2010 Week 4 College Football Rankings and Review; Stanford #1, Ohio State #2, Alabama #3

Week 4 brought some surprises on the field and a bunch in the resulting rankings.  The full rankings are on the web-site, but the top-30 is below for quick reference.

Alabama's stay at #1 ends, replaced by a Stanford team that has looked impressive, and Ohio State passes them too at #2 dropping Alabama to #3.  Why is this?  It is a combination of several factors including:

• Alabama won by less than expected against Arkansas (4 vs 10)
• Alabama past opponent Duke lost to Army when the computer expected them to win
• Alabama past opponent San Jose State was thumped by Utah 56-3
• Alabama's pre-season rating (far and away #1) is less than 10% of their current rating, it was around 25% last week
• Stanford thumped Notre Dame by more than expected
• Stanford past opponent UCLA thumped Texas on the road when expected to lose
• Stanford's pre-season rating (#23) is no longer holding them down as much
• Ohio State prior opponent Miami won big at Pittsburgh

It can be useful to look at performance charts as well, here are the top-3:

You can see how important Stanford's win over UCLA and Ohio State's win over Miami are at this point of the season.  As more meaningful games are added and as those team rise or fall, things could change.  You can also see that Alabama is rated where they were after week 1, the other teams have just passed them by primarily due to their week 2 opponents improving.

Performance charts for all teams are available as part of a newsletter subscription.

Behind the top 3 is Nevada (helped by Cal losing by only 1) and Oregon was #2 last week but fell a few spots after a closer than expected win.

The BCS buster watch begins at #6 where TCU stays and Boise State actually falls from #9 to #12 after a less than stellar win.  BSU is helped by Nevada being highly rated at this point so a win over them (if they stay highly rated) will count nicely, but they have some ground to make up to just catch TCU.

Picking games, the computer stunk (as is often the case one of the first four weeks and this was that week) going 24-34 against the spread and 46-12 picking winners while Vegas went 51-7 picking winners.  The computer is still 103-90-1 against the spread for the year though.  Full prediction performance here.

Look for season projections and preview of the upcoming week here and on the web-site.

Rank	Team	Rating	Record	Schedule	Change
Rank	Team	Rating	Record	Schedule	Change
1	Stanford	95.202	4-0	66.961	+2, +7.848
2	Ohio State	88.079	4-0	63.221	+8, +5.241
3	Alabama	87.816	4-0	67.184	-2, -5.370
4	Nevada	85.804	4-0	62.773	+11, +5.356
5	Oregon	85.616	4-0	58.432	-3, -2.984
6	TCU	85.330	4-0	65.782	+0, +0.810
7	Arizona	84.474	4-0	67.844	+4, +1.856
8	Florida	83.914	4-0	64.240	-3, -1.900
9	LSU	83.737	4-0	72.167	-2, -0.183
10	Iowa	83.640	3-1	61.839	+3, +3.117
11	Miami FL	83.499	2-1	67.545	+15, +8.372
12	Boise St	82.620	3-0	70.586	-3, -0.309
13	UCLA	81.176	2-2	80.542	+28, +8.974
14	North Carolina St	80.961	4-0	64.397	+11, +5.747
15	Nebraska	80.632	4-0	57.988	-11, -5.827
16	California	80.517	2-2	71.923	+21, +7.198
17	Auburn	79.050	4-0	69.656	+3, +2.692
18	Kansas St	79.048	4-0	69.427	+15, +5.371
19	Arkansas	78.576	3-1	64.552	-3, -1.799
20	Virginia Tech	78.393	2-2	72.276	-2, -0.015
21	Clemson	77.545	2-1	53.678	+7, +2.770
22	Oklahoma	76.871	4-0	66.453	-10, -4.494
23	South Carolina	76.811	3-1	66.697	-6, -3.187
24	Penn State	76.496	3-1	67.870	-5, -1.533
25	Michigan	76.472	4-0	64.472	+17, +4.496
26	Oklahoma St	76.381	3-0	60.022	-5, +0.056
27	Missouri	75.964	4-0	59.847	+28, +5.607
28	Air Force	75.630	3-1	58.969	-14, -4.876
29	Northwestern	75.546	4-0	65.533	+7, +2.209
30	Texas	75.415	3-1	67.378	-22, -7.574