Adam Burke shares his weekly college football power ratings
This year’s college football season has been a frustrating one in a lot of ways. The dispersal of talent is as widespread as it has ever been as a result of the transfer portal and NIL money, so we’ve got a lot of teams that can step up on any given week. I feel like I’ve spent most of the season pinballing the teams in the middle back and forth, while sometimes overreacting and sometimes underreacting.
I still find the creation of power ratings to be a valuable and viable exercise, but I do find myself trusting my numbers a little bit less this year. Maybe it simply has to do with the inconsistency of teams around the country. We already have 60 bowl-eligible programs for 43 bowl games and there are 22 teams with 5-5 records. It could just be the recency bias talking, but it really does feel like there are a lot more 6-4 and 5-5 teams this season than in past seasons.
Parity is good for college football because it makes every week exciting, but it has made a lot of teams a moving target for me. Now that we’re into Week 12, I’m still looking at my numbers, but not really treating them as actionable unless it is a game that I also feel strongly about because of other factors and variables. At this point of the season, some teams will have quit and other teams will keep playing hard for the sake of a coach or some other motivating factor. Obviously there are teams still playing for hardware, bowl eligibility, College Football Playoff aspirations, and the like.
Prior to last week, I had so many games that were close to the market number that I felt like my power ratings were pretty efficient. Last week, however, I had more games that were off-market and nearly all of them went against my number. So, I’ve tried to make some corrections this week, but it feels a little like yelling into the wind at this stage of the game. Some teams are what they are. Some teams aren’t what they aren’t. And some teams are just all over the place week to week.