OK let's address the key thing first.
Yes, Thomas More won their biggest game of the season. Yes Thomas More is the best team in the Big Rivers. And, yes, despite TMU winning, they move down. The reason is twofold: 1) because we didn't do this all-D1 ranking last week, we have two weeks of results to lean on, and Notre Dame College, Colorado, and Brown have all put in results that lead us to move them up; 2) while Thomas More is currently and clearly the top team in the Big Rivers, we've got some little pieces of evidence that indicate that the conference isn't quite D1A level—Thomas More's 24-15 win over Kentucky is part of that. Kentucky is playing very well in the SCRC, which is a DIAA league, but we also saw Clemson, a slightly lower-ranked SCRC team lose by a relatively convincing margin to Iona.
Iona is a good Liberty side but will probably miss the playoffs. Now ... we could also point out that Wheeling, a team Thomas More beat by 28, lost by only three to Queens. And in fact that was one of the reasons we had Thomas More where we had them. But Queens nudges down a bit, and our opportunity to make some direct comparisons of the size of players (not the only criterion for judgment but a big one), we're just not going to elevate Big Rivers to that DIA level just yet. Close, but not quite.
(Remember, we're ranking only fall-playing teams. Arkansas State, Grand Canyon, and Arizona all play a few games in the fall, but not enough for us to say this is a major 15s season for them.)
Brown ... we're high on Brown. They will have to keep it up come NCR playoff time.
We have six teams come into the rankings, with the Heart of America teams getting in there. Siena? We're a bit iffy about Siena. They are playing in Liberty's D1AA schedule but in NCR's D1 playoffs. But really we don't have enough comparison to say where they should be. The playoffs will tell us. But we have the idea they are good enough to be in this 50 ... just where is the question.
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