2016 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 12

Good morning, and happy Nick Saban Is A Coward Week!

This week means that we're almost through our entire regular season in college football. Division III just announced its playoff field on Sunday with a potential rematch for the fate of the universe looming in Round 2 before the inevitable Purple Bowl in about a month. But in the FBS level, as we saw yesterday, time is running out and chaos is starting to reign. I love it.

This week's cowardice is joined by multiple other non-conference games that are not cowardice, which is nice after a week where literally the only non-conference games were between two independents and a third independent hosting an FCS game. A primer on how this metric works can be found in my season introductory post.

1. Sun Belt (0.18, 5.91; LW: 1). Louisiana Lafayette visits Georgia and South Alabama hosts FCS Presbyterian College.
2. Conference USA (0.23, 5.54; LW: 2). UTSA visits Texas A&M.
3. Mountain West (0.00, 5.25; LW: 3). No change.
4. MAC (0.00, 5.08; LW: 4). No change.
5. American Athletic (0.42, 5.00; LW: 5). Houston hosts Louisville and Connecticut visits Boston College.
6. ACC (0.29, 3.79; LW: 6). Louisville visits Houston, Boston College hosts Connecticut, North Carolina hosts FCS The Citadel, and Virginia Tech visits Notre Dame. The Citadel is North Carolina's second FCS game, and the Tar Heels are disqualified from the Death to the BCS Playoffs.
7. Pac 12 (0.00, 3.17; LW: 7). No change.
8. Big Ten (0.00, 3.14; LW: 8). No change.
9. Big 12 (0.00, 2.90; LW: 10). No change.
10. SEC (-0.14, 2.86; LW: 9). Georgia hosts Louisiana Lafayette, Texas A&M hosts UTSA, South Carolina hosts FCS West Carolina, Kentucky hosts FCS Austin Peay, Alabama hosts FCS Chattanooga, and Auburn hosts FCS Alabama A&M.

To see the updated spreadsheet, click here.

Photo by Vasha Hunt (AP)

Factoring in the independents, were they their own conference, they would have gotten an average of 1 point for the week, giving them a cumulative average of 18.25, which would be far and away the best score in the country. This includes a game between Massachusetts and BYU, who as independents don't see this game count as a conference game. Army also plays its second FCS team of the season, and they are thus disqualified from the Death to the BCS Playoffs as well.

I don't know why the penultimate week of the season is always an FCS week for a handful of teams. I don't have a problem with an FCS game in and of itself, but it should not be scheduled this late in the year. It makes you a coward. It shouldn't impact any of our playoff contenders in the grand scheme of things (Alabama, for one, is far and away the best team in the country right now, and playing Chattanooga doesn't change that), but it's very disappointing, so I always break out my soapbox for this particular week.

I'm putting it away now, though. We get more MACtion tonight and tomorrow night, but most of the fun stuff again happens on Saturday. I'll be back on Monday with the results from the week and another mock bracket as we near Championship Weekend and the final, official, bracket for the Death to the BCS Playoffs.