2015 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 5

It's Week 5 of the college football season, and this week, we're starting to see conference play begin in earnest. It's already been heavy in some conferences, but leagues like the Big Ten have yet to begin. It has helped boost them towards the top of the rankings so far.

At this point, other than some small shuffling here and there the rankings will likely stay around the same from here until the second to last week of the season, when the coward Nick Saban and a few other SEC schools show how weak they are only to see the conference's score get boosted the following week with the handful of interconference intrastate rivalry games.

Below are the rankings with Week 5 scores, cumulative averages for the season, and last week's placings. I also take a look at the out of conference games that made changes to the scores.

1. MAC: 0.31; 6.08 (LW: 1). MACtion begins in earnest, though all on Saturday, but some points are earned with Massachusetts hosting Florida International, and Eastern Michigan visits LSU.
2. Conference USA: 0.42; 5.75 (LW: 2). Most of the schedule is in-conference, with the major points coming from Florida International visiting Massachusetts and Vanderbilt traveling to Middle Tennessee.
3. Mountain West: 0.67; 5.25 (LW: 4). Most of the conference battles itself, but there are three road non-conference games, including San Jose State playing in Auburn.
4. Big Ten: 0.07; 4.93 (LW: 3). The Big Ten finally kicks off conference play, with only Penn State hosting Army to earn any points.
5. Sun Belt: 0.36; 4.73 (LW: 5). Georgia State gets its FCS game out of the way, while Louisiana-Lafayette and New Mexico State play out of conference on the road.
6. American Athletic: 0.58; 4.25 (LW: 6). A majority of the teams are in-conference this week, though Temple and UConn are on the road, Cincinnati hosts Miami (Florida) for a couple points, and Navy hosts Air Force to finally get out of the negative numbers.
7. Pac-12: 0.00; 3.17 (LW: 7). Four conference games and four byes result in no change this week.
8. Big XII: 0.00; 3.00 (LW: 8). It's all conference games this week.
9. ACC: 0.21; 2.79 (LW: 9). A couple byes and heavy in-conference schedule keeps the score pretty low for the week. Miami does travel to Cincinnati and Clemson hosts Notre Dame.
10. SEC: 0.21; 2.14 (LW: 10). Vanderbilt is on the road at Middle Tennessee, which I commend, and they get most of the SEC's points this weekend. Kentucky does eat its cupcake this week though.

Photo by Chris Humphries (USA Today Sports)

If you want to see the updated rankings, you can view them here. The independents, thanks to a road trip heavy week, are up to 10 NCSS points, which would be tops in the nation if they were their own conference. Again though, because their entire schedule is non-conference they will have much higher scores than everyone else.

I think starting next week, I'm just going to list the games that impact the scores, because conference play has begun everywhere. I'll be back on Monday with a look at results and how they impact Playoff Points.