Team Rankings

I want to remind people of all of the good websites with team rankings at this point. For the best computer rankings I recommend Jeff Sagarin. Ken Pomeroy is also good. Both Sagarin and Pomeroy still have a few funny rankings due to the low number of games played, but the rankings should both be robust by mid-to-late December. The RPI can be found on many websites, but I'll recommend Warren Nolan because his "Nitty Gritty Report" will be invaluable when it starts coming out some time in January or so. If you want to see how other websites are projecting the bracket, you can go to the Bracket Matrix.

The RPI is still a little bit ridiculous because of its composition, where strength of schedule matters more than absolute record - the numbers are fairly accurate at the end of the season, but they're total nonsense in November. Right now they rate the Big Ten 10th and the Summit League 13th... somehow I think if those two conferences matched up in a Big Ten/Summit League Challenge that it wouldn't exactly be a close competition. I wouldn't believe anything out of the RPI until late December. It's not worth really worrying about team RPIs until early January.

Sagarin and Pomeroy are both more reasonable with their rankings right now. Sagarin rates the top conferences in order as the Big East, ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC fairly evenly apart, then a bit of a drop to the Pac-10, which is narrowly ahead of the Atlantic 10. Pomeroy puts the Big 12 slightly ahead of the ACC, then a bit back to the Big East, then a bit further back to the Big Ten, then the SEC, C-USA, A-10, Missouri Valley and Pac-10.

You can make a good argument that the A-10 is as good as the Pac-10, or even better, but the SEC should be a lot closer to the Pac-10 than to the other four BCS conferences. And while the Pac-10 has been bad, I wouldn't throw C-USA or the Missouri Valley ahead of them. You could probably argue for the Big East, ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten in just about any order right now, although right now I'd argue that the Big East and ACC have been fairly even, with the Big Ten a bit behind and the Big 12 fourth. But that's just my opinion.


As the year goes along the three computer rankings will begin to line up. They are all out of whack now because the sample sizes are so small. Also, remember that Sagarin keeps a component based on last year's results (that slowly goes away over the next few weeks) while Pomeroy starts his rankings from scratch each season, which is why the Sagarin ratings are more accurate early on.