One thing that drives our rankings readers crazy is when a team wins a game and moves down.
This week there were two teams that were in danger of moving down. Boston College did what they had to do and beat West Chester, but right behind them is Western Washington, which just came back from a tour of Norther California in which they beat Santa Clara 46-0 and San Jose State 43-12. (Max Stone 29 points over the two games and Charlie Funk scored four tries.) That was a pretty impressive tour and in normal circumstances we would have moved WWU up. But ... we're in the middle of NCR playoff time here. BC won a playoff game, while WWU won two non-league tour matches.
Those wins for WWU will provide them plenty of schedule strength going forward, but that's the point—going forward. Western Washington has a strong spring schedule and playoffs in the spring, and with cross-border results under their belt they will likely move up as the games progress. But right now it's pretty tough bumping down a team that won a playoff game 22-5. Now Western Michigan does move down because right now they we holding onto a #10 ranking based on a one-point loss to Louisville. Louisville looked a little shaky in their win over Tennessee, but we decided to move Tennessee up two places.
Virginia Tech also won a playoff game, and this time we move them down a spot. Why? First off, they were ranked #2 and you've got to do a lot to hold onto a ranking that high. Secondly, Iowa State won the HOA and look to be easily as strong as last year when they lost the ACR final to USD—we have Iowa State ranked ahead of USD because USD hasn't played any games yet. Third, VT won but in a really close game that we have ranked #14 and that finished 2nd in the Liberty Conference. All of that forced us to look at everything and debate whether UMass should move up a bit (maybe), or whether VT and Iowa State might switch. We did the latter.
But of course there are more NCR playoff games to come.
And remember, there are DIAA games and leagues playing in the winter/spring, so this ranking will continue and will still change. Will the #1 in December still be #1 in May? Yes, quite possibly, but it's not guaranteed.
