2017 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 10

Happy Halloween from Confessions of a Sportscaster! Unfortunately, this morning I don't really have anything scary cooked up for you. Instead, I'm back to looking at college football schedules.

The fun part is that tonight begins the reign of MACtion as we get our middle of the week football fix. Last week had a little MACtion on Thursday night, but not the Tuesday-Wednesday mix of stuff that's fun. There are a handful of Thursday games though to take a look at as well.

If you need a refresher on how this metric works, you can read that in my season introductory post. Let's look at what we've got coming up.

1. MAC (0.00, 6.17; LW: 1). No change.
2. Sun Belt (0.25, 5.67; LW: 2). Coastal Carolina visits Arkansas.
3. Conference USA (0.43, 5.57; LW: 4). Western Kentucky visits Vanderbilt, Southern Mississippi visits Tennessee.
4. Mountain West (0.17, 5.42; LW: 3). Air Force hosts Army, Fresno State hosts BYU.
5. American Athletic (0.00, 4.25; LW: 5). No change.
6. Big Ten (0.00, 4.07; LW: 6). No change.
7. Big 12 (0.00, 3.60; LW: 7). No change.
8. ACC (0.14, 3.21; LW: 9). Wake Forest visits Notre Dame.
9. Pac 12 (0.00, 3.08; LW: 8). No change.
10. SEC (0.29, 3.00; LW: 10). Mississippi State hosts Massachusetts, Vanderbilt hosts Western Kentucky, Arkansas hosts Coastal Carolina, Tennessee hosts Southern Mississippi.

To see the updated spreadsheet, click here.

Photo from Getty Images (Photographer uncredited)

The SEC is shaping up its non-conference schedule, albeit with games against Group of Five opposition. It's still better than Nick Saban Is A Coward Week, which is coming up sooner than you think. It's also amazing to see the separation among the Group of Five, where everyone except the American Athletic, who is almost closer to a Power conference when you think about it, is heads and tails above the rest of the country.

Meanwhile, if you were to take the independents as their own conference, they would have an average NCSS of 15.50, which would blow away what the MAC has done. But given their nature, I don't count the independents in these rankings other than to make a mention of where they're at.

That's it for now. I'll be back Monday with a look at results and what it means for my fifth mock bracket for the Death to the BCS Playoffs.