2016 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 7

It's been a busy 15 hours or so of football-related posts for me as I catch up following a long weekend. We're almost to the halfway mark of the season, if you can believe that. There's still a ton of time left in the season, even if we're almost out of non-conference games.

However, mainly because of the independents but also because there are some out of conference games that don't involve those teams still to come, I'm continuing to follow up on the schedules for each week by conference, though I'm not commenting on any of the conference games because, for the purpose of this metric, it doesn't matter.

The rankings are mostly stable as we go from week to week, but unexpected changes can and do happen. Either way, if you want a refresher on how this metric works, you can view that at my season intro post. Let's get to the schedule.

1. MAC (0.00, 5.08; LW: 1). No change.
2. Conference USA (0.38, 5.08; LW: 4). Louisiana Tech visits Massachusetts and Southern Mississippi visits LSU.
3. Sun Belt (0.27, 5.00; LW: 3). Georgia Southern visits Georgia Tech.
4. Mountain West (0.00, 4.92; LW: 2). No change.
5. American Athletic (0.00, 4.42; LW: 5). No change.
6. ACC (0.07, 3.29; LW: 6). Georgia Tech hosts Georgia Southern.
7. Pac 12 (0.17, 3.17; LW: 8). Stanford visits Notre Dame.
8. Big Ten (0.00, 3.14; LW: 7). No change.
9. SEC (0.21, 2.93; LW: 10). Mississippi State visits BYU and LSU hosts Southern Mississippi.
10. Big 12 (0.00, 2.90; LW: 9). No change.

To see the updated spreadsheet, click here.

Photo by Kevin C. Cox (Getty Images)

You may notice some blue numbers on the spreadsheet; these are for games that were postponed due to Hurricane Matthew. Thankfully, no non-conference games were impacted so scores from last week haven't changed. Any makeup dates will be put back on the schedule for the appropriate week. The purple numbers indicate byes.

If the independents were their own conference, they'd be up to an average NCSS of 13.00, which would easily still be best in the country despite Army hosting FCS Lafayette. Speaking of which, based on rounding, the MAC does have a better NCSS than Conference USA by maybe seven-thousandths of a point, so they are not actually tied.

The weekend looms in a couple days, though games start within the next couple days. I'll return on Monday with a Playoff Points update and a new mock bracket.