2015 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 8

I think at this point, we're officially halfway done with the regular season in college football. With the exception of Navy, everyone has played at least six games (and Navy has played five games), so we're starting to get down to the nitty gritty of the season.

Last week we finally advanced to the point where I can pretty neatly summarize every conference's out of league slate in one sentence, which makes this whole post so much cleaner. We also saw minimal changes in the numbers last week, something that will probably remain true once again this week.

So below, I will look at every conference and rerank them from last week based on their non-conference schedules for the whole season.

1. Conference USA: 0.33; 6.25 (LW: 2). Rice hosts Army and Western Kentucky visits LSU.
2. MAC: 0.00; 6.15 (LW: 1). No change. 
3. Sun Belt: 0.00; 5.64 (LW: 3). No change. 
4. Mountain West: 0.00; 5.25 (LW: 4). No change. 
5. American Athletic: 0.00; 5.17 (LW: 6). No change.
6. Big Ten: 0.00; 4.93 (LW: 5). No change.
7. Pac-12: 0.00; 3.33 (LW: 7). No change. 
8. ACC: 0.00; 3.07 (LW: 8). No change. 
9. Big XII: 0.00; 3.00 (LW: 9). No change. 
10. SEC: 0.07; 2.57 (LW: 10). LSU hosts Western Kentucky.

Photo from Washington State University Athletics Department

If you want to see the updated rankings, you can view them here. I'm also keeping track of the independents, who as a group move up to an average of 12.33, but that's with BYU losing a point from its score due to hosting Wagner out of the FCS.

I had to fix a standings issue that I apparently missed last week between the Mountain West and American Athletic, but that is resolved now and everyone else is ordered properly, including Conference USA climbing back to the top of the standings. In aggregate, these conference averages don't mean a ton, and they do have some flaws in that all conferences don't play the same number of games for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. It nonetheless remains an interesting metric to study to see just how "tough" teams are scheduling themselves.

I'll be back on Monday with a look at results from the weekend, and with luck, maybe the first mock Death to the BCS Playoff bracket.