Top10 college teams (10/4/2006)

[lastchance]

One of the basic tenets of statiscal analysis in sports is that the best teams destroy inferior teams, not will their way to victory or squeak out small wins. To use a NFL example, the Bears are impressive not just because they've won 5 games, but because they've destroyed their competition in 4 of those.

Think about playground sports: You can judge future performance by watching how much better one team is compared to the other when one team runs up the score. If the game is close, you can tell that these teams are likely equivalent.

I rank Cal higher than Tenn because Predictor tells me so.

Apparently, in their other games, Cal has shown their superiority over inferior teams more than Tenn has, and Predictor shows it. Of course, it's really, really close, and at this point, this game is likely a pk.

It's probably that 1 point win at home against Air Force. A top 10 team should've won by a TD+, but there are all fluke games. It does drag down Tenn's ranking a bit though.