2014 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 6

One last post for the month of September.

Conference play is starting en masse now, and teams are starting to get into the meat of their schedule. You know, other than the handful of SEC teams that shamefully have FCS games still coming up on the slate. You know who you are...

For now, we're just looking at what non-conference games happen to be on the slate. For the most part, the rankings of the conferences as they have been in past weeks will remain mostly unchanged. There are independents playing games still, which will throw a monkey wrench into some places here and there.

You can view last week's NCSS rankings here. Here's a look at the upcoming week. The only comments made on each conference are about non-conference games (in-conference games and byes are not mentioned as they don't impact NCSS).

1. MAC (0.15, 5.77; LW: 1). Ball State visits Army.
2. Conference USA (0.38, 5.46; LW: 3). North Texas visits Indiana, UTSA hosts New Mexico and Rice hosts Hawaii.
3. Mountain West (0.67, 5.33; LW: 4). Utah State visits BYU, New Mexico visits UTSA, Hawaii visits Rice and Air Force hosts Navy.
4. American Athletic (0.18, 5.27; LW: 2). Tulsa visits Colorado State.
5. Sun Belt (0.00, 4.64; LW: 5). No change.
6. Big 10 (0.07, 4.21; LW: 6). Indiana hosts North Texas.
7. Pac 12 (0.17, 3.08; LW: 9). Stanford visits Notre Dame.
8. ACC (0.00, 3.07; LW: 7). No change.
9. Big XII (0.00, 3.00; LW: 8). No change.
10. SEC (0.00, 2.86; LW: 10). No change.

In the interests of full disclosure, the independents' collective NCSS average is 9.25 now, after a 1.50 average for the week. You can view the individual scores for each team here.

Based on this metric, it looks as though the mid-majors face tougher competition out of conference than the Power conferences do. To some degree, that's true, because most games between mid-majors and Power conference teams are played at the home stadium of the latter team. The fact that a lot of Power conference teams play seven or eight home games also brings their numbers down. That's why this metric isn't perfect, but I like using it to see whether or not teams are scheduling tough outside of their own conference.

Play for Week 6 starts Thursday night, as we have an American Athletic, a Pac 12, and a Sun Belt game all on the docket. Good luck to your teams this week!