In last week’s rankings, Auburn stood head and shoulders above the rest of college football. As a result, even a 15-point loss on the road against Mississippi State wasn’t enough to nudge the Tigers from the top spot. Is this a problem? Not really. The SRS ratings are predictive; they are not designed to tell you which teams are the most deserving or which schools have accomplished the most. Instead, they are intended to give you an idea of what might happen in a future game between any two teams.

Auburn’s rating is amplified by a 41-7 victory against LSU, which stands out as the most dominant performance of the year. The Tigers also crushed Arkansas by 24, a margin that looks more impressive every week. Other than yesterday’s loss, Auburn’s “worst” performance of the year by SRS standards was a 6-point win on the road against Kansas State (#14 in the SRS), which would be the best game of the year for all but a handful of teams.

The Mississippi schools check in at #2 and #3 in the SRS this week; Alabama and Texas A&M are #8 and #9, giving the SEC West five teams in the top ten yet again. Auburn, with the double-edged sword of a brutal schedule, will have no problem getting back into the playoff discussion if the Tigers can win out. Georgia, fresh off a 34-0 thumping of Missouri, is now 7th in the SRS. But I want to focus on schools 4, 5, and 6 in the ratings. All are from the Big 12, a conference doesn’t appear to be getting much respect nationally.

The ten-team conference plays a round robin schedule, meaning each team gets nine division games. That leaves only 3 nonconference games for each school, and the class of the conference — Baylor, Oklahoma, and TCU — are already done with that part of their schedule. It makes sense to analyze these teams as a group, because for SRS purposes (and based on the two head-to-head games), these three teams are all about equal. In their nine nonconference games, they went 9-0 with an average margin of victory of 41 points, and all wins came by at least 23. Of course, that schedule was loaded with cupcakes: other than Tennessee (currently 12th in the SRS), the only semi-respectable opponents were Minnesota (#38) and Louisiana Tech (#50). And the Vols game is certainly helping: Tennessee is 3-3, but the losses were by 1 point to Florida, 4 to Georgia, and 24 to Oklahoma.

So far, the trio of schools have played four other Big 12 games, and those games are also part of what’s driving these ratings.

• Against West Virginia, OU won on the road by 12 points. The Mountaineers are 4-2 with their only other loss being a 10-point neutral site loss to the Crimson Tide. In other words, the SRS sees those two games and thinks “Well, we know Alabama is really good, and Oklahoma did even better against a common opponent than Alabama. I guess OU is really good, too.”

• Against Iowa State, Baylor won by 21 points on the road. That was the biggest loss suffered by the Cyclones this year; so even though ISU may not be very good, Baylor still took care of business there. And Iowa State lost by 4 to Kansas State, and KSU lost by only 6 to Auburn. ^[1]If you want to engage in even more six degrees action, Iowa State beat Iowa, which beat Indiana by 16. Indiana, you may recall, beat Missouri, which impacts the ratings of all of the SEC teams … Continue reading

• Against Texas, Baylor and Oklahoma combined for an average win of 59-33, with neither game coming at home. What does this mean? Well, that depends on how good Texas is. Currently, the answer is not very, as the Longhorns reside at #51 in the SRS. But the margin of victory is still pretty good.

So perhaps the better question is: What have we seen to indicate that the trio of top Big 12 teams aren’t top teams? The worst SRS game happened this week, with Oklahoma only beating Texas by 5. After that, the next worst game ^[2]Excluding blowouts of over 30 points against terrible teams that actually drive down that ratings, and losses to each other. is probably Oklahoma’s 12-point win against West Virginia. If that’s the second worst performance, these teams have certainly earned the benefit of the doubt. Until they struggle against the rest of the conference — and considering just one team (Kansas State) is currently in the top 30 of the SRS, struggling can be used liberally here — there’s no reason Baylor, Oklahoma, and TCU shouldn’t continue to rank in the top 10.

Below are the week 7 ratings. As always thanks to Dr. Peter R. Wolfe for providing the weekly game logs.

Other undefeated notes: Florida State and Notre Dame are now both inside the top 15 of the rankings, although both continue to invite more questions than answers. The schools play each other in week 8, though, and the winner should move into the top 10. More importantly, the winner of that game will be in the pole position for one of the four playoff spots. Louisville has a chance to be a spoiler regardless of what happens: the Cardinals host Florida State on the Thursday before Halloween, and travel to South Bend on November 22nd.

Below are the results from each game in week 7. No surprise here: the two Mississippi schools were dominant this week; they join Georgia in producing the only 70+ point performances of the week.

And don’t forget: the NCAA Games page has been updated, showing the results (and therefore the math behind each team’s season rating) for each FBS team in each game in 2014.