	Georgia Southern	79.1	80.4	78.5	79.3
123	Coastal Carolina	74.5	75.7	75.3	75.2
124	Kent St.	73.9	75.4	74.2	74.5
125	Rice	72.6	74.1	73.0	73.2
126	San Jose St.	72.3	72.4	71.6	72.1
127	Texas St.	70.3	72.5	69.4	70.7
128	Charlotte	69.5	71.8	69.7	70.3
129	U T E P	67.9	70.7	67.9	68.9
130	Ball St.	65.7	67.7	66.4	66.6
PiRate Ratings By Conference
#	League	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	ACC	112.7	111.6	112.2	112.2
2	SEC	112.0	110.7	111.4	111.4
3	B12	109.8	109.9	110.0	109.9
4	P-12	109.4	108.1	108.6	108.7
5	BTEN	108.8	108.6	108.5	108.6
6	IND	99.1	98.6	99.2	99.0
7	AAC	97.9	98.3	98.2	98.1
8	MWC	92.2	92.2	92.3	92.2
9	MAC	88.2	89.1	89.0	88.8
10	CUSA	84.4	85.8	85.2	85.1
11	SBC	84.3	85.0	84.3	84.5

 

 

 

PiRate Ratings 2017-18 College Football National Championship Game Preview

2017-18 College Football National Championship Game

#3 Georgia Bulldogs (13-1) vs. #4 Alabama Crimson Tide (12-1)

Date: Monday, January 8, 2018

Time: 8:00 PM Eastern Standard

Location: Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta

TV: ESPN

Announcers: Chris Fowler–Play-by-play, Kirk Herbstreit–Color commentary, Maria Taylor–Sideline, Tom Rinaldi–Sideline

Radio: ESPN

Announcers: Sean McDonough–Play-by-play, Todd Blackledge–Color commentary, Holly Rowe–Sideline, Ian Fitzsimmons–Sideline

Officiating: Big Ten Staff

Las Vegas Line (as of Tuesday, January 2, 2018, 4:00 PM EST

Spread: Alabama by 4 1/2

Money line: Alabama -200,  Georgia +170

Total: 45 1/2

PiRate Ratings

PiRate: Alabama by 6.5

Mean: Alabama by 3.7

Bias: Alabama by 4.8

Reasonable Expected Score: Alabama 31  Georgia 26

100 Computer Simulations

Wins: Alabama 68  Georgia 32

Average Score: Alabama 33  Georgia 27

Outlier ALA: Alabama 38  Georgia 9

Outlier GA: Georgia 27  Alabama 16 

 

 

PiRate Ratings 2017-18 College Football Bowls & Playoffs Preview

2017-18 Bowls & Playoffs Schedule

All times are EST

Saturday, December 16

New Orleans Bowl: 1:00 PM on ESPN

North Texas (9-4) vs. Troy (10-2)

 

Cure Bowl: 2:30 PM on CBSSN

Western Kentucky (6-6) vs. Georgia St. (6-5)

 

Las Vegas Bowl: 3:30 PM on ABC

Boise St. (10-3) vs. Oregon (7-5)

 

New Mexico Bowl: 4:30 PM on ESPN

Marshall (7-5) vs. Colorado St. (7-5)

 

Camellia Bowl: 8:00 PM on ESPN

Middle Tennessee (6-6) vs. Arkansas St. (7-4)

 

Tuesday, December 19

Boca Raton Bowl: 7:00 PM on ESPN

Akron (7-6) vs. Florida Atlantic (10-3)

 

Wednesday, December 20

Frisco Bowl: 8:00 PM on ESPN

SMU (7-5) vs. Louisiana Tech (6-6)

 

Thursday, December 21

Gasparilla Bowl: 8:00 PM on ESPN

Temple (6-6) vs. Florida Int’l. (8-4)

 

Friday, December 22

Bahamas Bowl: 12:30 PM on ESPN

UAB (8-4) vs. Ohio U. (8-4)

 

Idaho Potato Bowl: 4:00 PM on ESPN

Central Michigan (8-4) vs. Wyoming (7-5)

 

Saturday, December 23

Birmingham Bowl: 12:00 PM on ESPN

South Florida (9-2) vs. Texas Tech (6-6)

 

Armed Forces Bowl: 3:30 PM on ESPN

Army (9-3) vs. San Diego St. (10-2)

 

Dollar General Bowl: 7:00 PM on ESPN

Toledo (11-2) vs. Appalachian St. (8-4)

 

Sunday, December 24

Hawaii Bowl: 8:30 PM on ESPN

Houston (7-4) vs. Fresno St. (9-4)

 

Tuesday, December 26

Heart of Dallas Bowl: 1:30 PM on ESPN

West Virginia (7-5) vs. Utah (6-6)

 

Quick Lane Bowl: 5:00 PM on ESPN

Duke (6-6) vs. Northern Illinois (8-4)

 

Cactus Bowl: 9:00 PM on ESPN

Kansas St. (7-5) vs. UCLA (6-6)

 

Wednesday, December 27

Independence Bowl: 1:30 PM on ESPN

Florida St. (6-6) vs. Southern Miss. (8-4)

 

Pinstripe Bowl: 5:15 PM on ESPN

Boston College (7-5) vs. Iowa (7-5)

 

Foster Farms: 8:30 PM on Fox

Purdue (6-6) vs. Arizona (7-5)

 

Texas Bowl: 9:00 PM on ESPN

Texas (6-6) vs. Missouri (7-5)

 

Thursday, December 28

Military Bowl: 1:30 PM on ESPN

Navy (6-6) vs. Virginia (6-6)

 

Camping World Bowl: 5:15 PM on ESPN

Oklahoma St. (9-3) vs. Virginia Tech (9-3)

 

Holiday Bowl: 9:00 PM on FS1

Michigan St. (9-3) vs. Washington St. (9-3)

 

Alamo Bowl: 9:00 PM on ESPN

TCU (10-3) vs. Stanford (9-4)

 

Friday, December 29

Belk Bowl: 1:00 PM on ESPN

Wake Forest (7-5) vs. Texas A&M (7-5)

 

Sun Bowl: 3:00 PM on CBS

North Carolina St. (8-4) vs. Arizona St. (7-5)

 

Music City Bowl: 4:30 PM on ESPN

Kentucky (7-5) vs. Northwestern (9-3)

 

Arizona Bowl: 5:30 PM on CBSSN

Utah St. (6-6) vs. New Mexico St. (6-6)

 

Cotton Bowl: 8:30 PM on ESPN

Ohio St. (11-2) vs. USC (11-2)

 

Saturday, December 30

Taxslayer Bowl: 12:00 PM on ESPN

Louisville (8-4) vs. Mississippi St. (8-4)

 

Liberty Bowl: 12:30 PM on ABC

Iowa St. (7-5) vs. Memphis (10-2)

 

Fiesta Bowl: 4:00 PM on ESPN

Penn St. (10-2) vs. Washington (10-2)

 

Orange Bowl: 8:00 PM on ESPN

Wisconsin (12-1) vs. Miami (Fla.) (10-2)

 

Monday, January 1

Outback Bowl: 12:00 OM on ESPN2

Michigan (8-4) vs. South Carolina (8-4)

 

Peach Bowl: 12:30 PM on ESPN

Auburn (10-3) vs. Central Florida (12-0)

 

Citrus Bowl: 1:00 PM on ABC

Notre Dame (9-3) vs. LSU (9-3)

 

New Year’s Day Playoffs

Rose Bowl: 5:00 PM on ESPN

Oklahoma (12-1) vs. Georgia (12-1)

 

Sugar Bowl: 8:45 PM on ESPN

Clemson (12-1) vs. Alabama (11-1)

 

Monday, January 8

National Championship Game: 8:00 PM on ESPN

Rose Bowl Winner vs. Sugar Bowl Winner

 

PiRate Rating Spreads for Bowls/Playoffs

Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
North Texas	Troy	-12.5	-11.2	-11.8
Georgia St.	Western Kentucky	-6.6	-6.9	-7.3
Boise St.	Oregon	-6.6	-5.7	-5.9
Marshall	Colorado St.	-10.4	-8.0	-8.7
Middle Tennessee	Arkansas St.	-5.9	-5.7	-5.7
Florida Atlantic	Akron	15.2	14.8	16.4
SMU	Louisiana Tech	11.7	10.5	11.1
Florida Int’l.	Temple	-5.8	-6.1	-5.2
UAB	Ohio U	-14.7	-16.3	-13.6
Wyoming	Central Michigan	0.4	-0.8	-1.4
South Florida	Texas Tech	3.8	3.2	4.5
San Diego St.	Army	2.4	2.3	3.2
Appalachian St.	Toledo	-5.9	-7.1	-7.7
Fresno St.	Houston	-3.5	-4.5	-2.7
West Virginia	Utah	0.2	0.7	0.2
Northern Illinois	Duke	-14.7	-13.8	-12.8
UCLA	Kansas St.	-7.7	-8.5	-8.4
Southern Miss.	Florida St.	-29.4	-27.4	-27.3
Boston College	Iowa	-0.3	-1.0	0.5
Arizona	Purdue	0.8	-0.3	-0.8
Texas	Missouri	4.2	6.3	5.5
Navy	Virginia	-1.1	0.5	-1.2
Oklahoma St.	Virginia Tech	1.9	1.8	2.6
TCU	Stanford	-1.3	-1.2	-0.6
Washington St.	Michigan St.	5.8	3.1	4.2
Wake Forest	Texas A&M	6.4	6.6	7.4
Arizona St.	North Carolina St.	-8.3	-8.7	-8.4
Kentucky	Northwestern	-8.4	-7.9	-9.9
New Mexico St.	Utah St.	-9.1	-9.6	-8.8
Ohio St.	USC	11.6	10.4	12.2
Mississippi St.	Louisville	-5.6	-4.5	-5.8
Memphis	Iowa St.	4.0	3.1	3.9
Washington	Penn St.	-2.4	-3.5	-2.7
Miami (Fla.)	Wisconsin	-3.4	-2.1	-3.6
South Carolina	Michigan	-8.3	-8.6	-8.6
Auburn	Central Florida	15.8	12.5	14.8
Notre Dame	LSU	-3.1	-1.8	-3.6
Oklahoma	Georgia	-2.4	-3.2	-1.8
Alabama	Clemson	2.8	2.4	1.7