2021 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 12

The penultimate week of the regular season gets underway tonight, which means it's time to get a quick peek at what's coming up.

We've got MACtion again each of the next two nights, which will help determine one automatic bid recipient, and likely not any at large berths. Most of that will come on Saturday, which is also when the D-III playoffs kick off, something I'm excited for.

There won't be many adjustments this week, though next week's batch of rivalry games certainly will. We'll see just how much that swings the pendulum, but for right now, here's where we're at going into Week 12.

2017 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 12

For those of you who either ignored my warning yesterday afternoon or were intrigued by it, I have one thing to say to you this morning: Happy Nick Saban Is A Coward Week!

To be completely fair to Coach Saban, it's not just him. During last year's Nick Saban Is A Coward Week, five other teams joined in on the cowardice of playing an FCS team the second to last week of the regular season, and all of those coaches are equally as cowardly as Saban. Saban is just the highest profile coach of a team who does this, and thus has the indignity of getting this week named after him.

Also to be fair, there are still other non-conference games that need to be factored into NCSS scores, and with the way the Sun Belt has scheduled out its season, they could finally supplant the MAC atop the conference rankings. But we have to check to find out.

You can find a primer on how the NCSS metric works in my season introductory post. Below are the ten FBS conference ranked by average NCSS.

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.

2015 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 12

Buckle in. This one could get heated.

We're onto one of the final weeks of the college football season, but this one is probably the most controversial of all the weeks that I do a Non-Conference Schedule Strength rankings. And really, it's mostly Nick Saban's and Greg Sankey's fault. But more on that later.

If you read last week's post,  you may remember it being formatted weird. I've fixed it now though and it should be working okay. Otherwise, things stayed the same: the Group of Five conferences have the toughest non-conference schedules and there are a ton of cupcakes amongst the Power Five. Don't let delusion Alabama fans claim otherwise.

So below, I will take a look at the non-conference games for this week by conference. They will get a score for the week, which then gets added to their cumulative season total. Here's the updated rankings.

2014 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 13

With me running a day late on college football stuff this week, I'm behind by a couple games this week. Last night, there were a pair of MAC games, which fortunately doesn't impact this metric.

There will be a fair amount of non-conference games in this week as teams wind down their regular seasons. The next couple weeks will see some major non-conference games to finish out slates, as well as defining games to determine division or conference championships. Unfortunately, for some teams, this is also an opportunity to be complete and utter cowards of the highest caliber. You probably know who I'm referring to.

If you want to refer back to last week's numbers, you can view them here. Let's see how this week looks.

NCAA FBS Rankings: Week 13

It's been a busy past few days, with North Central basketball underway, and a lot of football this past weekend. I'm looking ahead now to the upcoming week of games, seeing as the action starts tonight with a couple MAC games. These are all factors that are important going forward to the last few weeks of the season for playoff purposes.

This week's rankings will have some big movement, if my spoiler from yesterday's playoff seedings post are any indication. If you want to see where we're at through the first 12 weeks of the season, you can view last week's schedule rankings here.

College Football Non-Conference Power Rankings: Week 12

My old image that I had been using for this feature disappeared, so I had to find a different image. Fortunately that was about all that went wrong this weekend from a football standpoint. Saturday saw chaos atop the B(C)S again, while at the D-III level my North Central Cardinals earned the automatic bid to the playoffs by beating Augustana while Elmhurst knocked off Illinois Wesleyan. I still wait for next year to get back the Bell though.

But this reminder of the glory of D-III football shows once again how great a playoff system could be for the FBS. I think the system would need to be tweaked quite a bit (we're probably looking at trimming down the regular season and a conference realignment would be ideal, though not realistic) before we get it perfect. Based on the system in place though, I think 16 teams would have to be the ideal size so everyone has a chance at a national title and we're not leaving anyone out that deserves a bid.

With just a couple weeks left, here's how the conferences and their scheduling to date shake up.

1. WAC (7.43)- San Jose State hosts BYU and Texas State visits Navy.
2. Sun Belt (7)- No change.
3. Conference-USA (6.75)- No change.
4. MAC (6.62)- No change.
5. Big East (6.5)- South Florida visits Miami (Florida), Temple visits Army, and Syracuse visits Missouri.
6. Mountain West (5.5)- No change.
7. Big Ten (4.58)- No change.
8. ACC (3.92)- Wake Forest visits Notre Dame and Miami hosts South Florida.
9. Pac-12 (3.17)- No change, but a correction was made (see playoff seedings below for the explanation).
10. SEC (2.86)- Missouri hosts Syracuse, but Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Auburn, Texas A&M, and Kentucky are all hosting FCS teams.
11. Big XII (2.6)- No change.

That looks a little more like the stereotype we associate with the SEC. With that done, here's how the playoff would appear if the season ended today. Remember, in accordance with Dan Wetzel's Death to the BCS system, the 11 conference champions get automatic berths, and then we add 5 at large teams to fill out the field. The obvious goal is to win your conference, but one loss won't completely trip you up unless every independent runs the table, which will probably never happen. Important factors for seeding and earning an at-large berth include who you beat, who you lost to, what your usual margin of victory is, and your Non-Conference Schedule Score (NCSS), which is averaged into each conference's score above. A higher number means you've played more major conference teams and/or played on the road outside of your conference in more games. Last week's rankings can be found here.