College Football

Yeah, I think that describes A&M this season (every season?) really well: they have good talent, but they underperform. So if your algorithm is looking more at potential, recruiting ranks, stat rankings, then A&M should be good on paper. We just don't win the games.

And yes, JMU in particular has been giving me heartburn every week questioning the validity of my poll. But just to provide a comparison, the average ranking of the teams JMU has beaten is 80.0 (based on my rankings) whereas the average ranking of the teams Georgia has beaten is 99.3, so it makes sense JMU gets the higher rank for now (fun fact: Georgia has the lowest strength of schedule of all the undefeated teams, hence their low ranking). Since my system doesn't care at all about expectations/stats/brand name/eye test and is only based on comparing wins/losses, weird rankings like that will happen even though I know if JMU and Georgia played it wouldn't be close. But those oddities tend to go away as the season progresses.

Definitely agree, it's fun that everyone has a different way of slicing the rankings and everyone's poll is different. It gives us something to compare and argue about, and a lot of the fun of college football is arguing about rankings.