2014 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 7

We're onto another week of college football action! And hopefully, we'll have as much excitement as last week had.

For the most part going forward, NCSS averages for the conferences won't change, because conference play has started in full. There were some swaps last week in positioning, but nothing too major. I imagine this week will be similar. Either way, I need to look over the schedule in preparation for Week 7's Playoff Points numbers as well as version 2 of the Death to the BCS Playoffs bracket.

Let's look at the numbers.

1. MAC (0.23, 6.00; LW: 1). Toledo visits Iowa State. 
2. American Athletic (0.36, 5.64; LW: 4). Cincinnati visits Miami (Florida) and Central Florida hosts BYU.
3. Conference USA (0.15, 5.62; LW: 2). Rice visits Army.
4. Mountain West (0.67, 5.33; LW: 3). No change.
5. Sun Belt (0.18, 4.82; LW: 5). Louisiana-Monroe visits Kentucky, and Appalachian State hosts its second FCS team of the year. Appalachian State is now ineligible for the Death to the BCS Playoffs.
6. Big 10 (0.00, 4.21; LW: 6). No change.
7. ACC (0.21, 3.29; LW: 8). Miami (Florida) hosts Cincinnati, North Carolina visits Notre Dame.
8. Big XII (0.10, 3.10; LW: 9). Iowa State hosts Toledo. (Also, Texas and Oklahoma are playing their annual neutral site game.)
9. Pac 12 (0.17, 3.08; LW: 7). No change.
10. SEC (-0.07, 2.79; LW: 10). Kentucky hosts Louisiana-Monroe, but we get the rare negative week score because of Tennessee and Vanderbilt hosting DI-AA teams this week.

In the interests of disclosure, the independents collectively have an NCSS of 10.25, an increase of 1 from last week, though Navy is hosting an FCS team, the first independent to host one in 2014 (Army visited Yale a couple weeks ago). Also, Notre Dame is still officially an independent, even though they have a loose affiliation with the ACC, so they're getting out of conference points for ACC opponents. If you want to see every team's individual score, you can view the Google spreadsheet here.

App State becomes the sixth team that is disqualified from playoff competition. In their defense, it's their first year in FBS play, so I'm more willing to reinstate them if they somehow win the Sun Belt. We'll see. For now, they join Ball State, Buffalo, and Florida International as teams disqualified for too many cupcakes; Idaho is also eliminated due to academic issues, and Penn State is disqualified for being Penn State.

Next week's college football posts (the Week 7 Playoff Points post, the second version of the Death to the BCS Playoffs bracket, and the Week 8 NCSS post) will all be pushed back a day in honor of my wife's birthday on Monday. That takes priority, every time. The football schedule should allow for that. As for this week, Thursday starts the slate as BYU visits Orlando to play Central Florida. Good luck to your teams this weekend!