Week 14 Power Rankings, Ratings and Odds
There are only 10 conference championship games plus a rescheduled Akron vs. Buffalo game with the Bulls vying for bowl eligibility coming up this week. Only 84 of the 131 FBS teams still have games left to play. There are 41 bowl games after conference championships and Week 15 is reserved for Army vs. Navy, where neither team can reach bowl eligibility unless the Black Knights get a waiver from the NCAA for having two wins over FCS teams this season. It does look like we’ll have at least a couple of 5-7 teams bowling based on a lack of available programs with six wins.
I still do my power ratings for all 131 teams, though, because I use my end-of-season numbers as a guide for the upcoming season. Perhaps that carries a lot less weight with the transfer portal and all of the offseason craziness, but I still like to know where a team started, where it ended and how it looks going into the following season.
I’ll write up some parting thoughts on power ratings when I publish my bowl numbers, which will be subject to change as players sit out or opt to transfer and head coaches and coordinators are moving all around. We’ve already seen the coaching carousel heat up, with Willie Fritz to Georgia Tech, Luke Fickell to Wisconsin, Kenny Dillingham to Arizona State and the abrupt resignation of David Shaw at Stanford. Teams will be losing coordinators for some of these important games or at least have some noteworthy distractions.
Take a team like Tulane, for example. The Green Wave host the AAC Championship Game this week with Fritz already named the head coach at Georgia Tech. But, there’s obviously tons of motivation to win a conference crown. It’s the game after this one that you worry about, but you know it is a distraction for the players. Those things are not accounted for at all in a raw power rating, but absolutely should be part of the handicap.
