The PiRate Ratings Are Hard At Work

Welcome back gridiron fans.  The PiRates are back at sea working hard on getting their treasure for the 2017-18 season.

There will be a few tweaks to the formulas this season as we refine our ratings to make them as accurate as possible, and we are excited about it.

Tweak #1: Our first tweak involves increasing the alteration of each college football teams’ rate of adjustment as it applies to depth concerns.  If a team is stacked two-deep with talent, they should be able to endure a long, hard season.  But, if the team is only good in their starting lineup, and they lack the depth, they will weaken as the season goes on.  Consider two teams, State and Tech.  State and Tech are about equal in talent in their starting lineups, and on August 25, they are exactly the same in power rating.  For the sake of argument, let’s say they both look like 9-3 teams in a power 5 conference and have identical ratings of 118.0.

In the month of September, State and Tech both go 4-0 over similar competition, and their statistics show that they are still basically the same in talent and results.  Both teams ratings go up, but State’s go up a tad more than Tech’s, due to the depth issue.  Through four games, it won’t be all that much, and now on the First Monday in October, State is now 122.5, and Tech is 121.8.

In October, State and Tech both go 3-1 to sit at 7-1 with four games to go.  Both teams have lost some key players by now, but State has plugged in able second-teamers to fill the spots, while Tech has been forced to go with talent not up to Power 5 conference standards.  State’s wins have been a little easier, and their loss was much closer than Tech’s wins and loss.  Now, State has a rating of 123.1, while Tech has fallen a bit to 119.5.

In November, State finishes strong, going 3-1 to finish the regular season at 10-2.  Tech falters going 1-3 to finish 8-4.

We see this every year.  We believe we can factor in this depth issue into our ratings before the season begins, and we can adjust the rate of adjustment during the season as a team sees key players leave the lineup.  It also works in reverse; a team may have a blessing of several new underclassmen beginning to contribute.

Look at Georgia in 1980.  Hershel Walker was a true freshman.  In the second half of the season opener against Tennessee, Coach Vince Dooley inserted Walker into the game with the Bulldogs trailing by double-digits, and Walker turned the game around in his first 10 carries.  Georgia won the game, and Walker led the Bulldogs to an undefeated National Championship.  Had this new twist of our ratings been in effect then, The Bulldogs might have improved by an unprecedented 10 points between game one and game two.  As it was then, it took several weeks until Georgia’s rating really reflected their power, all because of one freshman.

This can just as easily happen to an average team that loses a couple of key players.  There have been instances when a team has lost a dozen key players by the end of October.  If it is Alabama, the Crimson Tide might be five points weaker than they would have been with the dozen players still healthy.  But, if it is Iowa State, the Cyclones might be 15 points weaker with the loss of these dozen players.

Going back to the unexpected bonanza, what if a team has five or six redshirt freshmen that have displaced upperclassmen in the starting lineup?  Obviously, this team must now be better talent-wise if starters have been replaced  (unless the coach has thrown in the towel on the season and is looking to the future).  What started as a so-so season may continue as a better season because the surprising advancement of the freshmen has made this team a touchdown better than it was earlier in the season.

The PiRate Ratings will adjust for this during the season by increasing or decreasing the adjustment rate of the teams after each Saturday.  Because the PiRate Ratings always show a total average of 100.0, that means teams might lose ground in the ratings after a good game, because other teams now earn more bonus for their play on the field.  It will be a work in progress, but in the end, we believe it will lead to more accurate ratings.

 

Tweak #2: Our basketball ratings have always been Four Factors-based.  We have three different algorithms using the Four Factors Data.  Football also has its factors.  In fact, in football, there are five factors.  They are, in order of importance: Explosiveness, Efficiency, Field Position, Finishing Drives, and Turnovers.   You can find excellent content online about these factors–some explain in detail like a thesis, while others give you a quick outline.

For our purposes, we have changed how we use the box scores of the games in our updating formula.  We will look more at Explosiveness and Efficiency when we update the teams’ ratings every week.  Additionally, we will keep an unpublished running score on how consistent teams are in being able to move the ball and stop the movement of the other team.  Which leads us to our big breakthrough for 2017-18.

Big Breakthrough

Have you ever noticed that over the course of an era, a team may celebrate a national championship or conference championship when they appear to not be as good as prior teams or soon see future teams that look better but do not win the championship?  You have probably seen that a really good team goes 10-2 or 11-1 and demolishes most of their opponents but suffered a terrible upset.  Then, that team runs the table but wins most of their games by nice amounts but by no means blowouts.

Think of a team that wins 55-17 and 38-10 or something similar for most of the season and then falls 31-27 to a mediocre team.  This team leads the nation in total offense or scoring defense, but they always fall a game short of the accomplishment.  But, then along comes a season where this school wins 31-20, 27-14 or something similar and runs the table.  They finish well down in total offense and near the top in scoring defense, but they go undefeated.

We have seen this happen multiple times in the last 30 years.  The dominating team is not as consistent as the team that went undefeated, and in three out of 10 games, the less consistent power may be two touchdowns better than the undefeated champion.  However, 70% of the time, the undefeated champion will be better than the dominating team.

The PiRates have tried to assign value or lack of value to the consistency of a team, but this is something that takes a good sampling of games.  This adjustment will be used in November after all teams have played 2/3 of their regular season schedule.  By then, we should have a grasp of what teams are staying consistent, and what teams are all over the map.  We will not adjust their ratings, because you never know if your inconsistent team will deviate 14 points above their rating or 14 points below.  What we will do is search for consistency when we select our Money Line plays.  We might be crazy, because we are coming off two consecutive profitable Money Line seasons (just for fun and not real wagering), so we might be cutting off our noses to spite our faces.

Enjoy your summer.  Football season will be here before you know it.  The PiRates are actually ahead of schedule this year with their college football updates, and we should have enough time to expand our preseason coverage this year.

Questions & Answers

Hello rabid basketball fans.  We will be issuing our bracket selections and Red-White-Blue Ratings in about 2 hours or less, and we remind you to refer back to the primer we sent out yesterday if you want to understand what our numbers mean.

We try our hardest to answer all of your comments and emails, but in the last 48 hours, we have received more than we can respond to without stopping everything we are doing.  Many of you have asked the same or similar questions, so we are going to answer the most popular ones here.  We are sorry if we cannot personally reply to all of you.

Question:Will you have your ratings available for the NCAA Tournament?

Answer: Yes!  We will issue Red-White-Blue Ratings for every NCAA Tournament game.  Whether or not it is picked up by the Prediction Tracker, we do not know.  It appears to be an issue with our formatting being picked up by their scanner.

 

Question: Do your bracket picking criteria and your point spread ratings account for injuries to players?

Answer: Yes and no.  We do not have a mathematical formula to reduce a team’s talent level for injuries, but we do apply that after the fact and include that in our intangibles to lower the rating for the team in question.  Obviously, this year, Oregon and Xavier will see their ratings lowered more than anybody else.  Also, in the Big Dance, we add a little to the ratings of teams that had a player step up in the last 10 games, because these teams can become sleepers.

 

Question: What is the difference in your three ratings?  Do they use different data?

Answer: We have three ratings in case you did not know.  We call them Red, White, and Blue, because we are patriotic PiRates.  All three of the ratings rely on the exact same Four Factors (see yesterday’s post if you are unaware) as well as other intangible factors like strength of schedule, home court advantage, visiting team disadvantage when playing on the road, and other data.

The difference in the three ratings comes from how much weight we assign to each factor.  The Red and White ratings use very similar data points and thus should not vary all that much, especially later in the season.  The Blue rating is more of a renegade and it sometimes misbehaves when compared to the other two ratings.

 

Question: Why don’t you issue ratings for every Division 1 college basketball game rather than just choose a few conferences and then only issue spreads on the weekends?

Answer: This is the most asked question from our readers.  There is one easy answer to this question.  We do not issue spreads for every game because we do not have the time to do so.  Unlike our football ratings which almost update themselves, our basketball ratings must be made from scratch after every game played.  We have to input all the statistics for each team when we issue the spreads on the game.  Because we have found that third party websites are not 100% accurate when they publish team stats, we go to each team’s homepage and get the stats from their official statbook.  It takes about 8 to 9 minutes to retrieve the stats for each game we rate.  Since there are 351 Division 1 teams playing games 7 days a week, you can see where it would take a contingent of about 20-25 volunteers to gather the information.

Once the stats are retrieved, the Captain runs them through the algorithms to get the spreads on each game.  For this reason, we can only issue basketball spreads for weekend games between the top 5 conferences plus a other top 25 teams like Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s.

 

Question: What is your past in the media?

Answer: Two of us on the PiRate ship have pasts in the commercial media.  The Captain’s better half enjoyed a career as a radio host in Wisconsin with a cult following on her late night time slot.

The Captain spent time in print, radio, and television as a sports announcer, play-by-play announcer, and color analyst.

Some of the wenches helping out have heavily-followed podcasts and Youtube sites in a different genre.

 

Question: Who are your favorite teams?

Answer: The one’s we pick to win.  Our goal is to be accurate and not favor one team over another due to partiality.

 

Question: Will you have baseball coverage in the future?

Answer: This is not possible at the current time, as our Captain serves as a metric specialist in professional baseball.  It would imply that he is revealing privileged information able to be seen by rivals of his employer.

 

Thank you for your patronage.  Look for our bracket selections and ratings for the First Four games in just a couple hours.

PiRate Ratings College Basketball Preview For December 29, 2016

Welcome to the PiRate Ratings’ return to college basketball coverage.  There are changes in the numbers this season, and we are excited to debut our annual Red-White-and-Blue Ratings for the 2016-17 college basketball season.

First, we have tweaked our Blue formula algorithm this year by giving a little more emphasis to true shooting percentage and the complimentary defensive metric in limiting shooting percentage.  In recent seasons, turnover margin has begun to mean a little bit less than it did a decade ago, and there are fewer truly dominant rebounding teams out there.  So, the college game for the time being is all about making shots and preventing the other team from making shots.  It sounds silly, as that should be all that matters (hitting baskets and stopping the other team from making them), but turnovers and rebounds gives teams more opportunities to take shots and make shots, while reducing the number of opportunities teams give to their opponents.  Rebounding and turnover rates are still vital, as we merely reduced the percentage of the total contribution by a couple basis points.

Next up, we plan on totally revising our NCAA  Tournament Bracketology data this season.  Our old formula has been performing with mediocre results in recent years, and we have decided to go 80% Four Factors and 20% PiRate Criteria this season and see what happens.  The R+T factor will still be part of our presentation, as it is still very effective at weeding out pretenders from contenders.

Until the Big Dance, we will concentrate our efforts on conference games and big non-conference games between teams from the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC.  Because we have to input the stats for every team for every game, it is not possible to do this for every Division I game.  But, because all we need for our ratings are the current updated stats, we can always rate any game, thus, if we want to rate a Missouri Valley Conference big game, we can add it to the slate.

Additionally, following the New Year’s, expect our chosen selections to run just one day a week, most likely Friday, and it will include that weekend’s games.  We will also provide commentary on the entire division, as we tend to receive a lot of readership when we report on the low-major and mid-major conferences.

Let’s get started with this week’s pre-New Year’s report.

PiRate Top 10

thru games of 12/28/16

1. Villanova
2. Virginia
3. Duke
4. West Virginia
5. Kansas
6. Baylor
7. North Carolina
8. Louisville
9. Wisconsin
10. Kentucky

ACC

1. Virginia
2. Duke
3. North Carolina
4. Louisville
5. Florida St.
6. Clemson
7. Notre Dame
8. Miami
9. Virginia Tech
10. Syracuse
11. Wake Forest
12. Pittsburgh
13. North Carolina St.
14. Georgia Tech
15. Boston College

This league is so loaded this year that #13 North Carolina State is strong enough to compete for the SEC Championship.  Only the bottom two are considered out of the running for an NCAA  Tournament bid.

Big East

1. Villanova
2. Butler
3. Xavier
4. Creighton
5. Marquette
6. Seton Hall
7. Georgetown
8. Providence
9. St. John’s
10. DePaul

Until they lose, reigning national champion Villanova rules the roost in the league and nationally.  The Wildcats had a close one last night against the cellar dweller, but one game does not knock them off their perch, as long as it is a win.  As of today, it looks like five teams would make the Dance.

Big Ten

1. Wisconsin
2. Purdue
3. Michigan
4. Indiana
5. Northwestern
6. Ohio St.
7. Maryland
8. Minnesota
9. Michigan St.
10. Iowa
11. Illinois
12. Nebraska
13. Penn St.
14. Rutgers

It looks like Northwestern is in line to finally make it to the Big Dance.  A strong 12-2 start for the Wildcats needs only a winning conference record and one conference tournament win to get that elusive bid.

Big 12

1. West Virginia
2. Kansas
3. Baylor
4. Texas Tech
5. Kansas St.
6. Iowa St.
7. TCU
8. Oklahoma St.
9. Oklahoma
10. Texas

Yes, the Longhorns and Sooners bring up the rear as conference play is set to begin.  The other 8 teams look to be NCAA Tournament bound as of today with the top 3 teams the equal of the top three in the ACC.

Pac-12

1. UCLA
2. Arizona
3. Oregon
4. USC
5. Colorado
6. California
7. Utah
8. Stanford
9. Washington
10. Arizona St.
11. Oregon St.
12. Washington St.

Even with UCLA’s last second loss at Oregon, the Bruins stay atop the Pac-12 standings.  This league looks like a 4 or 5-bid league as of now.

SEC

1. Kentucky
2. Florida
3. South Carolina
4. Texas A&M
5. Arkansas
6. Georgia
7. Ole Miss
8. Alabama
9. Tennessee
10. Vanderbilt
11. Auburn
12. LSU
13. Mississippi St.
14. Missouri

Kentucky and Florida rank well ahead of the other dozen in this league this year.  South Carolina, Texas A&M, Arkansas, and Georgia sit on a separate shelf above the remaining eight teams.  This could be as little as a two-bid league but no more than a four-bid league as of now.

Low and Mid-Major Teams in the mix for at-large bids

It is getting more difficult to label Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s as Mid-Major teams.  The two WCC powers are both in our top 25 teams this week.

Cincinnati out of the American Conference is really a power team, even though the AAC has lost some prestige.  SMU is in the same boat, but the Mustangs need to do a little more work to be a for sure at-large team this year.

Wichita State has earned the same privilege as Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s.  The Shockers belong in the list of at-large possibles.

The only real low-major team in consideration for a possible at-large bid would be UNC-Wilmington from the Colonial Athletic Association.  UNCW has the talent to get to the Sweet 16, and they scared the daylights out of Duke in the NCAA Tournament last year.

This Week’s Selections

Normally, this would be a list for Saturday/Sunday games, but due to the New Year’s Holiday, we are beginning with a list of Thursday games.  Once again, we will concentrate only on the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC conference games, as well as any games among highly ranked teams.

Each Rating is derived from the Four Factors with separate algorithmic equations.  An explanation of the Four Factors follows below.

Games Scheduled for:	Thursday, December 29, 2016
Home	Visitor	Red	White	Blue
Texas A&M	Tennessee	8	11	9
Auburn	Georgia	1	2	-3
Ole Miss	Kentucky	-12	-7	-8
LSU	Vanderbilt	2	5	-3
Arkansas	Florida	-1	-4	-7
St. John’s	Butler	-6	-8	-11
Gonzaga	Pepperdine	25	24	28
Loyola Marymount	Saint Mary’s	-10	-11	-14

The Four Factors in basketball are:

1. Effective Field Goal Percentage
2. Turnover Rate
3. Offensive Rebounding Rate
4. Free Throw Rate

These factors apply to both offense and defense, so in effect each team has Eight Factors.

Effective Field Goal Percentage

[FG +(0.5*3pt)]/FGA (expressed as a percentage)

Where FG is field goals made, 3pt is 3-point shots made, and FGA is field goal attempts

If a team makes 25 of 55 field goals and sinks 6 three-pointers, their EFG% is:

[25+(0.5*6)]/55 = 50.9% or 50.9

Turnover Rate

TOV/[FGA+(0.475*FTA)+TOV] (expressed as a percentage)

Where TOV is turnovers, FGA is Field Goal Attempts, and FTA is Free Throw Attempts

If a team commits 12 turnovers, takes 55 field goal attempts and 23 free throw attempts, their turnover rate is:

12/[55+(.475*23)+12]=15.4%

Offensive Rebounding %

OR/(OR+Opponents DR) (expressed as a percentage)

Where OR is offensive rebounds and DR is defensive rebounds

If a team gets 8 offensive rebounds, and their opponents get 26 defensive rebounds, their Offensive Rebounding % is:

8/(8+26) = 23.5%

Free Throw Rate

Basketball analytics gurus differ on how to rate this stat.  We align with those that favor free throws made per 100 possessions.

FT/[FGA+(0.475*FTA)+TOV-OR] (expressed as a percentage)

Where FT is Free throws made, FGA is field goal attempts, TOV is turnovers, and OR is offensive rebounds

If a team made 17 out of 23 free throw attempts with 55 field goal attempts, 12 turnovers, and 8 offensive rebounds, their FT Rate is:

17/[55+(0.475*23)+12-8] = 24.3%

The Red, White, and Blue Ratings use these statistics (both offensively and defensively) for the first 8 parts of the equation.  Part Number 9 is Strength of Schedule, and each rating adjusts a little differently for this.  Part Number 10 is Home Court Advantage (as well as occasional away from home disadvantage for teams that play much worse away from home than at home).

These 10 parts are then put through three separate algorithms to come up with three different ratings.  The difference in the ratings is the spread for the game.

 

College Football Ratings & Spreads For September 22-24, 2016

What an incredible college football week has just passed!  We told you last week that it could be the best September slate of college football games in years, and it lived up to the hype.

Guess what?  This weekend won’t exactly be chopped liver.  There are some excellent games on tap, and more conference games will be played this week.

First, some information about you guys and dolls.  We asked you to go to our sister site at http://www.piratings.webs.com and tell us who your favorite college and NFL teams happened to be.  We have received dozens of replies so far, and a pattern has developed.

Among the colleges mentioned, a large majority of you are Big Ten fans.  The number one school mentioned so far, and by quite a large margin, is Ohio State.  Number two surprised us, as we expected that an SEC school or six would be among the top ones you fine folks follow.  No SEC team received more than three votes, and that three belongs to Florida.  Number two behind the Buckeyes was their arch-rival Michigan, and in distant third place was the other Big Ten East biggie, Michigan State.

The NFL followed suit with upper Midwest fan support.  In a close race so far, Cleveland, Green Bay, and Chicago rank one-two-three.

It could be that the PiRate Ratings have a lot of upper Midwest support.  There are ties to Ohio State in a minor way, much less than the ties to Wisconsin, but it is there.  However, we expected a lot more SEC support, and it just didn’t come.  Wherefore art thou Alabama, Tennessee, LSU, Georgia, and Aggie fans?

Okay, now to get down to business.  We will obviously comment on the 3 Big Ten schools first today, and then include other games of interest that you might want to follow this week.

Ohio St.

The Buckeyes get a well-timed week off after picking up the biggest win of the NCAA season against the Sooners in Norman.  Their next two games are home contests against Rutgers and Indiana, so Urban Meyer’s team will be 5-0 when they head up to Camp Randall Stadium on October 15.

The stats are intimidating to any future opponent: 56.7 points per game to 12.3 points allowed per game; 306 yards per game rushing to just 103 allowed per game; a total yards per game average of 545 to 279; the defense has intercepted nine passes in three games; and if that isn’t enough riches, the Buckeyes have the best kicking game in the nation so far with a 50+ yard punt average and a 47+ yard net punt average to go with perfect 100% accuracy on PATs and field goals.

Michigan

The Wolverines spotted improved Colorado a quick two touchdown lead before getting down to business and posting an impressive 17-point win at the Big House.  Penn State comes to Ann Arbor this week, after the Nittany Lions held off a pesky Temple team.  The Maize and Blue defense and special teams have scored or set up more points than they have allowed with interception returns, punt returns, and three blocked kicks so far.  At one time, in 1969, Penn State’s defense and special teams scored or set up more points than the defense allowed for the entire season.  That Penn State team finished undefeated, and if this Michigan team can continue to replicate that great 1969 Penn State team, there is no reason to think the Wolverines cannot run the table–at least head to the Giant Horseshoe at 11-0.  How much would another 11-0 vs. 11-0 matchup cost to purchase a ticket on the street this time?  Prices were highly inflated in 2006, when these two teams were undefeated and ranked 1-2.

As for this week, We don’t think James Franklin’s Nittany Lions will roar much.  They might hold Michigan under 40 points, but can they score more than 17?

 

Michigan St.

The Spartans looked like a different team between game one against Furman and game two against Notre Dame.  Now MSU hosts a Wisconsin team that must have overlooked Georgia State last week, but even overlooking the Panthers, UW should have won by 30.  Sparty’s defense held Notre Dame’s rushing game at bay all night, and a repeat performance against the Badgers will mean a double-digit win.  For the record, we do not believe they will stop the UW rush like they stopped the Notre Dame running game.

Tyler O’Connor looked like a pro prospect at times against the Irish secondary.  His one interception came on a deflection, and if you remove that deflection, he had a night Connor Cook would have been proud of.  Look for MSU to win another tight game by less than a touchdown.  The last three times these schools have played, the margins were all under a TD.

Other Games of Interest

Thursday Night:

Clemson at Georgia Tech

The CU win at Auburn does not look all that impressive after Texas A&M looked better in their win at Jordan-Hare.  The narrow win over Troy could not be erased by the slaughter over the FCS school that was so unprepared to play a Power 5 team, that their kick returner handed the Tigers a touchdown by tossing it to the back judge without downing the ball.  This Clemson team has started to resemble the Florida State team of 2014.  That FSU team was considerably weaker than the 2013 champion, but they still made it to the playoffs.  We are not sure this CU team is playoff worthy, but they have time to right the ship.

Georgia Tech is 3-0 and looks like a defensive juggernaut in the process.  However, a closer look shows their defensive performance has come against three teams that would have trouble scoring in 11 on 0 practice drills.  Tech’s next three games could see a reverse in defensive performance.  Still, the Yellow Jackets are mighty tough to prepare for, and when you take away two days of preparation, it could make this a rather interesting game to watch.

Saturday

Florida at Tennessee

Butch Jones’ legacy in Knoxville is like an almost finished book.  The one major chapter of his mystery novel is the one where you find out who did it.  If Florida did it, ole Butch may not get a chance to write the sequel.

Florida has won 11 straight games in this series.  The average score in this streak has been 29-16, although the last two have both been decided by a single point.  The Gators are going to have to make due with Austin Appleby at quarterback after starter Luke Del Rio injured his knee on a cheap shot tackle by North Texas.  Appleby would become the second former Purdue quarterback to start a game for an SEC team in the last two weeks (Danny Etling @ LSU).  After replacing Del Rio, Appleby completed passes of 11 and 19 yards against the Mean Green in his four attempts.  At Purdue, Appleby had a tendency to force throws where he should not have passed, and his interception rate was  4%, about 45% higher than the QB that sent him packing from West Lafayette.

Josh Dobbs has not been what he was expected to be this year.  It looks like the coaching staff has put a governor on his scrambling and is not calling for Dobbs to keep the ball on many designed running plays.  That might change this week, as the Vols need to pull out all the stops to move the ball against Geoff Collins’ defense.

Tennessee is not without major losses due to injury, and it affects a trio of excellent starting defensive players.  All-American punt returner and very good cornerback Cameron Sutton will be out for several weeks. All-SEC weakside linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin should be able to play, but he will be far from 100%, and the Vols are hurting depthwise here, as middle linebacker Darrin Kirkland and backup hybrid linebacker/safety Quarte Sapp will miss the game.

Expect a low-scoring, hard-fought game that comes down to the final few minutes.

Arkansas vs. Texas A&M in Arlington, TX (Dallas Cowboys Stadium)–The Southwest Classic

What can these two former Southwest Conference rivals do for a second encore after the last two games in Jerryworld went to overtime?  The Aggies won both games, and it would not surprise us again if the game was still to be decided late in the fourth quarter.  Arkansas has not beaten A&M since the Aggies joined the SEC.

Both teams have big wins already this year.  Arkansas won at TCU, while A&M topped UCLA, so they have been tested, and we expect a quality game from both sides.  It was hoped that Austin Allen would be able to approach his graduated brother Brandon’s stats at quarterback, but through three games, little brother has greatly surpassed expectations.  Add to this fact that running back Rawleigh Williams has done an admirable job replacing Alex Collins.  It has been the Razorback defense that has not quite lived up to expectations.

As for the Aggies, Kevin Sumlin has dealth with his critics in recent years since Johnny Manziel left College Station, and most of that criticism has come from subsequently weaker offenses year over year.  We may ask these critics why a 44-31 win is better than a 29-16 win?  This Aggie team can play defense, as most defenses led by legendary guru John Chavis tend to do.  Against Josh Rosen and UCLA, the Aggie defense produced five sacks and three interceptions.  Auburn tried to throw short, and A&M didn’t give up yards after the catch.

Arkansas will try to combine pounding the ball up the gut with vertical passes to Keon Hatcher combined with spreading the field and finding Drew Morgan, tight end Jeremy Sprinkle, and Dominique Reed.

Stanford at UCLA

The must-win games continue to allow Stanford a chance to stay in the playoff hunt.  A win over USC at home was just fine.  A win at UCLA and by a larger margin than the Bruins fell at Texas A&M, gives the Cardinal the much-needed ammunition to fight against the Clemson’s, Louisville’s, and Houston’s.  SU must run the table against a weaker Pac-12 slate, and a win at the Rose Bowl Saturday night pumps up their resume.  A loss, and it’s all up to Washington and Arizona State to carry the Pac-12 banner.

Boise St. at Oregon St.

The Broncos are now in a multi-team battle with South Florida, Houston, Memphis, Central Michigan, Western Michigan, Toledo, and San Diego State for the NY6 Bowl Bid.  For that matter, throw in a surprising Army team into this mix and don’t eliminate the other two service academies just yet.

This game is Boise’s best resume builder for the rest of the season, even though the Beavers are at the bottom of the Pac-12.  It is almost required that BSU wins this game by at least 17 points, or they might have to be the last remaining undefeated team in December.

 

Here are this week’s PiRate Ratings

PiRate Ratings–Predictive
#	Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	Alabama	131.1	123.6	130.9	128.5
2	Louisville	127.9	121.7	128.1	125.9
3	Ohio St.	122.9	122.2	124.4	123.2
4	LSU	124.0	118.3	123.0	121.8
5	Michigan	121.9	119.8	122.5	121.4
6	Tennessee	121.8	117.1	121.8	120.2
7	Oklahoma	120.0	117.3	119.9	119.1
8	Clemson	122.2	113.9	120.7	118.9
9	Stanford	121.4	114.2	120.3	118.6
10	Washington	121.0	113.2	121.1	118.4
11	Miami	120.1	112.8	120.0	117.6
12	Houston	115.5	113.6	117.7	115.6
13	Oklahoma St.	115.3	116.3	115.1	115.6
14	Florida St.	117.9	110.6	116.8	115.1
15	North Carolina	117.2	110.5	116.9	114.9
16	Virginia Tech	114.5	114.1	114.8	114.5
17	Texas A&M	114.8	113.8	114.8	114.5
18	Pittsburgh	115.9	111.4	115.0	114.1
19	Iowa	115.1	112.0	114.8	114.0
20	Auburn	113.9	112.4	113.8	113.4
21	Mississippi St.	114.4	111.7	113.7	113.3
22	Notre Dame	114.9	111.2	113.6	113.2
23	Florida	112.6	116.3	110.8	113.2
24	Michigan St.	113.5	112.5	111.7	112.6
25	Texas	112.1	113.6	111.2	112.3
26	TCU	111.9	113.5	111.5	112.3
27	USC	114.3	109.9	111.6	111.9
28	Oregon	112.3	111.0	111.5	111.6
29	Arkansas	113.7	108.8	111.0	111.2
30	South Florida	111.6	109.0	112.8	111.1
31	Ole Miss	113.6	107.1	112.4	111.0
32	Georgia	111.0	111.1	110.9	111.0
33	UCLA	111.4	110.4	111.0	110.9
34	Baylor	110.4	110.5	111.5	110.8
35	Nebraska	111.8	108.4	111.9	110.7
36	Wisconsin	111.1	109.0	111.7	110.6
37	Georgia Tech	111.0	107.2	110.4	109.5
38	Boise St.	108.0	109.4	110.3	109.2
39	Colorado	110.1	105.6	110.6	108.8
40	Utah	110.8	105.1	108.7	108.2
41	Kansas St.	107.2	110.2	107.1	108.2
42	BYU	110.3	103.6	109.7	107.9
43	Penn St.	107.2	109.0	105.9	107.4
44	Arizona St.	107.5	108.1	106.3	107.3
45	West Virginia	107.2	106.6	106.8	106.9
46	Western Michigan	106.8	104.8	108.6	106.7
47	Washington St.	107.6	104.8	107.5	106.7
48	North Carolina St.	106.9	104.7	106.3	106.0
49	San Diego St.	105.8	102.9	108.2	105.7
50	Minnesota	105.1	103.1	104.8	104.3
51	Central Michigan	103.0	105.7	104.2	104.3
52	Northwestern	106.4	101.2	104.8	104.1
53	Texas Tech	105.5	103.3	103.4	104.1
54	Toledo	104.2	102.8	105.2	104.1
55	Missouri	104.1	103.3	103.9	103.8
56	Indiana	101.8	106.3	101.4	103.2
57	Arizona	104.3	102.0	103.1	103.1
58	Cincinnati	101.9	102.5	102.6	102.4
59	Maryland	101.4	105.0	99.2	101.9
60	Memphis	103.7	99.6	102.0	101.8
61	California	105.0	96.6	102.7	101.4
62	Air Force	100.9	101.3	101.4	101.2
63	Wake Forest	101.8	99.5	100.9	100.8
64	Tulsa	99.7	102.0	100.4	100.7
65	Vanderbilt	102.5	98.3	101.0	100.6
66	South Carolina	100.9	99.9	100.4	100.4
67	Boston College	100.5	99.5	100.0	100.0
68	Temple	99.9	99.6	100.3	100.0
69	Western Kentucky	100.8	96.4	102.0	99.7
70	Syracuse	101.4	97.6	99.2	99.4
71	Virginia	100.4	97.4	99.7	99.2
72	Duke	99.0	99.8	97.3	98.7
73	Navy	98.8	98.7	98.3	98.6
74	Appalachian St.	97.7	96.4	99.8	98.0
75	Army	93.8	102.0	97.1	97.6
76	Connecticut	97.5	95.3	97.7	96.9
77	Rutgers	98.0	95.5	96.4	96.7
78	Purdue	97.6	95.2	96.6	96.5
79	Illinois	97.6	94.3	96.6	96.2
80	East Carolina	95.1	97.2	95.5	95.9
81	Oregon St.	98.4	93.6	95.8	95.9
82	Kentucky	94.9	97.5	93.6	95.3
83	Ohio	91.5	100.1	92.5	94.7
84	Utah St.	93.9	96.7	93.5	94.7
85	Middle Tennessee	94.0	95.3	94.5	94.6
86	Iowa St.	95.0	94.7	93.8	94.5
87	Northern Illinois	93.7	94.9	94.4	94.3
88	Southern Mississippi	93.8	93.7	94.8	94.1
89	New Mexico	92.2	95.2	93.0	93.5
90	Nevada	91.6	95.1	92.8	93.2
91	SMU	92.6	91.8	91.9	92.1
92	Georgia Southern	91.3	91.3	93.6	92.1
93	UNLV	89.8	94.2	89.9	91.3
94	Troy	88.6	93.6	90.5	90.9
95	Louisiana Tech	89.8	92.0	90.9	90.9
96	Marshall	88.7	93.1	90.5	90.8
97	Arkansas St.	88.7	90.7	90.2	89.9
98	San Jose St.	89.8	89.8	90.0	89.9
99	Akron	86.7	93.1	88.1	89.3
100	Bowling Green	89.7	88.5	89.1	89.1
101	Central Florida	88.2	90.6	88.2	89.0
102	Colorado St.	86.0	88.7	86.5	87.1
103	Ball St.	85.9	87.9	86.8	86.9
104	Kansas	85.0	92.5	82.3	86.6
105	Tulane	85.5	88.6	85.7	86.6
106	Old Dominion	85.4	88.3	85.7	86.5
107	Kent St.	84.1	85.8	84.3	84.8
108	Rice	81.8	89.6	81.8	84.4
109	Miami (O)	83.6	84.4	84.7	84.2
110	Wyoming	83.9	83.6	84.1	83.9
111	Georgia St.	81.5	86.6	83.2	83.8
112	Florida Atlantic	81.7	85.1	83.3	83.4
113	UTSA	79.6	87.5	82.1	83.1
114	South Alabama	80.0	87.6	81.4	83.0
115	Florida International	80.2	87.1	80.9	82.7
116	Massachusetts	79.5	87.5	81.0	82.7
117	Eastern Michigan	79.9	85.1	80.8	81.9
118	Fresno St.	80.5	84.6	80.1	81.7
119	Buffalo	77.8	86.6	79.0	81.2
120	UL-Lafayette	75.8	84.4	77.7	79.3
121	Idaho	76.0	81.8	77.3	78.4
122	New Mexico St.	75.4	78.0	76.2	76.5
123	Hawaii	77.1	75.8	76.2	76.4
124	North Texas	74.6	77.0	74.6	75.4
125	UTEP	72.3	76.7	73.8	74.3
126	Charlotte	70.5	77.7	71.6	73.3
127	Texas St.	71.6	72.7	72.8	72.4
128	UL-Monroe	70.1	75.2	70.7	72.0

 

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

 

PiRate Ratings By Conference

American Athletic Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
South Florida	111.6	109.0	112.8	111.1
Cincinnati	101.9	102.5	102.6	102.4
Temple	99.9	99.6	100.3	100.0
Connecticut	97.5	95.3	97.7	96.9
East Carolina	95.1	97.2	95.5	95.9
Central Florida	88.2	90.6	88.2	89.0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Houston	115.5	113.6	117.7	115.6
Memphis	103.7	99.6	102.0	101.8
Tulsa	99.7	102.0	100.4	100.7
Navy	98.8	98.7	98.3	98.6
SMU	92.6	91.8	91.9	92.1
Tulane	85.5	88.6	85.7	86.6
AAC Averages	99.2	99.1	99.4	99.2
Atlantic Coast Conference
Atlantic Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Louisville	127.9	121.7	128.1	125.9
Clemson	122.2	113.9	120.7	118.9
Florida St.	117.9	110.6	116.8	115.1
North Carolina St.	106.9	104.7	106.3	106.0
Wake Forest	101.8	99.5	100.9	100.8
Boston College	100.5	99.5	100.0	100.0
Syracuse	101.4	97.6	99.2	99.4
Coastal Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Miami	120.1	112.8	120.0	117.6
North Carolina	117.2	110.5	116.9	114.9
Virginia Tech	114.5	114.1	114.8	114.5
Pittsburgh	115.9	111.4	115.0	114.1
Georgia Tech	111.0	107.2	110.4	109.5
Virginia	100.4	97.4	99.7	99.2
Duke	99.0	99.8	97.3	98.7
ACC Averages	111.2	107.2	110.4	109.6
Big 12 Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Oklahoma	120.0	117.3	119.9	119.1
Oklahoma St.	115.3	116.3	115.1	115.6
Texas	112.1	113.6	111.2	112.3
TCU	111.9	113.5	111.5	112.3
Baylor	110.4	110.5	111.5	110.8
Kansas St.	107.2	110.2	107.1	108.2
West Virginia	107.2	106.6	106.8	106.9
Texas Tech	105.5	103.3	103.4	104.1
Iowa St.	95.0	94.7	93.8	94.5
Kansas	85.0	92.5	82.3	86.6
Big 12 Averages	107.0	107.9	106.3	107.0
Big Ten Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Ohio St.	122.9	122.2	124.4	123.2
Michigan	121.9	119.8	122.5	121.4
Michigan St.	113.5	112.5	111.7	112.6
Penn St.	107.2	109.0	105.9	107.4
Indiana	101.8	106.3	101.4	103.2
Maryland	101.4	105.0	99.2	101.9
Rutgers	98.0	95.5	96.4	96.7
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Iowa	115.1	112.0	114.8	114.0
Nebraska	111.8	108.4	111.9	110.7
Wisconsin	111.1	109.0	111.7	110.6
Minnesota	105.1	103.1	104.8	104.3
Northwestern	106.4	101.2	104.8	104.1
Purdue	97.6	95.2	96.6	96.5
Illinois	97.6	94.3	96.6	96.2
Big Ten Averages	108.0	106.7	107.3	107.3
Conference USA
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Western Kentucky	100.8	96.4	102.0	99.7
Middle Tennessee	94.0	95.3	94.5	94.6
Marshall	88.7	93.1	90.5	90.8
Old Dominion	85.4	88.3	85.7	86.5
Florida Atlantic	81.7	85.1	83.3	83.4
Florida International	80.2	87.1	80.9	82.7
Charlotte	70.5	77.7	71.6	73.3
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Southern Mississippi	93.8	93.7	94.8	94.1
Louisiana Tech	89.8	92.0	90.9	90.9
Rice	81.8	89.6	81.8	84.4
UTSA	79.6	87.5	82.1	83.1
North Texas	74.6	77.0	74.6	75.4
UTEP	72.3	76.7	73.8	74.3
CUSA Averages	84.1	87.7	85.1	85.6
FBS Independents
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Notre Dame	114.9	111.2	113.6	113.2
BYU	110.3	103.6	109.7	107.9
Army	93.8	102.0	97.1	97.6
Massachusetts	79.5	87.5	81.0	82.7
Independents Averages	99.6	101.1	100.4	100.4
Mid-American Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Ohio	91.5	100.1	92.5	94.7
Akron	86.7	93.1	88.1	89.3
Bowling Green	89.7	88.5	89.1	89.1
Kent St.	84.1	85.8	84.3	84.8
Miami (O)	83.6	84.4	84.7	84.2
Buffalo	77.8	86.6	79.0	81.2
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Western Michigan	106.8	104.8	108.6	106.7
Central Michigan	103.0	105.7	104.2	104.3
Toledo	104.2	102.8	105.2	104.1
Northern Illinois	93.7	94.9	94.4	94.3
Ball St.	85.9	87.9	86.8	86.9
Eastern Michigan	79.9	85.1	80.8	81.9
MAC Averages	90.6	93.3	91.5	91.8
Mountain West Conference
Mountain Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Boise St.	108.0	109.4	110.3	109.2
Air Force	100.9	101.3	101.4	101.2
Utah St.	93.9	96.7	93.5	94.7
New Mexico	92.2	95.2	93.0	93.5
Colorado St.	86.0	88.7	86.5	87.1
Wyoming	83.9	83.6	84.1	83.9
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
San Diego St.	105.8	102.9	108.2	105.7
Nevada	91.6	95.1	92.8	93.2
UNLV	89.8	94.2	89.9	91.3
San Jose St.	89.8	89.8	90.0	89.9
Fresno St.	80.5	84.6	80.1	81.7
Hawaii	77.1	75.8	76.2	76.4
MWC Averages	91.6	93.2	92.2	92.3
Pac-12 Conference
North Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Stanford	121.4	114.2	120.3	118.6
Washington	121.0	113.2	121.1	118.4
Oregon	112.3	111.0	111.5	111.6
Washington St.	107.6	104.8	107.5	106.7
California	105.0	96.6	102.7	101.4
Oregon St.	98.4	93.6	95.8	95.9
South Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
USC	114.3	109.9	111.6	111.9
UCLA	111.4	110.4	111.0	110.9
Colorado	110.1	105.6	110.6	108.8
Utah	110.8	105.1	108.7	108.2
Arizona St.	107.5	108.1	106.3	107.3
Arizona	104.3	102.0	103.1	103.1
Pac-12 Averages	110.3	106.2	109.2	108.6
Southeastern Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Tennessee	121.8	117.1	121.8	120.2
Florida	112.6	116.3	110.8	113.2
Georgia	111.0	111.1	110.9	111.0
Missouri	104.1	103.3	103.9	103.8
Vanderbilt	102.5	98.3	101.0	100.6
South Carolina	100.9	99.9	100.4	100.4
Kentucky	94.9	97.5	93.6	95.3
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Alabama	131.1	123.6	130.9	128.5
LSU	124.0	118.3	123.0	121.8
Texas A&M	114.8	113.8	114.8	114.5
Auburn	113.9	112.4	113.8	113.4
Mississippi St.	114.4	111.7	113.7	113.3
Arkansas	113.7	108.8	111.0	111.2
Ole Miss	113.6	107.1	112.4	111.0
SEC Averages	112.4	110.0	111.6	111.3
Sunbelt Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Appalachian St.	97.7	96.4	99.8	98.0
Georgia Southern	91.3	91.3	93.6	92.1
Troy	88.6	93.6	90.5	90.9
Arkansas St.	88.7	90.7	90.2	89.9
Georgia St.	81.5	86.6	83.2	83.8
South Alabama	80.0	87.6	81.4	83.0
UL-Lafayette	75.8	84.4	77.7	79.3
Idaho	76.0	81.8	77.3	78.4
New Mexico St.	75.4	78.0	76.2	76.5
Texas St.	71.6	72.7	72.8	72.4
UL-Monroe	70.1	75.2	70.7	72.0
Sun Belt Averages	81.5	85.3	83.0	83.3

 

PiRate Ratings By Conference
#	League	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	SEC	112.4	110.0	111.6	111.3
2	ACC	111.2	107.2	110.4	109.6
3	Pac-12	110.3	106.2	109.2	108.6
4	Big Ten	108.0	106.7	107.3	107.3
5	Big 12	107.0	107.9	106.3	107.0
6	Independents	99.6	101.1	100.4	100.4
7	AAC	99.2	99.1	99.4	99.2
8	MWC	91.6	93.2	92.2	92.3
9	MAC	90.6	93.3	91.5	91.8
10	CUSA	84.1	87.7	85.1	85.6
11	Sun Belt	81.5	85.3	83.0	83.3

This Week’s Spreads

Thursday, September 22		PiRate	Mean	Bias
Georgia Tech	Clemson	-8.2	-3.7	-7.3
Friday, September 23		PiRate	Mean	Bias
Eastern Michigan	Wyoming	-1.0	4.5	-0.3
Utah	USC	-0.5	-1.8	0.1
Saturday, September 24		PiRate	Mean	Bias
Akron	Appalachian St.	-8.0	-0.3	-8.7
Buffalo	Army	-14.0	-13.4	-16.1
Cincinnati	Miami (O)	20.8	20.6	20.4
Connecticut	Syracuse	-1.9	-0.3	0.5
Indiana	Wake Forest	3.0	9.8	3.5
Kentucky	South Carolina	-3.0	0.6	-3.8
Michigan	Penn St.	17.7	13.8	19.6
Michigan St.	Wisconsin	5.4	6.5	3.0
North Carolina	Pittsburgh	4.3	2.1	4.9
Purdue	Nevada	9.0	3.1	6.8
South Florida	Florida St.	-3.8	0.9	-1.5
Temple	Charlotte	31.9	24.4	31.2
Tennessee	Florida	12.2	3.8	14.0
Virginia	Central Michigan	0.4	-5.3	-1.5
Virginia Tech	East Carolina	22.4	19.9	22.3
West Virginia (N)	BYU	-0.1	6.0	0.1
Western Michigan	Georgia Southern	18.5	16.5	18.0
Iowa St.	San Jose St.	8.2	7.9	6.8
Old Dominion	UTSA	8.3	3.3	6.1
Rutgers	Iowa	-14.1	-13.5	-15.4
Alabama	Kent St.	50.0	40.8	49.6
Auburn	LSU	-7.1	-2.9	-6.2
Baylor	Oklahoma St.	-1.9	-2.8	-0.6
Minnesota	Colorado St.	22.1	17.4	21.3
Ole Miss	Georgia	5.6	-1.0	4.5
Texas A&M (N)	Arkansas	1.1	5.0	3.8
Tulane	UL-Lafayette	11.7	6.2	10.0
Memphis	Bowling Green	17.0	14.1	15.9
Troy	New Mexico St.	16.2	18.6	17.3
Utah St.	Air Force	-4.0	-1.6	-4.9
Arizona	Washington	-13.7	-8.2	-15.0
Arizona St.	California	5.5	14.5	6.6
Oregon	Colorado	5.2	8.4	3.9
Oregon St.	Boise St.	-6.6	-12.8	-11.5
UCLA	Stanford	-7.0	-0.8	-6.3
Massachusetts	Mississippi St.	-32.4	-21.7	-30.2
Notre Dame	Duke	18.9	14.4	19.3
Western Kentucky	Vanderbilt	1.3	1.1	4.0
Fresno St.	Tulsa	-16.2	-14.4	-17.3
Florida Atlantic	Ball St.	-1.2	0.2	-0.5
Rice	North Texas	9.7	15.1	9.7
Texas St.	Houston	-41.9	-38.9	-42.9
Florida Int’l.	Central Florida	-6.0	-1.5	-5.3
Middle Tennessee	Louisiana Tech	6.7	5.8	6.1
Northwestern	Nebraska	-2.4	-4.2	-4.1
Marshall	Louisville	-36.4	-26.1	-35.1
SMU	TCU	-17.3	-19.7	-17.6
UTEP	Southern Miss.	-18.5	-14.0	-18.0
UNLV	Idaho	16.8	15.4	15.6

FBS vs. FCS	Week 4
Home	Visitor	PiRate
Boston College	Wagner	36
Ohio	Gardner-Webb	30
Missouri	Delaware St.	45
South Alabama	Nicholls St.	19
Arkansas St.	Central Arkansas	21
Northern Illinois	Western Illinois	13
Kansas St.	Missouri St.	42

 

 

 

College Football Ratings & Spreads For September 15-17, 2016

The Best Schedule in a September Saturday in Years

This will be a week for college football fanatics to arrange their schedules to be glued to your viewing devices.  Forget mowing that lawn; the groceries can be shopped for Friday after work.  Tell your spouses that their honey-do list for this Saturday must be postponed, and let them know that the buckaroos at the PiRate Ratings have ordered you to do research this week.

This week’s schedule of games might even be better on the whole than rivalry weeks at the end of the season.  Let’s look at some of the great offerings, and by great, we don’t necessarily mean top 10 teams facing off against each other.  There are even great games among the bottom 30 teams.

Actually, the festivities commence Thursday night, when Houston visits Cincinnati.  This is somewhat of a trap game for the Cougars.  It is their first road game, and it comes against a solid but not spectacular conference foe.  Cincinnati began the season with a lackluster victory over a cream puff, and then won at Purdue last week.  The Bearcats are just talented enough to play their best game of the season and upset Houston.  It should be a great game with a good deal of scoring.

 

On Friday night, in what looks like a possible blowout, Rice hosts Baylor.  At one time, when both teams were Southwest Conference members, this was a huge rivalry game, not unlike Texas and Arkansas.  Baylor has won the last seven times these teams have faced off, with the last Owl win coming in the old SWC days in 1992.  Baylor put up 70 points on Rice last year in Waco, and even thought the Bears are several touchdowns stronger, this game might be interesting for awhile.

 

Now to Saturday, when the fun continues in bunches.

12 Noon Eastern Time

ABC: Florida State at Louisville

Don’t be surprised if the home team Cardinals pull the upset here.  Coach Bobby Petrino has built an offense at UL that could end the season averaging north of 50 points per game.  The defense is not Top 5 tough like other teams, but we are not sure that Florida State’s defense is ready to win it a championship either.  In a shootout, the better gunman usually wins, and Louisville has the better sharpshooter.  This one could be a 45-41 affair, and it is a 50-50 game in our opinion.  The PiRate Ratings are 100% in agreement with the winner.  See below.

Big Ten Network: Temple at Penn State

Coach James Franklin has felt that seat start to warm up in not so Happy Valley.  Losing to rival Pitt is not great, but losing for a second season to Temple could add some gas to that flame under the seat.  Temple imploded against Army, and then the Owls could not stop the option.  They righted the ship last week, and Penn State better play mistake-free ball and not give TU any gift points.

12:30 PM

ACC Network: Vanderbilt at Georgia Tech

Why is this game so important?  Both teams need this game to stay in the bowl chase this early in the season.  Georgia Tech pulled out a last-second win against Boston College in Dublin, Ireland, in week one.  The Yellow Jackets looked much better this past weekend, but they only played FCS Mercer.  This week, they face a coach that earned his job by stopping the read option, and Coach Derek Mason of Vanderbilt probably knows how to stop the spread option like his Stanford defenses did against Marcus Mariota’s Oregon offense.

The problem is that Vanderbilt’s offense is as weak as Boston College’s offense, and the Commodores may have trouble reaching 14 points in this game.  A 17-14 game would not be a shocker, although we believe that both teams will improve on the attack side after two so-so performances.  We believe the game could be won by less than a touchdown, with Tech having a 60% chance and Vanderbilt a 40% chance of winning.

3:30 PM

Big  Ten Network: Colorado at Michigan

Could it be that Coach Mike MacIntyre has turned the Buffalo program around?  After blowing out rival Colorado State at Invesco Field in week one, CU toyed with Idaho State in week two.  Sure, these are not quality opponents, but in recent years, CU might have gone 1-1 against these teams.

Playing at the Big House against a tough group of Wolverines is probably too much for the Buffs to take on, but it could be a very interesting game if CU does not turn the ball over.

 

WatchESPN App: South Florida at Syracuse

This will be an interesting contest with a team in Syracuse that might throw 50-60 passes and run off 100 scrimmage plays in a game before the season ends, and a South Florida team that plays the Stanford-Michigan smashmouth offense.  USF might be the one team that can derail Houston if the two meet in the AAC Championship Game, and the Bulls just might be a dark horse contender for the New Year’s 6 Bowl.  However, Coach Dino Babers has the ‘Cuse playing well above their level of 2015, and The Orangemen could just as easily end USF’s hopes for playing on January 2.

 

ABC: Oregon at Nebraska

Call this game a playoff eliminator.  The loser can win out and still miss the playoffs, while the winner stays alive with the hope that a 13-0 season will get them to Atlanta or Glendale, AZ.  Coach Mike Riley certainly knows Oregon well, having coached at Oregon State so long, but then Mark Helfrich knows a lot about what Riley’s teams do.  So, it should come down to which team executes its game plan better.  The Huskers can be an extra touchdown better in Lincoln than on a neutral field, and Oregon has not been a giant killer on the road in recent years.

 

CBS Sports Network: San Diego State at Northern Illinois

Northern Illinois is off to its worst start in years at 0-2, while SDSU is 2-0.  Why would we call this a game worth watching?  First, NIU’s first two games were road games, and the Huskies have a 31-2 home record in the last six years.  They won’t bend or break at Huskie Stadium.

Rocky Long may have the best team he’s ever coached in his career this season.  San Diego State has a decent chance of running the table in the regular season for the first time since 1969, when Dennis Shaw ran the Air Coryell offense to perfection.  The Aztecs have a couple of roadblock road games with trips to Dekalb this week and then to South Alabama in two weeks.  If they can get through these games unscathed, then you can add another prime contender with Houston, South Florida, Boise State, and maybe another MAC team for the NY6 Bowl bid.

 

CBS: Alabama at Ole Miss

Ole Miss is the one team that doesn’t back down to the Crimson Tide.  The Rebels have beaten ‘Bama in back-to-back years.  When has a team beaten Alabama three years in a row, when the Tide was not going through a rough patch where they did not stay in the Top 10?  It’s never been done when Alabama finished in the Top 10 all three seasons.  The closest was the 1967-68-69 seasons when Tennessee beat the Tide, but in 1969, Alabama had declined and would finish 6-5.

Ole Miss blew an excellent opportunity to make this a game between two Top 10 teams, when turnovers cost them a big lead against Florida State.  We believe the Rebels can play a mistake-free game this week and still lose by up to three touchdowns.  If a rebuilding reloading Tide team can go into Oxford and win big, we could be looking at another dynasty in Tuscaloosa like the Crimson fans saw in the early 1960’s and most of the 1970’s.

7:00 PM

ESPN: Texas A&M at Auburn

This one can be called the hot seat avoidance game.  The losing coach is going to begin to be in a bit of trouble.  How do we rate Auburn’s close loss to Clemson at Jordan-Hare Stadium, after Troy went to CU and lost by the same amount of points?  Auburn handled Arkansas State with ease, but ASU lost at home to Toledo in week one.  This becomes a put up or shut up game for War Eagle Nation.

Texas A&M has a quality win over UCLA, plus a no extra knowledge learned win over a very weak Prairie View team.  This is the Aggies’ first road game, and it comes in a tough place to win, but they won by a field goal the last time they came here.  We expect a hard-fought, close game.

 

ESPN2: Mississippi State at LSU

The loser will be 0-1 in the SEC and 1-2 overall, and they can look forward to hoping for an Outback Bowl bid at the max.  If the winner has maroon jerseys, then there will be less smiles in the LSU coaching office come Sunday Morning.  Les Miles is on the hottest of hot seats at the present time, and a home loss to a team that lost to South Alabama might be enough to make his dismissal inevitable.

Then, there is the health of star back Leonard Fournette, who missed the Jacksonville State game Saturday night.  Fournette is expected back in practice tomorrow, but he still suffers from the effects of the ankle injury.  And, there is the little matter of who will start at quarterback for the Tigers.  Former Purdue starter Danny Etling started 6 of 8 for 100 yards after replacing ineffective Brandon Harris in the second quarter.  However, he was 0 of 6 in the second half.

 

ESPN3: Navy at Tulane

How in the world could we select this game as one that could be a must watch affair?  Okay, first we did say this was a week for football fanatics, so give us a tad bit of slack here.  This actually should be a very interesting and fun game to watch, so consider giving it a few minutes time early in the evening.

Tulane’s first-year coach Willie Fritz came from Georgia Southern.  This Green Wave squad was not expected to do much in year one, as Fritz began the process of turning a former Pro-style offense into his unique form of multiple option offense, similar but different from the Navy/Georgia Tech style of spread option or inverted wishbone.  In week one, TU went to Wake Forest and held their own in a defensive struggle.  The Green Wave almost pulled off the upset, and after Wake knocked off Duke last week, this loss in Winston-Salem looks better than it did on opening night.  TU then handled Southern with ease, this time doing it with a breakout true freshman quarterback in Johnathan Brantley, who ran the option like a seasoned veteran.

Besides having two option teams going at each other, this is an American Athletic Conference game and an intra-division one to boot.  It should be a fun retro match that resembles the Oklahoma-Texas games of the early 1970s.

 

7:30 PM

NBC: Michigan State at Notre Dame

Neither team has looked as good as expected to this point, although Michigan State has only played one game, and the Spartans have had an extra week to prepare.  You know the old adage, that a team improves the most between its first and second game, and having two weeks to improve should make Sparty a live road ‘dog.

If you are around 60 years of age or older, you know how great this rivalry has been.  You saw the 1966 game that ended in a 10-10 tie, where both teams finished the season at 9-0-1.  Expect the score to pass 20 total points sometime in the second quarter.

Fox Sports: Ohio State at Oklahoma

Now this is how top teams should schedule!  If there were automatic NCAA Playoff bids to each of the Power 5 Conference Champions with three at-large bids to be awarded, then you would see more games like this instead of Big U vs. Northwest Southeastern Tech.

An Oklahoma loss means the Sooners can only expect a Sugar Bowl bid if they win the Big 12 Conference.  An Ohio State win in Norman could be enough to move the Buckeyes up to Number One in the nation, even if Alabama wins at Ole Miss.  Ohio State has started its first two games slowly, and a repeat at Memorial Stadium could be impossible to rally to victory if they get down by double-digits.

The key in this one is how much Oklahoma’s pass defense has improved since week one.  If J. T. Barrett can exploit the OU secondary for a deep pass for a touchdown, the Buckeyes’ running game might be able to get untracked and put up 250 yards on the Sooners.

We expect a game with more than 70 points scored, and wouldn’t this be an excellent night for a handful of overtimes?

8:00 PM

ABC: USC at Stanford

USC faces two separate extra troubles this week.  First, the home Cardinal had an extra week to prepare after besting a decent Kansas State team in week one.  Second, Stanford knows what Alabama did to the Trojans on a neutral field.  They know that to be given serious credibility, they cannot beat USC by a field goal or touchdown and get it.  They have to win this one by double digits to get any respect.

USC is not chopped liver.  The Trojans have played in the Rose Bowl in a season in which the national champ embarrassed them.  Look back at 1966, when USC lost to Notre Dame 51-0, yet made it to the Rose Bowl.

If truth be told, the Trojans are not 46 points weaker than Alabama.  If they played again, they might only lose by 24-28 points.  Stanford better be on guard, because the Trojans seek the same respect that Stanford believes they must earn.  Expect a good game on the Farm Saturday night.

10:30 PM

ESPN: Texas at California

This one is all about the Longhorns venturing out of the Lone Star State.  Cal is rebuilding and will be lucky to win five games this year, while Texas is trying to return to greatness.  The Longhorns have holes in their defense, and Cal has an offense capable of scoring a lot of points.  The key is how well the Texas offense will fare on foreign soil, even against a very porous defense.  If you wake up Sunday morning and see that Coach Charlie Strong’s team hung half a hundred on the Bears, then UT could easily be 4-0 when the Red River Shootout takes place in Dallas.  A win there, and it would be quite possible to see a path to 12-0 for the ‘Horns.

 

Here are this week’s PiRate Ratings

 

PiRate Ratings
#	Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	Alabama	131.9	124.3	131.9	129.4
2	Tennessee	124.8	120.1	124.8	123.2
3	LSU	124.6	118.7	123.7	122.3
4	Oklahoma	122.7	119.5	122.5	121.6
5	Louisville	123.4	117.2	123.6	121.4
6	Michigan	121.6	119.7	122.2	121.2
7	Ohio St.	120.1	119.9	121.7	120.6
8	Florida St.	122.9	115.6	121.8	120.1
9	Clemson	121.9	113.6	120.4	118.6
10	Washington	121.1	113.3	121.2	118.5
11	Stanford	120.5	113.1	119.4	117.7
12	Oklahoma St.	114.9	116.4	114.7	115.3
13	Auburn	115.7	113.9	115.8	115.1
14	North Carolina	117.1	110.4	116.8	114.8
15	Iowa	115.9	112.8	115.6	114.8
16	Notre Dame	116.4	112.4	115.3	114.7
17	Texas	113.7	116.7	113.7	114.7
18	Miami	117.5	109.5	116.8	114.6
19	Pittsburgh	116.3	111.3	115.4	114.3
20	Houston	113.9	111.8	115.9	113.9
21	Florida	112.9	116.6	111.1	113.5
22	Wisconsin	113.9	111.5	114.7	113.4
23	Mississippi St.	114.1	111.6	113.3	113.0
24	USC	115.2	111.0	112.5	112.9
25	TCU	111.7	113.6	111.5	112.3
26	Oregon	112.8	111.7	111.8	112.1
27	Texas A&M	112.4	111.7	112.2	112.1
28	Georgia	111.3	111.4	111.2	111.3
29	Michigan St.	111.9	111.2	109.9	111.0
30	Virginia Tech	111.0	110.6	111.3	111.0
31	Arkansas	113.1	108.2	110.4	110.6
32	UCLA	110.9	110.5	110.4	110.6
33	Baylor	110.3	110.0	111.4	110.6
34	Ole Miss	113.1	106.7	111.7	110.5
35	Nebraska	111.5	107.9	111.8	110.4
36	South Florida	110.1	107.6	111.5	109.7
37	Arizona St.	109.3	109.6	108.3	109.1
38	Boise St.	107.7	109.1	110.0	108.9
39	Colorado	110.3	105.6	110.8	108.9
40	BYU	110.8	103.5	110.3	108.2
41	Utah	111.0	104.9	108.6	108.2
42	Penn St.	107.6	109.5	106.0	107.7
43	Georgia Tech	108.2	104.5	107.6	106.8
44	West Virginia	107.0	106.4	106.6	106.7
45	North Carolina St.	106.7	104.2	106.0	105.6
46	Washington St.	106.5	103.4	106.3	105.4
47	San Diego St.	105.2	101.9	107.6	104.9
48	Kansas St.	103.9	107.2	103.5	104.9
49	Texas Tech	105.8	103.4	103.6	104.3
50	Western Michigan	104.2	102.4	106.1	104.2
51	Minnesota	104.9	102.9	104.6	104.1
52	Vanderbilt	105.8	101.5	104.3	103.9
53	Northwestern	106.2	100.7	104.6	103.8
54	Boston College	104.3	103.3	103.8	103.8
55	Cincinnati	103.1	103.9	104.0	103.7
56	Central Michigan	102.2	105.0	103.4	103.5
57	Missouri	103.8	103.0	103.6	103.5
58	Arizona	104.6	102.2	103.6	103.5
59	Indiana	101.6	106.1	101.2	103.0
60	Maryland	102.4	106.0	100.2	102.9
61	Toledo	103.0	101.4	103.9	102.8
62	Air Force	100.6	101.0	101.1	100.9
63	Syracuse	102.9	99.0	100.5	100.8
64	Wake Forest	101.7	99.4	100.8	100.7
65	South Carolina	101.1	100.0	100.6	100.6
66	Tulsa	99.5	101.8	100.2	100.5
67	Appalachian St.	99.8	99.2	102.5	100.5
68	Western Kentucky	101.4	96.6	102.8	100.3
69	Memphis	102.3	97.4	100.4	100.1
70	Temple	99.5	99.1	100.2	99.6
71	Virginia	100.7	97.6	100.0	99.4
72	California	103.8	93.9	100.6	99.4
73	Duke	99.2	100.3	97.5	99.0
74	Navy	99.0	98.7	98.5	98.8
75	Illinois	99.8	96.3	98.7	98.3
76	Rutgers	98.2	95.2	96.3	96.6
77	Connecticut	97.2	95.1	97.4	96.6
78	Purdue	97.6	95.2	96.6	96.5
79	Oregon St.	98.3	93.5	95.7	95.8
80	East Carolina	94.9	97.1	95.3	95.8
81	Kentucky	95.4	97.7	93.7	95.6
82	Southern Mississippi	95.2	94.5	96.2	95.3
83	Marshall	93.2	97.6	95.0	95.3
84	Northern Illinois	94.0	95.6	94.7	94.8
85	Georgia Southern	93.8	93.5	96.3	94.6
86	Iowa St.	95.2	94.6	93.8	94.5
87	Utah St.	93.3	96.3	92.6	94.1
88	New Mexico	92.0	95.5	93.1	93.6
89	Middle Tennessee	92.2	94.1	92.5	92.9
90	Army	88.7	96.9	92.0	92.5
91	Nevada	91.1	94.1	92.1	92.5
92	Ohio	89.2	97.8	90.2	92.4
93	SMU	92.5	91.7	91.8	92.0
94	UNLV	90.5	94.8	90.6	92.0
95	Bowling Green	92.0	90.2	91.6	91.3
96	Arkansas St.	89.6	91.4	91.4	90.8
97	Louisiana Tech	89.5	91.9	90.7	90.7
98	San Jose St.	89.6	90.0	90.1	89.9
99	Troy	86.9	92.5	88.8	89.4
100	Kansas	86.4	94.7	83.9	88.4
101	Central Florida	87.2	89.6	87.2	88.0
102	Old Dominion	85.6	88.8	86.0	86.8
103	Colorado St.	85.7	88.4	86.2	86.8
104	Florida Atlantic	85.0	88.1	86.9	86.7
105	Tulane	85.3	88.6	85.5	86.5
106	Ball St.	85.5	87.5	86.4	86.5
107	Akron	83.2	89.6	84.6	85.8
108	Rice	81.9	90.1	81.9	84.6
109	Kent St.	83.9	85.6	84.1	84.6
110	Wyoming	83.7	83.4	83.9	83.7
111	Miami (O)	83.0	84.2	83.9	83.7
112	South Alabama	80.5	87.9	81.9	83.4
113	Florida International	80.6	87.4	81.4	83.1
114	Fresno St.	81.6	85.9	81.3	82.9
115	Massachusetts	79.1	87.2	80.5	82.3
116	Buffalo	78.3	87.6	79.7	81.9
117	UTSA	78.3	86.5	80.6	81.8
118	Georgia St.	78.7	84.1	80.2	81.0
119	Eastern Michigan	78.2	83.4	79.1	80.2
120	Idaho	77.6	83.7	79.0	80.1
121	UL-Lafayette	75.3	84.1	77.2	78.9
122	UTEP	76.3	80.7	77.8	78.3
123	New Mexico St.	74.9	77.8	76.1	76.3
124	Hawaii	76.8	75.6	75.7	76.0
125	North Texas	74.8	77.2	74.8	75.6
126	Charlotte	72.2	79.4	73.3	75.0
127	Texas St.	72.1	73.2	73.3	72.9
128	UL-Monroe	67.6	73.0	68.0	69.5

Ratings By Conference

American Athletic Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
South Florida	110.1	107.6	111.5	109.7
Cincinnati	103.1	103.9	104.0	103.7
Temple	99.5	99.1	100.2	99.6
Connecticut	97.2	95.1	97.4	96.6
East Carolina	94.9	97.1	95.3	95.8
Central Florida	87.2	89.6	87.2	88.0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Houston	113.9	111.8	115.9	113.9
Tulsa	99.5	101.8	100.2	100.5
Memphis	102.3	97.4	100.4	100.1
Navy	99.0	98.7	98.5	98.8
SMU	92.5	91.7	91.8	92.0
Tulane	85.3	88.6	85.5	86.5
AAC Averages	98.7	98.6	99.0	98.8
Atlantic Coast Conference
Atlantic Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Louisville	123.4	117.2	123.6	121.4
Florida St.	122.9	115.6	121.8	120.1
Clemson	121.9	113.6	120.4	118.6
North Carolina St.	106.7	104.2	106.0	105.6
Boston College	104.3	103.3	103.8	103.8
Syracuse	102.9	99.0	100.5	100.8
Wake Forest	101.7	99.4	100.8	100.7
Coastal Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
North Carolina	117.1	110.4	116.8	114.8
Miami	117.5	109.5	116.8	114.6
Pittsburgh	116.3	111.3	115.4	114.3
Virginia Tech	111.0	110.6	111.3	111.0
Georgia Tech	108.2	104.5	107.6	106.8
Virginia	100.7	97.6	100.0	99.4
Duke	99.2	100.3	97.5	99.0
ACC Averages	111.0	106.9	110.2	109.4
Big 12 Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Oklahoma	122.7	119.5	122.5	121.6
Oklahoma St.	114.9	116.4	114.7	115.3
Texas	113.7	116.7	113.7	114.7
TCU	111.7	113.6	111.5	112.3
Baylor	110.3	110.0	111.4	110.6
West Virginia	107.0	106.4	106.6	106.7
Kansas St.	103.9	107.2	103.5	104.9
Texas Tech	105.8	103.4	103.6	104.3
Iowa St.	95.2	94.6	93.8	94.5
Kansas	86.4	94.7	83.9	88.4
Big 12 Averages	107.2	108.3	106.5	107.3
Big Ten Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Michigan	121.6	119.7	122.2	121.2
Ohio St.	120.1	119.9	121.7	120.6
Michigan St.	111.9	111.2	109.9	111.0
Penn St.	107.6	109.5	106.0	107.7
Indiana	101.6	106.1	101.2	103.0
Maryland	102.4	106.0	100.2	102.9
Rutgers	98.2	95.2	96.3	96.6
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Iowa	115.9	112.8	115.6	114.8
Wisconsin	113.9	111.5	114.7	113.4
Nebraska	111.5	107.9	111.8	110.4
Minnesota	104.9	102.9	104.6	104.1
Northwestern	106.2	100.7	104.6	103.8
Illinois	99.8	96.3	98.7	98.3
Purdue	97.6	95.2	96.6	96.5
Big Ten Averages	108.1	106.8	107.4	107.4
Conference USA
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Western Kentucky	101.4	96.6	102.8	100.3
Marshall	93.2	97.6	95.0	95.3
Middle Tennessee	92.2	94.1	92.5	92.9
Old Dominion	85.6	88.8	86.0	86.8
Florida Atlantic	85.0	88.1	86.9	86.7
Florida International	80.6	87.4	81.4	83.1
Charlotte	72.2	79.4	73.3	75.0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Southern Mississippi	95.2	94.5	96.2	95.3
Louisiana Tech	89.5	91.9	90.7	90.7
Rice	81.9	90.1	81.9	84.6
UTSA	78.3	86.5	80.6	81.8
UTEP	76.3	80.7	77.8	78.3
North Texas	74.8	77.2	74.8	75.6
CUSA Averages	85.1	88.7	86.2	86.7
FBS Independents
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Notre Dame	116.4	112.4	115.3	114.7
BYU	110.8	103.5	110.3	108.2
Army	88.7	96.9	92.0	92.5
Massachusetts	79.1	87.2	80.5	82.3
Independents Averages	98.8	100.0	99.5	99.4
Mid-American Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Ohio	89.2	97.8	90.2	92.4
Bowling Green	92.0	90.2	91.6	91.3
Akron	83.2	89.6	84.6	85.8
Kent St.	83.9	85.6	84.1	84.6
Miami (O)	83.0	84.2	83.9	83.7
Buffalo	78.3	87.6	79.7	81.9
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Western Michigan	104.2	102.4	106.1	104.2
Central Michigan	102.2	105.0	103.4	103.5
Toledo	103.0	101.4	103.9	102.8
Northern Illinois	94.0	95.6	94.7	94.8
Ball St.	85.5	87.5	86.4	86.5
Eastern Michigan	78.2	83.4	79.1	80.2
MAC Averages	89.7	92.5	90.6	91.0
Mountain West Conference
Mountain Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Boise St.	107.7	109.1	110.0	108.9
Air Force	100.6	101.0	101.1	100.9
Utah St.	93.3	96.3	92.6	94.1
New Mexico	92.0	95.5	93.1	93.6
Colorado St.	85.7	88.4	86.2	86.8
Wyoming	83.7	83.4	83.9	83.7
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
San Diego St.	105.2	101.9	107.6	104.9
Nevada	91.1	94.1	92.1	92.5
UNLV	90.5	94.8	90.6	92.0
San Jose St.	89.6	90.0	90.1	89.9
Fresno St.	81.6	85.9	81.3	82.9
Hawaii	76.8	75.6	75.7	76.0
MWC Averages	91.5	93.0	92.0	92.2
Pac-12 Conference
North Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Washington	121.1	113.3	121.2	118.5
Stanford	120.5	113.1	119.4	117.7
Oregon	112.8	111.7	111.8	112.1
Washington St.	106.5	103.4	106.3	105.4
California	103.8	93.9	100.6	99.4
Oregon St.	98.3	93.5	95.7	95.8
South Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
USC	115.2	111.0	112.5	112.9
UCLA	110.9	110.5	110.4	110.6
Arizona St.	109.3	109.6	108.3	109.1
Colorado	110.3	105.6	110.8	108.9
Utah	111.0	104.9	108.6	108.2
Arizona	104.6	102.2	103.6	103.5
Pac-12 Averages	110.4	106.1	109.1	108.5
Southeastern Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Tennessee	124.8	120.1	124.8	123.2
Florida	112.9	116.6	111.1	113.5
Georgia	111.3	111.4	111.2	111.3
Vanderbilt	105.8	101.5	104.3	103.9
Missouri	103.8	103.0	103.6	103.5
South Carolina	101.1	100.0	100.6	100.6
Kentucky	95.4	97.7	93.7	95.6
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Alabama	131.9	124.3	131.9	129.4
LSU	124.6	118.7	123.7	122.3
Auburn	115.7	113.9	115.8	115.1
Mississippi St.	114.1	111.6	113.3	113.0
Texas A&M	112.4	111.7	112.2	112.1
Arkansas	113.1	108.2	110.4	110.6
Ole Miss	113.1	106.7	111.7	110.5
SEC Averages	112.9	110.4	112.0	111.8
Sunbelt Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Appalachian St.	99.8	99.2	102.5	100.5
Georgia Southern	93.8	93.5	96.3	94.6
Arkansas St.	89.6	91.4	91.4	90.8
Troy	86.9	92.5	88.8	89.4
South Alabama	80.5	87.9	81.9	83.4
Georgia St.	78.7	84.1	80.2	81.0
Idaho	77.6	83.7	79.0	80.1
UL-Lafayette	75.3	84.1	77.2	78.9
New Mexico St.	74.9	77.8	76.1	76.3
Texas St.	72.1	73.2	73.3	72.9
UL-Monroe	67.6	73.0	68.0	69.5
Sun Belt Averages	81.5	85.5	83.2	83.4

 

 

PiRate Ratings By Conference
#	League	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	SEC	112.9	110.4	112.0	111.8
2	ACC	111.0	106.9	110.2	109.4
3	Pac-12	110.4	106.1	109.1	108.5
4	Big Ten	108.1	106.8	107.4	107.4
5	Big 12	107.2	108.3	106.5	107.3
6	Independents	98.8	100.0	99.5	99.4
7	AAC	98.7	98.6	99.0	98.8
8	MWC	91.5	93.0	92.0	92.2
9	MAC	89.7	92.5	90.6	91.0
10	CUSA	85.1	88.7	86.2	86.7
11	Sun Belt	81.5	85.5	83.2	83.4

 

 

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

 

This Week’s Spreads

Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
Thursday, September 15
Cincinnati	Houston	-7.8	-4.9	-8.9
Friday, September 16
Rice	Baylor	-26.4	-17.9	-27.5
Utah St.	Arkansas St.	7.2	8.4	4.7
UTSA	Arizona St.	-28.5	-20.6	-25.2
Saturday, September 17
Appalachian St.	Miami (Fla.)	-14.7	-7.3	-11.3
Louisville	Florida St.	3.5	4.6	4.8
Penn St.	Temple	10.1	12.4	7.8
Rutgers	New Mexico	9.2	2.7	5.2
Tennessee	Ohio	38.6	25.3	37.6
Memphis	Kansas	18.9	5.7	19.5
TCU	Iowa St.	19.5	22.0	20.7
Wisconsin	Georgia St.	38.2	30.4	37.5
Bowling Green	Middle Tennessee	2.3	-1.4	1.6
Marshall	Akron	13.0	11.0	13.4
Georgia Tech	Vanderbilt	5.4	6.0	6.3
Connecticut	Virginia	-0.5	0.5	0.4
Washington St.	Idaho	31.4	22.2	29.8
Kansas St.	Florida Atlantic	21.9	22.1	19.6
Central Michigan	UNLV	14.7	13.2	15.8
Toledo	Fresno St.	24.4	18.5	25.6
Massachusetts	Florida Int’l.	1.0	2.3	1.6
Miami (O)	Western Kentucky	-16.4	-10.4	-16.9
Michigan	Colorado	14.3	17.1	14.4
Syracuse	South Florida	-4.2	-5.6	-8.0
Virginia Tech	Boston College	9.7	10.3	10.5
Nebraska	Oregon	1.7	-0.8	3.0
Northern Illinois	San Diego St.	-8.2	-3.0	-9.9
Oklahoma St.	Pittsburgh	1.6	8.1	2.3
Ole Miss	Alabama	-15.8	-14.6	-17.2
Kentucky	New Mexico St.	23.5	22.9	20.6
South Carolina	East Carolina	8.7	5.4	7.8
Illinois	Western Michigan	-1.4	-3.1	-4.4
Charlotte	Eastern Michigan	-4.0	-2.0	-3.8
North Carolina St.	Old Dominion	23.6	17.9	22.5
Georgia Southern	UL-Monroe	28.7	23.0	30.8
Auburn	Texas A&M	6.3	5.2	6.6
LSU	Mississippi St.	13.5	10.1	13.4
Southern Miss.	Troy	10.8	4.5	9.9
Texas Tech	Louisiana Tech	19.3	14.5	15.9
UTEP	Army	-9.4	-13.2	-11.2
Central Florida	Maryland	-12.2	-13.4	-10.0
Tulane	Navy	-11.2	-7.6	-10.5
UL-Lafayette	South Alabama	-3.2	-1.8	-2.7
Florida	North Texas	41.1	42.4	39.3
Notre Dame	Michigan St.	7.5	4.2	8.4
Arkansas	Texas St.	44.0	38.0	40.1
Missouri	Georgia	-4.5	-5.4	-4.6
Oklahoma	Ohio St.	5.6	2.6	3.8
Northwestern	Duke	9.5	2.9	9.6
Stanford	USC	8.3	5.1	9.9
Nevada	Buffalo	16.3	10.0	15.9
BYU	UCLA	2.9	-4.0	2.9
California	Texas	-6.9	-19.8	-10.1
San Jose St.	Utah	-18.9	-12.4	-16.0
Arizona	Hawaii	31.3	30.1	31.4

 

FBS versus FCS Teams–PiRate Estimated Spread

FBS vs. FCS	Week 3
Home	Visitor	PiRate
Clemson	South Carolina St.	47
Iowa	North Dakota St.	19
Tulsa	N. C. A&T	25
Ball St.	Eastern Kentucky	15
Kent St.	Monmouth	11
North Carolina	James Madison	26
Colorado St.	Northern Colorado	21
Wyoming	UC-Davis	11
Oregon St.	Idaho St.	25
Wake Forest	Delaware	23
SMU	Liberty	11
Washington	Portland St.	42

 

 

 

 

 

College Football Ratings & Spreads For September 9-10, 2016

What an incredible opening week to the college football season!  When was the last time seven SEC schools were 0-1?  It would take a lot of research, but we’re guessing if it happened, it happened back when Sewanee was a member of the league in the 1930’s.

 

How do you imagine Les Miles has slept since Saturday night?  He is going to need a lot of ice to keep cool in that boiling hot seat in Baton Rouge.  What about Mark Stoops, Gus Malzahn, and Derek Mason?  At least Malzahn lost at home by less than a touchdown to the defending national runner-up, but the questionable decisions in the final minutes left many War Eagle fans perplexed.

 

It wasn’t a great week for the Pac-12 Conference either.  USC and UCLA used to play doubleheaders early in the season at the L.A. Coliseum.  Often, it was actually a Friday night, Saturday night deal.  These days, that no longer happens, and this year, both teams ventured to the Lone Star State and left with 0-1 records.  Arizona lost to BYU.  Oregon State lost at Minnesota, and then Washington State lost to Eastern Washington.

 

The Big Ten had a decent first week.  Ohio State and Michigan began the year like the good ole days when the two teams might both still be unbeaten by the time they faced off in late November.  Michigan State, Penn State, and Minnesota won but didn’t look great doing so.  Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Iowa, and Nebraska looked great doing so.  Purdue’s win over an FCS school looked neutral, while Northwestern and Rutgers lost.  And, then there was Wisconsin.  They Lambeau leapt over LSU, making for Coach Miles’ recent insomnia.

 

The ACC picked up two wins over the SEC in three attempts, and the Big 12 picked up a couple of big wins, led by Texas edging Notre Dame.

 

The big winner of the day was the AAC, where Houston immediately jumped to the top of the Group of Five and even placed themselves into contention for a playoff spot if the Cougars can run the table impressively.  However, they will have to get past a couple of tough conference opponents.

 

Out West, San Diego State and Boise State believe they have what it takes to run the table and challenge Houston for that one guaranteed New Year’s 6 Bowl.

 

Week two does not offer as much as week one of the college season, and there isn’t a Thursday night game, as the NFL gets center stage.  Next week, we actually believe the college schedule has more to offer than week one.  For now, the big game this week is the one taking place at Bristol Motor Speedway just south of Bristol, Tennessee.  The Tennessee Volunteers and Virginia Tech Hokies have not played in decades, even though the two semi-powers are within an easy drive of each other.  They hope to place 150,000 fans in the speedway for the ball game.  It will be the ABC Primetime Game at 8 PM Eastern Time.

 

Usually, after the first week, some new readers to this site will see our ratings and think we are nuts that a team that lost in week one might still be rated higher than the team that beat them.  There are two basic types of ratings’ metrics.  The Predictive Ratings try to predict the outcome of the next game, so what the team has done to this point of the season is not as important as how they might do in the future.

 

You will see that LSU did not fall below Wisconsin in our Predictive Ratings.  Think of it this way.  If the 1927 New York Yankees dropped their season opener to the Boston Red Sox, would that make the Red Sox a better team?  The Yankees would eventually finish 59 games ahead of Boston that year, and no, they did not actually begin the season by losing to Boston.  They defeated the Philadelphia Athletics, the team that would finish number two in the American League.

 

Retrodictive Ratings are more like what you are probably accustomed to seeing.  They rank teams based on what they have done so far and cannot be used to predict the outcome of future games.  If Team A beat Teams B & C, and Team B beat Team C, then they should be ranked A, B, C in that order.  It isn’t that easy because with 128 FBS teams, there are dozens of exceptions where Team A might beat Team B and lose to Team C, while Team B beats Team C.  It gets a little easier as the season continues, because eventually, there will be teams that have done better than other teams in a more organized manner.

 

Okay, if you are still awake, here are our Predictive Ratings this week.

PiRate Ratings
#	Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	Alabama	132.2	124.4	132.2	129.6
2	Clemson	126.4	117.1	125.2	122.9
3	LSU	124.8	118.9	123.9	122.5
4	Tennessee	124.0	119.1	123.8	122.3
5	Oklahoma	122.4	119.2	122.2	121.3
6	Michigan	121.5	119.3	122.1	121.0
7	Florida St.	122.7	115.4	121.6	119.9
8	Oklahoma St.	118.5	119.8	118.5	118.9
9	Louisville	119.9	114.0	119.8	117.9
10	Stanford	120.5	113.1	119.4	117.7
11	Washington	120.5	111.7	120.4	117.5
12	Ohio St.	117.1	117.1	118.3	117.5
13	Texas	114.2	116.9	114.2	115.1
14	Miami	117.9	109.3	117.2	114.8
15	Pittsburgh	116.8	111.4	116.1	114.8
16	Notre Dame	116.4	112.1	115.0	114.5
17	Georgia	114.3	114.4	114.2	114.3
18	Auburn	114.9	113.1	114.4	114.1
19	Houston	113.6	111.5	115.6	113.6
20	North Carolina	115.8	109.0	115.2	113.3
21	Mississippi St.	114.4	111.7	113.5	113.2
22	TCU	112.1	114.4	112.0	112.8
23	Oregon	112.3	111.3	111.2	111.6
24	Texas A&M	111.9	111.2	111.7	111.6
25	Iowa	112.8	109.7	112.2	111.6
26	USC	114.0	108.9	110.8	111.2
27	Ole Miss	113.8	107.4	112.4	111.2
28	Virginia Tech	111.0	110.8	111.5	111.1
29	Wisconsin	112.2	108.4	112.7	111.1
30	Michigan St.	111.9	111.2	109.9	111.0
31	UCLA	111.1	110.4	110.6	110.7
32	Florida	110.0	114.0	107.6	110.5
33	Baylor	109.4	109.7	110.6	109.9
34	Nebraska	111.1	107.3	111.3	109.9
35	Arkansas	112.4	107.1	109.6	109.7
36	Arizona St.	108.7	109.2	107.7	108.6
37	Utah	111.1	105.0	108.6	108.2
38	Colorado	109.6	104.9	110.1	108.2
39	BYU	110.7	103.4	110.3	108.1
40	South Florida	108.5	105.9	109.7	108.0
41	Penn St.	107.4	109.7	105.6	107.6
42	Boise St.	105.7	108.7	108.1	107.5
43	Washington St.	108.8	104.1	108.5	107.2
44	North Carolina St.	108.3	105.0	107.9	107.1
45	West Virginia	107.2	106.6	106.8	106.9
46	Georgia Tech	108.3	104.6	107.7	106.9
47	Arizona	107.1	104.7	106.1	106.0
48	Northwestern	108.2	102.7	106.6	105.8
49	San Diego St.	105.1	102.4	108.4	105.3
50	Kansas St.	103.9	107.2	103.5	104.9
51	Texas Tech	106.4	103.8	104.2	104.8
52	Boston College	104.9	103.2	104.6	104.2
53	Minnesota	104.6	102.6	104.3	103.8
54	Western Michigan	103.7	101.9	105.6	103.7
55	Indiana	102.1	106.7	102.0	103.6
56	Tulsa	102.3	104.4	103.4	103.4
57	Syracuse	105.2	101.0	103.1	103.1
58	Vanderbilt	105.1	100.1	102.8	102.7
59	Toledo	102.7	101.1	103.6	102.5
60	Cincinnati	101.3	102.5	102.3	102.1
61	Missouri	102.4	101.3	101.7	101.8
62	Maryland	100.9	104.2	98.1	101.1
63	Central Michigan	99.1	102.1	100.1	100.4
64	South Carolina	100.8	99.9	100.4	100.4
65	Duke	100.4	101.7	99.0	100.4
66	Western Kentucky	101.1	96.5	102.5	100.0
67	Appalachian St.	99.2	98.4	101.7	99.8
68	Memphis	102.0	97.1	100.1	99.8
69	Illinois	101.1	97.7	100.3	99.7
70	Virginia	100.9	97.7	100.3	99.6
71	Air Force	99.3	99.6	99.5	99.5
72	Temple	99.2	98.8	99.9	99.3
73	California	103.9	93.4	99.8	99.0
74	Navy	99.2	99.0	98.6	99.0
75	Wake Forest	100.0	97.5	98.8	98.8
76	Kentucky	98.3	100.3	97.2	98.6
77	Purdue	99.4	96.6	98.3	98.1
78	Iowa St.	98.3	97.7	97.2	97.7
79	Northern Illinois	95.9	97.6	96.8	96.8
80	New Mexico	95.0	98.3	96.3	96.6
81	Connecticut	97.0	94.8	97.3	96.4
82	Rutgers	97.9	94.9	96.0	96.3
83	Utah St.	94.5	98.4	94.3	95.7
84	Oregon St.	98.0	93.2	95.4	95.5
85	Southern Miss.	94.8	94.1	95.8	94.9
86	Marshall	92.5	96.9	94.3	94.6
87	East Carolina	93.1	96.1	93.2	94.1
88	Middle Tennessee	92.7	95.3	93.8	93.9
89	Georgia Southern	93.0	91.7	95.5	93.4
90	SMU	93.4	92.0	92.6	92.7
91	Nevada	91.1	94.4	92.4	92.7
92	Bowling Green	93.2	91.4	92.8	92.5
93	UNLV	90.3	94.9	90.4	91.9
94	Arkansas St.	90.2	92.0	92.6	91.6
95	Army	87.5	95.9	91.1	91.5
96	Kansas	89.5	97.3	87.1	91.3
97	Louisiana Tech	89.4	91.8	90.6	90.6
98	Ohio	85.9	95.0	86.8	89.3
99	San Jose St.	88.4	88.8	88.9	88.7
100	Central Florida	87.3	90.0	87.3	88.2
101	Akron	84.6	92.4	86.3	87.8
102	Old Dominion	86.2	89.6	86.8	87.5
103	Colorado St.	85.9	88.1	86.2	86.7
104	Troy	83.9	90.5	85.5	86.7
105	Florida Atlantic	84.6	88.3	86.5	86.5
106	Ball St.	85.0	86.9	85.6	85.8
107	Tulane	84.5	87.8	84.7	85.7
108	Rice	82.9	90.9	82.6	85.5
109	Kent St.	84.4	86.1	84.6	85.1
110	Miami (O)	84.0	85.2	84.9	84.7
111	Florida Int’l	81.8	88.9	83.2	84.6
112	South Alabama	80.8	89.2	82.2	84.1
113	Wyoming	83.9	83.8	84.2	84.0
114	Georgia St.	80.3	85.8	82.1	82.7
115	Fresno St.	81.4	85.7	81.1	82.7
116	Eastern Michigan	79.6	85.1	81.0	81.9
117	Buffalo	78.3	87.6	79.7	81.9
118	UTSA	78.1	86.8	80.6	81.9
119	Massachusetts	78.5	87.3	79.7	81.8
120	Idaho	77.9	85.0	79.5	80.8
121	UL-Lafayette	75.2	84.0	77.1	78.8
122	UTEP	75.8	80.5	77.3	77.9
123	Hawaii	76.6	75.4	75.5	75.8
124	North Texas	74.3	76.7	74.3	75.1
125	Charlotte	71.7	78.9	72.8	74.5
126	New Mexico St.	72.4	75.5	73.4	73.8
127	Texas St.	71.6	72.7	72.8	72.4
128	UL-Monroe	67.9	73.3	68.3	69.8

 

And, here are our Retrodictive Ratings for this week.

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

Here are the Predictive Ratings By Conference

American Athletic Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
South Florida	108.5	105.9	109.7	108.0
Cincinnati	101.3	102.5	102.3	102.1
Temple	99.2	98.8	99.9	99.3
Connecticut	97.0	94.8	97.3	96.4
East Carolina	93.1	96.1	93.2	94.1
Central Florida	87.3	90.0	87.3	88.2
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Houston	113.6	111.5	115.6	113.6
Tulsa	102.3	104.4	103.4	103.4
Memphis	102.0	97.1	100.1	99.8
Navy	99.2	99.0	98.6	99.0
SMU	93.4	92.0	92.6	92.7
Tulane	84.5	87.8	84.7	85.7
AAC Averages	98.5	98.4	98.7	98.5
Atlantic Coast Conference
Atlantic Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Clemson	126.4	117.1	125.2	122.9
Florida St.	122.7	115.4	121.6	119.9
Louisville	119.9	114.0	119.8	117.9
North Carolina St.	108.3	105.0	107.9	107.1
Boston College	104.9	103.2	104.6	104.2
Syracuse	105.2	101.0	103.1	103.1
Wake Forest	100.0	97.5	98.8	98.8
Coastal Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Miami	117.9	109.3	117.2	114.8
Pittsburgh	116.8	111.4	116.1	114.8
North Carolina	115.8	109.0	115.2	113.3
Virginia Tech	111.0	110.8	111.5	111.1
Georgia Tech	108.3	104.6	107.7	106.9
Duke	100.4	101.7	99.0	100.4
Virginia	100.9	97.7	100.3	99.6
ACC Averages	111.3	107.0	110.6	109.6
Big 12 Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Oklahoma	122.4	119.2	122.2	121.3
Oklahoma St.	118.5	119.8	118.5	118.9
Texas	114.2	116.9	114.2	115.1
TCU	112.1	114.4	112.0	112.8
Baylor	109.4	109.7	110.6	109.9
West Virginia	107.2	106.6	106.8	106.9
Kansas St.	103.9	107.2	103.5	104.9
Texas Tech	106.4	103.8	104.2	104.8
Iowa St.	98.3	97.7	97.2	97.7
Kansas	89.5	97.3	87.1	91.3
Big 12 Averages	108.2	109.3	107.6	108.4
Big Ten Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Michigan	121.5	119.3	122.1	121.0
Ohio St.	117.1	117.1	118.3	117.5
Michigan St.	111.9	111.2	109.9	111.0
Penn St.	107.4	109.7	105.6	107.6
Indiana	102.1	106.7	102.0	103.6
Maryland	100.9	104.2	98.1	101.1
Rutgers	97.9	94.9	96.0	96.3
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Iowa	112.8	109.7	112.2	111.6
Wisconsin	112.2	108.4	112.7	111.1
Nebraska	111.1	107.3	111.3	109.9
Northwestern	108.2	102.7	106.6	105.8
Minnesota	104.6	102.6	104.3	103.8
Illinois	101.1	97.7	100.3	99.7
Purdue	99.4	96.6	98.3	98.1
Big Ten Averages	107.7	106.3	107.0	107.0
Conference USA
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Western Kentucky	101.1	96.5	102.5	100.0
Marshall	92.5	96.9	94.3	94.6
Middle Tennessee	92.7	95.3	93.8	93.9
Old Dominion	86.2	89.6	86.8	87.5
Florida Atlantic	84.6	88.3	86.5	86.5
Florida International	81.8	88.9	83.2	84.6
Charlotte	71.7	78.9	72.8	74.5
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Southern Mississippi	94.8	94.1	95.8	94.9
Louisiana Tech	89.4	91.8	90.6	90.6
Rice	82.9	90.9	82.6	85.5
UTSA	78.1	86.8	80.6	81.9
UTEP	75.8	80.5	77.3	77.9
North Texas	74.3	76.7	74.3	75.1
CUSA Averages	85.1	88.9	86.2	86.7
FBS Independents
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Notre Dame	116.4	112.1	115.0	114.5
BYU	110.7	103.4	110.3	108.1
Army	87.5	95.9	91.1	91.5
Massachusetts	78.5	87.3	79.7	81.8
Independents Averages	98.3	99.7	99.0	99.0
Mid-American Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Bowling Green	93.2	91.4	92.8	92.5
Ohio	85.9	95.0	86.8	89.3
Akron	84.6	92.4	86.3	87.8
Kent St.	84.4	86.1	84.6	85.1
Miami (O)	84.0	85.2	84.9	84.7
Buffalo	78.3	87.6	79.7	81.9
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Western Michigan	103.7	101.9	105.6	103.7
Toledo	102.7	101.1	103.6	102.5
Central Michigan	99.1	102.1	100.1	100.4
Northern Illinois	95.9	97.6	96.8	96.8
Ball St.	85.0	86.9	85.6	85.8
Eastern Michigan	79.6	85.1	81.0	81.9
MAC Averages	89.7	92.7	90.6	91.0
Mountain West Conference
Mountain Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Boise St.	105.7	108.7	108.1	107.5
Air Force	99.3	99.6	99.5	99.5
New Mexico	95.0	98.3	96.3	96.6
Utah St.	94.5	98.4	94.3	95.7
Colorado St.	85.9	88.1	86.2	86.7
Wyoming	83.9	83.8	84.2	84.0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
San Diego St.	105.1	102.4	108.4	105.3
Nevada	91.1	94.4	92.4	92.7
UNLV	90.3	94.9	90.4	91.9
San Jose St.	88.4	88.8	88.9	88.7
Fresno St.	81.4	85.7	81.1	82.7
Hawaii	76.6	75.4	75.5	75.8
MWC Averages	91.4	93.3	92.1	92.3
Pac-12 Conference
North Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Stanford	120.5	113.1	119.4	117.7
Washington	120.5	111.7	120.4	117.5
Oregon	112.3	111.3	111.2	111.6
Washington St.	108.8	104.1	108.5	107.2
California	103.9	93.4	99.8	99.0
Oregon St.	98.0	93.2	95.4	95.5
South Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
USC	114.0	108.9	110.8	111.2
UCLA	111.1	110.4	110.6	110.7
Arizona St.	108.7	109.2	107.7	108.6
Utah	111.1	105.0	108.6	108.2
Colorado	109.6	104.9	110.1	108.2
Arizona	107.1	104.7	106.1	106.0
Pac-12 Averages	110.5	105.9	109.0	108.5
Southeastern Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Tennessee	124.0	119.1	123.8	122.3
Georgia	114.3	114.4	114.2	114.3
Florida	110.0	114.0	107.6	110.5
Vanderbilt	105.1	100.1	102.8	102.7
Missouri	102.4	101.3	101.7	101.8
South Carolina	100.8	99.9	100.4	100.4
Kentucky	98.3	100.3	97.2	98.6
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Alabama	132.2	124.4	132.2	129.6
LSU	124.8	118.9	123.9	122.5
Auburn	114.9	113.1	114.4	114.1
Mississippi St.	114.4	111.7	113.5	113.2
Texas A&M	111.9	111.2	111.7	111.6
Ole Miss	113.8	107.4	112.4	111.2
Arkansas	112.4	107.1	109.6	109.7
SEC Averages	112.8	110.2	111.8	111.6
Sunbelt Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Appalachian St.	99.2	98.4	101.7	99.8
Georgia Southern	93.0	91.7	95.5	93.4
Arkansas St.	90.2	92.0	92.6	91.6
Troy	83.9	90.5	85.5	86.7
South Alabama	80.8	89.2	82.2	84.1
Georgia St.	80.3	85.8	82.1	82.7
Idaho	77.9	85.0	79.5	80.8
UL-Lafayette	75.2	84.0	77.1	78.8
New Mexico St.	72.4	75.5	73.4	73.8
Texas St.	71.6	72.7	72.8	72.4
UL-Monroe	67.9	73.3	68.3	69.8
Sun Belt Averages	81.1	85.3	82.8	83.1

PiRate Ratings By Conference
#	League	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	SEC	112.8	110.2	111.8	111.6
2	ACC	111.3	107.0	110.6	109.6
3	Pac-12	110.5	105.9	109.0	108.5
4	Big 12	108.2	109.3	107.6	108.4
5	Big Ten	107.7	106.3	107.0	107.0
6	Independents	98.3	99.7	99.0	99.0
7	AAC	98.5	98.4	98.7	98.5
8	MWC	91.4	93.3	92.1	92.3
9	MAC	89.7	92.7	90.6	91.0
10	CUSA	85.1	88.9	86.2	86.7
11	Sun Belt	81.1	85.3	82.8	83.1

And, here are our spreads for this week.

Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
Friday, September 9
Florida Int’l.	Maryland	-16.1	-12.3	-11.9
Syracuse	Louisville	-11.7	-10.0	-13.7
Saturday, September 10
Army	Rice	7.6	8.0	11.5
East Carolina	North Carolina St.	-12.7	-6.4	-12.2
U Mass (N)	Boston College	-27.9	-17.4	-26.4
Michigan	Central Florida	37.7	32.8	38.3
Pittsburgh	Penn St.	11.9	4.2	13.0
Purdue	Cincinnati	0.6	-3.4	-1.5
Nebraska	Wyoming	30.2	26.5	30.1
Oklahoma St.	Central Michigan	22.4	20.7	21.4
Clemson	Troy	45.5	29.6	42.7
USC	Utah St.	22.5	13.5	19.5
Air Force	Georgia St.	22.0	16.8	20.4
Kansas	Ohio	6.6	5.3	3.3
Appalachian St.	Old Dominion	15.5	11.3	17.4
Duke	Wake Forest	2.9	6.7	2.7
Florida	Kentucky	14.7	16.7	13.4
Notre Dame	Nevada	28.8	21.2	26.1
Ohio St.	Tulsa	18.3	16.2	18.4
Alabama	Western Kentucky	34.1	30.9	32.7
Baylor	SMU	18.5	20.2	20.5
Wisconsin	Akron	30.6	19.0	29.4
Navy	Connecticut	5.2	7.2	4.3
Indiana	Ball St.	19.6	22.3	18.9
Vanderbilt	Middle Tennessee	14.4	6.8	11.0
Colorado St.	UTSA	10.8	4.3	8.6
Washington	Idaho	45.6	29.7	43.9
Miami (Fla)	Florida Atlantic	35.8	23.5	33.2
South Florida	Northern Illinois	15.6	11.3	15.9
Mississippi St.	South Carolina	16.6	14.8	16.1
Oklahoma	UL-Monroe	57.5	48.9	56.9
TCU	Arkansas	2.7	10.3	5.4
Texas	UTEP	41.4	39.4	39.9
South Alabama	Georgia Southern	-9.7	0.1	-10.8
Auburn	Arkansas St.	27.7	24.1	24.8
Illinois	North Carolina	-11.7	-8.3	-11.9
Iowa	Iowa St.	16.5	14.0	17.0
Missouri	Eastern Michigan	25.8	19.2	23.7
Utah	BYU	2.4	3.6	0.3
Tennessee (N)	Virginia Tech	13.0	8.3	12.3
UCLA	UNLV	23.8	18.5	23.2
New Mexico St.	New Mexico	-20.6	-20.8	-20.9
Arizona St.	Texas Tech	5.3	8.4	6.5
Boise St.	Washington St.	-12.3	-0.5	-9.8
Oregon	Virginia	14.9	17.1	14.4
San Diego St.	California	4.2	12.0	11.6

Here are the PiRate Ratings For FBS vs. FCS games this week.

FBS	FCS	PiRate
Georgia	Nicholls St.	55.6
Rutgers	Howard	34.9
Houston	Lamar	48.9
Minnesota	Indiana St.	25.7
Texas A&M	Prairie View	43.6
Florida St.	Charleston Sou.	38.4
Temple	Stony Brook	23.9
West Virginia	Youngstown St.	27.2
Georgia Tech	Mercer	31.3
Bowling Green	North Dakota	24.0
Miami (O)	Eastern Illinois	11.0
Northwestern	Illinois St.	21.0
Ole Miss	Wofford	41.9
San Jose St.	Portland St.	11.2
Colorado	Idaho St.	39.4
Charlotte	Elon	10.1
Kent St.	N. C. A&T	11.0
Marshall	Morgan St.	40.9
Toledo	Maine	34.5
Louisiana Tech	S. Carolina St.	35.5
UL-Lafayette	McNeese St.	4.6
Western Michigan	UNC Central	37.1
North Texas	Bethune Cookman	5.2
Southern Miss.	Savannah St.	49.4
LSU	Jacksonville St.	31.5
Tulane	Southern	21.5
Fresno St.	Cal St. Sacramento	21.7
Arizona	Grambling	40.3
Hawaii	UT-Martin	6.1

Our Bowl Projections will commence in October.

 

Check back Thursday for our Just for Fun Money Line Parlay  selections.  Week one was a dud, as two upsets did us in.

College Football Preview–August 26, 2016

The College Football season kicks off a week earlier than normal this year thanks to the California Golden Bears playing the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors at ANZ Stadium in Sydney, Australia.  The chosen venue is the former site of the 2000 Summer Olympic Games, but in our opinion, this game would have been better placed in the Sydney Cricket Grounds, where the current Australian Football League Sydney Swans play.  48,000 seats are more than enough for these two teams, and ANZ Stadium holds around 80K.  Past games in Australia have drawn fewer than 20,000 fans.

 

Here are the initial PiRate Retrodictive Rankings For 2016.  Retrodictive refers to how teams have done so far to date, trying to rate the teams in order of who they have beaten and who has beaten them; they are not able to be used to predict the future, like our regular Predictive Ratings, which follow below.  Obviously, with no games played to date, these rankings are not yet Retrodictive.  Rather than re-list last year’s final Retrodictive Rankings, we have applied the updates to the 128 teams’ regular ratings to last year’s final rankings.

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

Here are the regular PiRate Ratings for the opening week of the season.  In some cases, these ratings differ slightly from the ratings given during the conference previews of the last 10 days, the reason being that players have quit, been injured, or transferred since the data was first compiled.

PiRate Ratings
#	Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	Tennessee	127.7	121.8	128.4	126.0
2	LSU	127.6	121.1	126.8	125.2
3	Oklahoma	125.6	122.1	125.6	124.4
4	Alabama	126.5	119.0	125.0	123.5
5	Clemson	126.8	116.4	125.7	123.0
6	Florida St.	122.9	115.4	121.9	120.1
7	Michigan	120.0	118.0	120.4	119.5
8	Mississippi St.	120.1	115.9	119.7	118.6
9	Stanford	121.3	112.8	120.4	118.2
10	Oklahoma St.	117.5	118.8	117.5	117.9
11	USC	119.7	114.3	118.0	117.3
12	Washington	119.4	110.4	119.1	116.3
13	Louisville	118.6	111.8	118.0	116.1
14	Texas	114.4	118.0	114.4	115.6
15	Pittsburgh	117.1	111.7	116.4	115.1
16	North Carolina	117.4	109.2	117.1	114.6
17	Auburn	114.5	113.8	113.9	114.1
18	TCU	113.3	115.6	113.2	114.0
19	Notre Dame	116.2	111.0	114.8	114.0
20	Florida	113.5	116.8	111.1	113.8
21	Arkansas	116.4	110.3	114.2	113.7
22	Miami	116.6	108.0	115.9	113.5
23	Ohio St.	113.3	113.5	113.5	113.4
24	Iowa	114.6	110.9	114.2	113.2
25	Georgia	112.5	114.0	112.1	112.9
26	Michigan St.	113.1	112.4	111.1	112.2
27	Oregon	112.8	111.8	111.7	112.1
28	Texas A&M	112.1	111.4	112.0	111.8
29	Virginia Tech	111.0	110.8	111.5	111.1
30	Ole Miss	113.6	107.4	112.1	111.0
31	Washington St.	112.3	107.6	112.0	110.7
32	UCLA	110.9	110.2	110.3	110.5
33	Houston	110.1	108.3	111.9	110.1
34	Baylor	109.4	109.7	110.6	109.9
35	Penn St.	109.5	111.3	108.0	109.6
36	Nebraska	110.4	105.9	110.5	108.9
37	Arizona St.	108.7	109.2	107.7	108.6
38	Utah	111.4	105.3	108.9	108.5
39	Wisconsin	109.1	105.9	109.5	108.2
40	BYU	110.6	102.9	110.3	107.9
41	South Florida	108.3	105.7	109.5	107.8
42	Northwestern	109.7	103.5	108.1	107.1
43	North Carolina St.	108.0	104.7	107.6	106.8
44	Georgia Tech	108.1	104.2	107.4	106.6
45	West Virginia	106.6	106.1	106.0	106.2
46	Arizona	107.2	105.2	106.1	106.2
47	Boise St.	104.4	105.7	106.3	105.5
48	Colorado	107.0	102.1	107.0	105.4
49	San Diego St.	104.9	102.2	108.2	105.1
50	Boston College	105.1	103.6	104.9	104.5
51	Kansas St.	103.1	107.5	102.5	104.4
52	Vanderbilt	106.9	100.7	105.1	104.3
53	Minnesota	104.8	102.8	104.7	104.1
54	Texas Tech	104.9	102.3	102.7	103.3
55	Virginia	104.4	101.2	103.8	103.1
56	Syracuse	105.2	101.0	103.1	103.1
57	Indiana	101.5	106.0	100.9	102.8
58	Missouri	103.0	101.8	102.5	102.5
59	Western Michigan	102.0	100.9	103.9	102.3
60	Cincinnati	101.5	102.7	102.5	102.3
61	Temple	102.2	101.2	103.1	102.2
62	Maryland	100.9	104.2	98.1	101.1
63	Wake Forest	102.3	99.2	101.5	101.0
64	Tulsa	99.7	102.2	100.4	100.8
65	Kentucky	100.4	102.3	99.2	100.6
66	Toledo	101.0	98.9	101.8	100.6
67	Memphis	102.7	97.8	100.8	100.5
68	Central Michigan	98.9	101.9	99.9	100.2
69	Air Force	99.9	100.2	100.1	100.1
70	California	104.7	93.3	101.0	99.7
71	Duke	99.4	100.7	98.0	99.4
72	Iowa St.	99.8	99.2	98.7	99.2
73	Illinois	100.6	97.2	99.8	99.2
74	Navy	99.2	99.0	98.6	99.0
75	South Carolina	99.0	99.3	98.1	98.8
76	Northern Illinois	97.3	98.9	98.4	98.2
77	Purdue	99.4	96.6	98.3	98.1
78	Connecticut	98.3	96.1	98.6	97.7
79	Western Kentucky	99.3	93.3	100.0	97.5
80	Rutgers	99.0	96.2	97.3	97.5
81	Bowling Green	96.7	94.7	97.3	96.2
82	Appalachian St.	95.5	95.7	97.1	96.1
83	New Mexico	94.3	97.6	95.6	95.9
84	Oregon St.	97.8	93.0	95.0	95.3
85	Marshall	92.5	96.9	94.3	94.6
86	Utah St.	93.2	97.1	93.0	94.4
87	Nevada	92.3	95.6	93.6	93.9
88	Arkansas St.	91.9	94.2	94.4	93.5
89	Georgia Southern	93.0	91.7	95.5	93.4
90	SMU	93.7	92.1	93.2	93.0
91	Southern Mississippi	92.7	92.1	93.8	92.9
92	East Carolina	91.6	94.6	91.7	92.6
93	Middle Tennessee	91.2	93.8	92.3	92.4
94	Ohio	88.7	98.2	90.1	92.4
95	San Jose St.	91.0	91.0	91.9	91.3
96	UNLV	89.0	93.6	89.1	90.6
97	Kansas	88.3	96.1	85.9	90.1
98	Colorado St.	88.2	90.6	89.0	89.3
99	Army	84.2	93.2	86.6	88.0
100	Rice	84.7	94.1	85.1	88.0
101	Akron	84.8	92.6	86.5	88.0
102	Old Dominion	85.8	89.2	86.4	87.1
103	Central Florida	85.9	88.6	85.9	86.8
104	Florida Atlantic	84.9	88.6	86.8	86.8
105	Louisiana Tech	85.4	88.6	86.0	86.7
106	Troy	83.6	90.2	85.2	86.4
107	Florida International	82.4	89.6	84.3	85.4
108	Buffalo	80.8	90.1	82.2	84.4
109	Ball St.	83.6	85.6	83.8	84.3
110	Georgia St.	81.7	87.1	83.9	84.2
111	Fresno St.	82.1	87.1	81.9	83.7
112	Tulane	82.2	86.1	82.0	83.4
113	Miami (O)	82.2	84.0	82.9	83.0
114	Kent St.	82.3	84.5	82.2	83.0
115	Wyoming	82.5	82.5	82.6	82.6
116	UTSA	78.4	87.1	80.9	82.2
117	Idaho	78.1	85.2	79.7	81.0
118	UL-Lafayette	76.3	86.8	78.7	80.6
119	Eastern Michigan	78.1	83.6	79.5	80.4
120	South Alabama	75.3	85.2	76.2	78.9
121	Massachusetts	75.0	84.5	76.2	78.6
122	UTEP	74.5	79.5	75.8	76.6
123	Hawaii	77.0	76.5	75.7	76.4
124	Charlotte	73.0	81.1	74.6	76.2
125	New Mexico St.	73.7	76.5	74.9	75.0
126	North Texas	74.0	76.6	73.7	74.8
127	UL-Monroe	67.9	73.3	68.3	69.8
128	Texas St.	68.8	69.5	69.5	69.3

 

PiRate Ratings By Conference

American Athletic Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
South Florida	108.3	105.7	109.5	107.8
Cincinnati	101.5	102.7	102.5	102.3
Temple	102.2	101.2	103.1	102.2
Connecticut	98.3	96.1	98.6	97.7
East Carolina	91.6	94.6	91.7	92.6
Central Florida	85.9	88.6	85.9	86.8
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Houston	110.1	108.3	111.9	110.1
Tulsa	99.7	102.2	100.4	100.8
Memphis	102.7	97.8	100.8	100.5
Navy	99.2	99.0	98.6	99.0
SMU	93.7	92.1	93.2	93.0
Tulane	82.2	86.1	82.0	83.4
AAC Averages	98.0	97.9	98.2	98.0
Atlantic Coast Conference
Atlantic Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Clemson	126.8	116.4	125.7	123.0
Florida St.	122.9	115.4	121.9	120.1
Louisville	118.6	111.8	118.0	116.1
North Carolina St.	108.0	104.7	107.6	106.8
Boston College	105.1	103.6	104.9	104.5
Syracuse	105.2	101.0	103.1	103.1
Wake Forest	102.3	99.2	101.5	101.0
Coastal Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Pittsburgh	117.1	111.7	116.4	115.1
North Carolina	117.4	109.2	117.1	114.6
Miami	116.6	108.0	115.9	113.5
Virginia Tech	111.0	110.8	111.5	111.1
Georgia Tech	108.1	104.2	107.4	106.6
Virginia	104.4	101.2	103.8	103.1
Duke	99.4	100.7	98.0	99.4
ACC Averages	111.6	107.0	110.9	109.9
Big 12 Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Oklahoma	125.6	122.1	125.6	124.4
Oklahoma St.	117.5	118.8	117.5	117.9
Texas	114.4	118.0	114.4	115.6
TCU	113.3	115.6	113.2	114.0
Baylor	109.4	109.7	110.6	109.9
West Virginia	106.6	106.1	106.0	106.2
Kansas St.	103.1	107.5	102.5	104.4
Texas Tech	104.9	102.3	102.7	103.3
Iowa St.	99.8	99.2	98.7	99.2
Kansas	88.3	96.1	85.9	90.1
Big 12 Averages	108.3	109.6	107.7	108.5
Big Ten Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Michigan	120.0	118.0	120.4	119.5
Ohio St.	113.3	113.5	113.5	113.4
Michigan St.	113.1	112.4	111.1	112.2
Penn St.	109.5	111.3	108.0	109.6
Indiana	101.5	106.0	100.9	102.8
Maryland	100.9	104.2	98.1	101.1
Rutgers	99.0	96.2	97.3	97.5
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Iowa	114.6	110.9	114.2	113.2
Nebraska	110.4	105.9	110.5	108.9
Wisconsin	109.1	105.9	109.5	108.2
Northwestern	109.7	103.5	108.1	107.1
Minnesota	104.8	102.8	104.7	104.1
Illinois	100.6	97.2	99.8	99.2
Purdue	99.4	96.6	98.3	98.1
Big Ten Averages	107.6	106.0	106.7	106.8
Conference USA
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Western Kentucky	99.3	93.3	100.0	97.5
Marshall	92.5	96.9	94.3	94.6
Middle Tennessee	91.2	93.8	92.3	92.4
Old Dominion	85.8	89.2	86.4	87.1
Florida Atlantic	84.9	88.6	86.8	86.8
Florida International	82.4	89.6	84.3	85.4
Charlotte	73.0	81.1	74.6	76.2
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Southern Mississippi	92.7	92.1	93.8	92.9
Rice	84.7	94.1	85.1	88.0
Louisiana Tech	85.4	88.6	86.0	86.7
UTSA	78.4	87.1	80.9	82.2
UTEP	74.5	79.5	75.8	76.6
North Texas	74.0	76.6	73.7	74.8
CUSA Averages	84.5	88.5	85.7	86.2
FBS Independents
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Notre Dame	116.2	111.0	114.8	114.0
BYU	110.6	102.9	110.3	107.9
Army	84.2	93.2	86.6	88.0
Massachusetts	75.0	84.5	76.2	78.6
Independents Averages	96.5	97.9	97.0	97.1
Mid-American Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Bowling Green	96.7	94.7	97.3	96.2
Ohio	88.7	98.2	90.1	92.4
Akron	84.8	92.6	86.5	88.0
Buffalo	80.8	90.1	82.2	84.4
Miami (O)	82.2	84.0	82.9	83.0
Kent St.	82.3	84.5	82.2	83.0
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Western Michigan	102.0	100.9	103.9	102.3
Toledo	101.0	98.9	101.8	100.6
Central Michigan	98.9	101.9	99.9	100.2
Northern Illinois	97.3	98.9	98.4	98.2
Ball St.	83.6	85.6	83.8	84.3
Eastern Michigan	78.1	83.6	79.5	80.4
MAC Averages	89.7	92.8	90.7	91.1
Mountain West Conference
Mountain Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Boise St.	104.4	105.7	106.3	105.5
Air Force	99.9	100.2	100.1	100.1
New Mexico	94.3	97.6	95.6	95.9
Utah St.	93.2	97.1	93.0	94.4
Colorado St.	88.2	90.6	89.0	89.3
Wyoming	82.5	82.5	82.6	82.6
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
San Diego St.	104.9	102.2	108.2	105.1
Nevada	92.3	95.6	93.6	93.9
San Jose St.	91.0	91.0	91.9	91.3
UNLV	89.0	93.6	89.1	90.6
Fresno St.	82.1	87.1	81.9	83.7
Hawaii	77.0	76.5	75.7	76.4
MWC Averages	91.6	93.4	92.3	92.4
Pac-12 Conference
North Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Stanford	121.3	112.8	120.4	118.2
Washington	119.4	110.4	119.1	116.3
Oregon	112.8	111.8	111.7	112.1
Washington St.	112.3	107.6	112.0	110.7
California	104.7	93.3	101.0	99.7
Oregon St.	97.8	93.0	95.0	95.3
South Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
USC	119.7	114.3	118.0	117.3
UCLA	110.9	110.2	110.3	110.5
Arizona St.	108.7	109.2	107.7	108.6
Utah	111.4	105.3	108.9	108.5
Arizona	107.2	105.2	106.1	106.2
Colorado	107.0	102.1	107.0	105.4
Pac-12 Averages	111.1	106.3	109.8	109.1
Southeastern Conference
East Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Tennessee	127.7	121.8	128.4	126.0
Florida	113.5	116.8	111.1	113.8
Georgia	112.5	114.0	112.1	112.9
Vanderbilt	106.9	100.7	105.1	104.3
Missouri	103.0	101.8	102.5	102.5
Kentucky	100.4	102.3	99.2	100.6
South Carolina	99.0	99.3	98.1	98.8
West Division
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
LSU	127.6	121.1	126.8	125.2
Alabama	126.5	119.0	125.0	123.5
Mississippi St.	120.1	115.9	119.7	118.6
Auburn	114.5	113.8	113.9	114.1
Arkansas	116.4	110.3	114.2	113.7
Texas A&M	112.1	111.4	112.0	111.8
Ole Miss	113.6	107.4	112.1	111.0
SEC Averages	113.9	111.1	112.9	112.6
Sunbelt Conference
Team	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
Appalachian St.	95.5	95.7	97.1	96.1
Arkansas St.	91.9	94.2	94.4	93.5
Georgia Southern	93.0	91.7	95.5	93.4
Troy	83.6	90.2	85.2	86.4
Georgia St.	81.7	87.1	83.9	84.2
Idaho	78.1	85.2	79.7	81.0
UL-Lafayette	76.3	86.8	78.7	80.6
South Alabama	75.3	85.2	76.2	78.9
New Mexico St.	73.7	76.5	74.9	75.0
UL-Monroe	67.9	73.3	68.3	69.8
Texas St.	68.8	69.5	69.5	69.3
Sun Belt Averages	80.5	85.1	82.1	82.6

 

 

PiRate Ratings By Conference
#	League	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average
1	Southeastern	113.9	111.1	112.9	112.6
2	Atlantic Coast	111.6	107.0	110.9	109.9
3	Pac-12	111.1	106.3	109.8	109.1
4	Big 12	108.3	109.6	107.7	108.5
5	Big Ten	107.6	106.1	106.7	106.8
6	American	98.0	97.9	98.2	98.0
7	Independents	96.5	97.9	97.0	97.1
8	Mountain West	91.6	93.4	92.3	92.4
9	Mid-American	89.7	92.9	90.7	91.1
10	Conference USA	84.5	88.5	85.7	86.3
11	Sunbelt	80.5	85.1	82.1	82.6

 

PiRate Ratings Spreads For August 26, 2016

Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
Hawaii	California	-27.6	-16.8	-25.2

Bowl Projections

We erred when issuing bowl projections in our conference previews, completely forgetting that the current Rose Bowl tie-in calls for the Pac-12 and Big Ten to supply the highest rated teams not in the playoffs, rather than using the old BCS formula rules.

 

Therefore, we have moved Ohio State into the Rose Bowl in lieu of Alabama, which in turn caused us to rearrange several other bowls once Alabama was moved to an SEC only bowl.

 

We are sorry for the error.  Here are the updated Bowl Projections.

Bowl	Conferences		Team	vs.	Team
New Mexico	MWC	CUSA	New Mexico	vs.	Rice
Las Vegas	Pac-12	MWC	Arizona St.	vs.	Boise St.
Cure	AAC	SBC	[Army]	vs.	Troy
Camellia	MAC	SBC	North. Illinois	vs.	Ga. Southern
New Orleans	CUSA	SBC	W. Kentucky	vs.	Arkansas St.
Miami Beach	AAC	MAC	Tulsa	vs.	West. Michigan
Boca Raton	AAC	CUSA	[Cent. Michigan]	vs.	Southern Miss.
Poinsettia	MWC	BYU	San Diego St.	vs.	BYU
Idaho Potato	MAC	MWC	Bowling Green	vs.	UNLV
Bahamas	AAC/CUSA	MAC/CUSA	Memphis	vs.	Toledo
Armed Forces	Navy	Big 12	Navy	vs.	[Arizona]
Dollar General	MAC	SBC	Ohio U	vs.	Appalachian St.
Hawaii	CUSA	MWC	Marshall	vs.	Air Force
St. Petersburg	AAC	ACC/ND	Houston	vs.	[Colorado]
Quick Lane	ACC/ND	Big Ten	Boston College	vs.	Wisconsin
Independence	SEC	ACC/ND	[UL-Lafayette]	vs.	Georgia Tech
Heart of Dallas	Big Ten	CUSA	Indiana	vs.	Middle Tenn.
Military	ACC/ND	AAC	N. Carolina St.	vs.	Temple
Holiday	Big Ten	Pac-12	Penn St.	vs.	Oregon
Cactus	Big 12	Pac-12	[Maryland]	vs.	Utah
Pinstripe	ACC/ND	Big Ten	Virginia Tech	vs.	Northwestern
Russell Athletic	ACC/ND	Big 12	Louisville	vs.	TCU
Foster Farms	Big Ten	Pac-12	Minnesota	vs.	Washington St.
Texas	Big 12	SEC	Baylor	vs.	Mississippi St.
Birmingham	AAC	SEC	Cincinnati	vs.	Texas A&M
Belk	ACC/ND	SEC	Miami (Fla)	vs.	Florida
Alamo	Big 12	Pac-12	Oklahoma St.	vs.	USC
Liberty	Big 12	SEC	West Virginia	vs.	Ole Miss
Sun	ACC/ND	Pac-12	Pittsburgh	vs.	UCLA
Arizona	CUSA/SBC	MWC/SBC	Louisiana Tech	vs.	Utah St.
Music City	ACC/ND/B10	SEC	Nebraska	vs.	Auburn
Orange	ACC/ND	B10/SEC	Florida St.	vs.	Notre Dame
Citrus	ACC/ND/B10	SEC	Iowa	vs.	Alabama
TaxSlayer	ACC/ND/B10	SEC	North Carolina	vs.	Arkansas
Peach	Semifinal	Semifinal	Tennessee	vs.	Stanford
Fiesta	Semifinal	Semifinal	Michigan	vs.	Oklahoma
Outback	Big Ten	SEC	Michigan St.	vs.	Georgia
Cotton	At-Large	At-Large	Clemson	vs.	South Florida
Rose	Big Ten	Pac-12	Washington	vs.	Ohio St.
Sugar	Big 12	SEC	Texas	vs.	LSU
Nat’l Championship	Semifinal	Winners	Tennessee	vs.	Michigan

Teams in [Brackets] are at-large selections because the contracted conference will not have a bowl eligible team able to fill the slot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PiRate Ratings Final Four Statistical Preview

Team	Team	Red	White	Blue
Villanova	Oklahoma	2	1	2
North Carolina	Syracuse	9	7	11

 

Four Factors

Team	EFG	DEFG	OR%	DOR%	TO%	DTU%	FT*	DFT*
Villanova	55.2	46.8	28.4	28.6	16.3	20.5	22.2	16.8
Oklahoma	54.8	46.4	30.8	30.4	18.0	17.7	20.2	16.6
Syracuse	50.1	47.0	33.4	34.8	18.2	20.4	21.3	16.4
North Carolina	52.5	47.7	40.3	30.0	15.2	18.5	22.3	18.4

 

PiRate Criteria

Team	PPG	DPPG	Mar.	FG-M	Rb-M	TO-M	R+T	WLRd	SOS
Villanova	77.5	63.6	13.9	7.1	1.9	2.8	10.3	18-4	58.54
Oklahoma	80.5	70.4	10.1	5.6	2.3	-0.3	6.5	15-6	58.74
Syracuse	70.1	64.6	5.5	1.7	-0.7	1.5	3.9	10-9	56.21
North Carolina	83.0	69.9	13.1	6.9	8.4	2.2	22.8	17-5	57.74

 

NFL Preview for Week 4: October 1-5, 2015

The Best Ever Debate
Already this season, we have heard the sports pundits ponder whether Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, or even Drew Brees is the best quarterback ever to play in the NFL. They cite touchdown passes, completion percentages, lack of interceptions, and a host of other statistics.

We are here to tell you that these pundits are only correct in whatever statistic they use. Aaron Rodgers may be the best QB at avoiding interceptions, while greats from the past, like Johnny Unitas don’t even show up in the top 20. Unitas comes in tied at 135th in this statistic, behind such current star Ryan Pickpatrick, er Fitzpatrick.

Does this mean that the greats from the past, like Unitas, Starr, Namath, Jurgensen, Van Brocklin, and others don’t measure up to today’s quarterbacks? Certainly, this is not the case. The way the game is played today compared to the way it was played 50 years ago is vastly different, and the rules today favor pass blockers compared to the rules of yesteryear. There was a time when blockers could not use any part of their hand to block. Today’s hand pushing would have been holding penalties in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and by the way, holding penalties cost a team 15 yards then.
As for interceptions, of course these numbers are lower today. When you throw half of your passes 7 yards or less downfield, many of them at or behind the line of scrimmage, interception percentages will be much lower than if you throw the ball more than 20 yards down the field.

Today, on 3rd and 20, more times than not if a QB passes the ball it will be a very short pass to a back or tight end hoping to find a hole and run to daylight. In 1965, on 3rd and 20, a QB would most assuredly throw the long bomb. An interception in this case might have actually been preferable to a punt. If a pass is thrown 50 yards downfield and intercepted with no return, it beats almost every punting situation. Rarely does a punt produce a net advantage of 50 yards.

Touchdown percentages are not usable for comparing quarterback talents either. Today, a QB is just as likely to pass at the opponent’s one yard line than for his team to run the ball. In 1965, all NFL teams used a halfback and fullback in the offensive set, and some teams still used a full-house backfield inside the opponent’s five yard line. The better teams, like Unitas’s Colts and Starr’s Packers ran the ball 85-90% of the time in the deep red zone. Of course, these greats from the past threw fewer touchdown passes than today’s QBs.

What about completion percentages? If you look at career rates, you will find Brees at the top. Just behind in the top 10 include Rodgers, Manning, Tony Romo, Phillip Rivers, Matt Ryan, and Ben Roethlisberger. To find a QB that played before 1970, you have to go all the way to 80th place and Jurgensen. Unitas is tied for 124th. Not-so-great QBs ahead of these two Hall-of-Famers include Mark Sanchez and Rex Grossman. And what about Broadway Joe Namath? He comes in at 166th.

So, obviously, current passers like Brees and Rodgers are much better passers than Unitas and Namath, correct? Not on your life, this is totally bunk, and we will show you why.

First, the QBs in the days where offensive linemen could not use their hands, passers had to throw the ball away to avoid a lot more sack opportunities. Teams like the Los Angeles Rams, Minnesota Vikings, Dallas Cowboys, and Oakland Raiders were noted for having top-flight pass rushes, where they averaged 4 to 5 sacks per game. No team today averages 4 sacks per game and few average as much as 3 per game.

Here is the key to these percentages. Let’s say Unitas and Brees both attempt 30 passes in a game. Unitas’s passes come in a 1964 game, whereas Brees’ passes come in a 2015 game. Let’s break down the types of passes each QB throws.

1. Screen passes and other passes thrown short of the line of scrimmage
2. Short passes thrown 0 to 5 yards past the line of scrimmage
3. Medium passes thrown 6 to 12 yards past the line of scrimmage
4. Intermediate passes thrown 13 to 20 yards past the line of scrimmage
5. Longer passes thrown 21 to 30 yards past the line of scrimmage
6. The Bomb thrown 31 to 60 yards past the line of scrimmage

Now, let’s show how a typical QB from 1964 and 2015 might distribute these passes.
1. Screens and other behind the LOS: Unitas 3 Brees 6
2. Short passes: Unitas 2 Brees 10
3. Medium passes: Unitas 4 Brees 8
4. Intermediate passes: Unitas 10 Brees 4
5. Longer passes: Unitas 6 Brees 1
6. The Bomb: Unitas 5 Brees 1

We really need not explain any further. Unitas’s passes might have averaged around 20 yards in length, while Brees’ passes averaged about 8 yards in length. It is quite obvious that it is much easier to complete a pass thrown 8 yards past the line of scrimmage than one thrown 20 yards past the line of scrimmage. Additionally, many of Brees’ shorter passes are 3rd & long dumps to secondary receivers thrown well short of the first down sticks, whereas in the days of Unitas, teams just did not throw short of the sticks on 3rd down.

Unitas may complete just 15 of the 30 passes in this example, while Brees completes 20 of the 30 passes. Yet, both QBs pass for 240 yards. What matters is how many yards per pass attempt each QB gained. In this example, both averaged exactly 8 yards per attempt, the line where everything better is considered exceptional.

Averaging more than 8 yards per pass attempt has been consistently brilliant, whether it took place in 1945, 1955, 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995, 2005, or 2015. Whereas all other statistics have varied over NFL (and AFL) history, this stat has been the one true correlation between success and failure.

Taken to the extreme, a Joe Namath or Daryle Lamonica type passer might complete just 45% of their passes, while a Brees or Rodgers might complete 67.5% of their passes. Namath and Lamonica might go 18 of 40 in a game, while Brees or Rodgers go 27 of 40. Namath and Lamonica might average 17.8 yards per completion thanks to multiple 40-60 yard pass completions (they didn’t call Lamonica the Mad Bomber for nothing). Brees and Rodgers might average 11.9 yards per completion. Guess what? In both instances, the total yardage gained is 320 yards or 8 yards per attempt. If you look at what 8 yards per pass attempt accomplishes throughout history, it is roughly 28 points per game, varying a little with rushing, defense, and special teams.
So, then, who is the best quarterback of all time? You guessed where we are going with this. Who ranks as having the best career yards per pass attempt?

The answer may or may not surprise you, but among the top passers in this category, there are 14 retired QBs eligible for the Hall of Fame, and 10 of these 14 are in the Hall of Fame. Of the other four, two are recently retired, and still might become a HOF member. Only Ed Brown and Earl Morrall rank in the top 20 in yards per attempt and are not in the Hall.

In Morrall’s case, he was frequently a backup to other Hall of Famers, like Y. A. Tittle, Unitas, and Bob Griese. When called on to fill in, he responded with two MVP-award seasons and an incredible won-loss percentage of 63.6%, including an outstanding 33-4-1 record when starting for a Don Shula-coached team (Baltimore and Miami). Morrall might have been a Hall of Famer had he not played behind three greats.

Brown is an interesting case worth researching. He was the quarterback of the 1951 University of San Francisco Dons football team that went 9-0 and was considered the best team on the West Coast with multiple future NFL players. Due to racist issues (USF was an integrated team), and because the available bowls of that time were all in Southern states, USF was not invited to a bowl, while inferior all-white teams received invitations. The Dons dropped football on that undefeated season.

Brown was drafted by the Bears and led Chicago to the Western Division crown one season with multiple second place finishes. He later was traded to Pittsburgh, where he led the Steelers to its best modern day season prior to the arrival of the Steel Curtain defense in the 1970’s. Brown’s career record as a starter was 55-38-5.

Now, just who has the best all-time yards per attempt mark? Did you guess Otto Graham?  Graham left a career mark of 9.0 yards per attempt. And, if you are wondering about the won-lost record for Graham, he is in a league by himself at 104-17-4 in his 10 seasons with the Cleveland Browns. In seven of those 10 seasons, Graham led the Browns to the league championship. In the other three seasons, Cleveland lost in the NFL Championship Game. Cleveland averaged 28.1 points per game in the 10 years Graham led the Browns attack. The year after Graham retired, after leading Cleveland to a 9-2-1 record plus a 38-14 pasting of the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL Championship, Cleveland fell to 5-7-0 without him.

When next you are asked who you believe is the best NFL quarterback of all time, you have your answer. Otto Graham was to football what Babe Ruth was to baseball and Wilt Chamberlain was to basketball.

Here is the entire top 20 list of quarterbacks by career yards per pass attempt.

#	Quarterback			Yds/Att.
1	Otto Graham			9.0
2	Sid Luckman			8.4
3	Norm Van Brocklin			8.2
4	Aaron Rodgers			8.2
5	Steve Young			8.0
6	Kurt Warner			7.9
7	Ben Roethlisberger			7.9
8	Ed Brown			7.9
9	Tony Romo			7.9
10	Phillip Rivers			7.9
11	Bart Starr			7.8
12	Johnny Unitas			7.8
13	Earl Morrall			7.7
14	Len Dawson			7.7
15	Peyton Manning			7.7
16	Roger Staubach			7.7
17	Dan Fouts			7.7
18	Sonny Jurgensen			7.6
19	Trent Green			7.6
20	Drew Brees			7.6

 

Current NFL PiRate Ratings
N F C
East	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Dallas	105.8	104.5	106.1	105.5	2-1-0	75	75
Philadelphia	103.2	102.6	103.4	103.1	1-2-0	58	63
N.Y. Giants	99.5	99.4	100.0	99.6	1-2-0	78	72
Washington	94.2	93.7	93.5	93.8	1-2-0	55	59
North	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Green Bay	108.6	107.9	109.0	108.5	3-0-0	96	68
Minnesota	101.2	98.8	102.5	100.8	2-1-0	60	50
Detroit	100.8	99.5	100.3	100.2	0-3-0	56	83
Chicago	92.7	91.7	92.5	92.3	0-3-0	46	105
South	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Carolina	101.1	100.8	101.2	101.0	3-0-0	71	48
Atlanta	99.5	100.0	100.7	100.1	3-0-0	89	72
New Orleans	97.2	93.3	97.3	95.9	0-3-0	60	84
Tampa Bay	91.4	92.3	91.0	91.6	1-2-0	49	80
West	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Seattle	107.1	106.6	107.2	107.0	1-2-0	74	61
Arizona	106.9	106.0	107.6	106.8	3-0-0	126	49
San Francisco	96.9	94.5	96.6	96.0	1-2-0	45	93
St. Louis	95.5	97.1	94.6	95.7	1-2-0	50	67
A F C
East	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
New England	109.6	110.0	109.8	109.8	3-0-0	119	70
Buffalo	103.5	104.4	103.6	103.8	2-1-0	100	68
N. Y. Jets	100.6	100.7	100.8	100.7	2-1-0	68	41
Miami	95.6	97.4	94.8	95.9	1-2-0	51	74
North	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Cincinnati	104.1	104.9	104.3	104.4	3-0-0	85	56
Pittsburgh	104.2	104.4	104.4	104.3	2-1-0	76	52
Baltimore	103.7	102.8	104.1	103.5	0-3-0	70	84
Cleveland	93.3	91.8	92.8	92.6	1-2-0	58	72
South	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Indianapolis	101.3	101.7	100.9	101.3	1-2-0	56	80
Houston	97.3	98.6	97.1	97.7	1-2-0	56	60
Tennessee	96.1	95.8	96.8	96.2	1-2-0	89	77
Jacksonville	89.2	93.4	88.0	90.2	1-2-0	49	91
West	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Denver	107.0	106.5	107.0	106.8	3-0-0	74	49
Kansas City	100.3	101.7	100.6	100.9	2-1-0	79	89
San Diego	100.0	100.4	99.8	100.1	1-2-0	66	83
Oakland	92.5	96.7	91.6	93.6	2-1-0	77	86

 

This Week’s Games
Week Number:	4
Date of Games:	October 1-5
Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
Pittsburgh	Baltimore	2.5	3.6	2.3
Miami (N)	NY Jets	-5.0	-3.3	-6.0
Indianapolis	Jacksonville	15.1	11.3	15.9
Buffalo	NY Giants	6.0	7.0	5.6
Tampa Bay	Carolina	-7.2	-6.0	-7.7
Washington	Philadelphia	-7.0	-6.9	-7.9
Chicago	Oakland	3.2	-2.0	3.9
Atlanta	Houston	5.2	4.4	6.6
Cincinnati	Kansas City	6.8	6.2	6.7
San Diego	Cleveland	9.7	11.6	10.0
San Francisco	Green Bay	-8.7	-10.4	-9.4
Arizona	St. Louis	14.4	11.9	16.0
Denver	Minnesota	8.8	10.7	7.5
New Orleans	Dallas	-6.1	-8.7	-6.3
Seattle	Detroit	9.3	10.1	9.9
(N) Neutral Site Game  in	London

 

NFL Preview For Week 3: September 24-28, 2015

Current NFL PiRate Ratings
N F C
East	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Dallas	107.5	106.4	108.2	107.4	2-0-0	47	36
Philadelphia	102.8	101.9	102.8	102.5	0-2-0	34	46
N.Y. Giants	99.3	99.1	99.6	99.3	0-2-0	46	51
Washington	94.4	94.0	93.9	94.1	1-1-0	34	27
North	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Green Bay	108.7	107.8	109.2	108.6	2-0-0	58	40
Detroit	101.8	100.4	101.6	101.3	0-2-0	44	59
Minnesota	100.1	97.3	101.3	99.6	1-1-0	29	36
Chicago	93.8	93.0	94.0	93.6	0-2-0	46	79
South	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Carolina	101.1	101.0	101.2	101.1	2-0-0	44	26
Atlanta	97.6	97.9	98.4	98.0	2-0-0	50	44
New Orleans	97.2	93.1	97.3	95.9	0-2-0	38	57
Tampa Bay	91.6	92.4	91.3	91.8	1-1-0	40	61
West	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Seattle	106.3	105.6	106.0	106.0	0-2-0	48	61
Arizona	104.1	103.2	104.8	104.0	2-0-0	79	42
San Francisco	99.4	97.0	99.1	98.5	1-1-0	38	46
St. Louis	95.6	97.3	94.6	95.8	1-1-0	44	55
A F C
East	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
New England	108.0	108.1	108.0	108.0	2-0-0	68	53
N. Y. Jets	101.0	101.4	101.4	101.3	2-0-0	51	17
Buffalo	101.0	101.9	101.1	101.3	1-1-0	59	54
Miami	98.1	99.9	97.3	98.4	1-1-0	37	33
North	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Baltimore	104.6	103.7	105.2	104.5	0-2-0	46	56
Pittsburgh	104.1	104.2	104.4	104.2	1-1-0	64	46
Cincinnati	103.5	104.3	103.5	103.8	2-0-0	57	32
Cleveland	94.6	92.7	94.7	94.0	1-1-0	38	45
South	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Indianapolis	101.2	101.7	100.7	101.2	0-2-0	21	47
Houston	97.1	98.5	96.8	97.5	0-2-0	37	51
Tennessee	96.3	95.9	97.1	96.4	1-1-0	56	42
Jacksonville	90.5	95.0	89.5	91.7	1-1-0	32	40
West	PiRate	Mean	Bias	Average	W-L-T	Pts	Opp
Denver	106.2	105.8	105.9	106.0	2-0-0	50	37
San Diego	101.1	101.9	101.0	101.3	1-1-0	52	52
Kansas City	100.2	101.8	100.4	100.8	1-1-0	51	51
Oakland	91.2	95.8	89.7	92.2	1-1-0	50	66

This Week’s PiRate Spreads

Home	Visitor	PiRate	Mean	Bias
NY Giants	Washington	7.4	7.6	7.9
Arizona	San Francisco	7.7	9.2	8.7
Baltimore	Cincinnati	4.1	2.4	4.7
Carolina	New Orleans	5.9	9.9	5.9
Cleveland	Oakland	6.9	0.4	8.5
Dallas	Atlanta	12.4	11.0	12.7
Detroit	Denver	-1.4	-2.4	-1.3
Houston	Tampa Bay	8.5	9.1	8.5
Miami	Buffalo	0.1	1.0	-0.8
Minnesota	San Diego	2.0	-1.6	3.3
New England	Jacksonville	20.5	16.1	21.5
NY Jets	Philadelphia	-0.8	0.5	-0.1
Seattle	Chicago	15.5	15.6	15.0
St. Louis	Pittsburgh	-5.5	-3.9	-6.8
Tennessee	Indianapolis	-1.9	-2.8	-0.6
Green Bay	Kansas City	11.5	9.0	11.8