2017 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 6

We're officially playing games in October now, which means we're well into the college football season. Conference play is also largely underway at this point, which means there's not much left for me to do in this one.

However, there are still the independent teams who need to play games, and we have the occasional interconference game that takes place. We also still have Nick Saban Is A Coward Week and Rivalry Week on the docket, where some major changes will take place.

But for now, I'm going to look at the schedule for this upcoming week and make whatever adjustments to each school's NCSS score, then average them out by conference. I will highlight all non-conference games with each league's score below.

If you need a refresher on how this metric works, it is explained in my season introductory post.

1. MAC (0.00, 6.00; LW: 1). No change.
2. Mountain West (0.33, 5.08; LW: 4). Boise State visits BYU, Air Force visits Navy.
3. Conference USA (0.07, 5.07; LW: 2). Rice hosts Army.
4. Sun Belt (0.00, 4.83; LW: 3). No change.
5. Big Ten (-0.07, 4.07; LW: 5). Indiana hosts FCS Charleston Southern.
6. American Athletic (0.08, 3.75; LW: 6). Navy hosts Air Force.
7. Big 12 (0.00, 3.60; LW: 7). No change.
8. ACC (0.07, 2.93; LW: 9). North Carolina hosts Notre Dame.
9. Pac 12 (0.00, 2.92; LW: 8). No change.
10. SEC (0.00, 2.43; LW: 10). No change.

To see the updated spreadsheet, click here.

As expected, most of the changes here came as a result of the independents playing. We do have Indiana playing an FCS team this week, but it reads like a last minute add since their schedule lists 13 games including the cancelled date with Florida International. They still lose an NCSS point, but even if they'd already played an FCS foe, they'd probably be granted an exemption from a one year Death to the BCS Playoffs ban. Granted, they've never been good enough to even be considered for the field of 16, but still.

Again, in the grand scheme of things, this metric doesn't matter a ton. It may be used to break a close tie when I start building out playoff fields, but for the most part it's just a check and balance... and an opportunity to take a potshot at Nick Saban. But that's not for another month and a half yet. I'll be back on Monday with a look at the results from the weekend, and then I'll take a look at the Week 7 schedule on Tuesday.