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2019 Week 10 Washington State Cougars Rankings

Main Poll Voters

User	Rank	Reason
ExternalTangents	23	+14.1
BlueSCar	24
stripes361	25	The final spot was a two-team race between Washington State and Memphis, who were the Top Two teams in my "Honorable Mentions" Section last week. On top of being an interesting study in contrasts based on their computer rankings (Memphis is only 38th in FPI but 19th in SP+, while Washington State is around the mid-20s in both), this provides a really good case study for the most controversial aspects of my thought process. Obviously, many would disagree that Washington State and Memphis really deserved to be next to each other in my rankings last week (Memphis was 6-1 with wins over Navy and Tulane teams which have good W-L records; Washington State was 4-3 with no notable wins) but let's assume for the sake of simplicity and illustration that their body of work/team quality/statistical profile/etc coming into this past week really were more or less equivalent. Who would then deserve to be ranked ahead of the other now? The most common reply would be "Well, Memphis won and Washington State lost so that's that. Memphis should be ahead." I'd counter with the argument that a 2 point loss at a Top 10 Oregon team is more impressive than a 1 point win at home against 2-6 Tulsa (admittedly, Tulsa is a victim of a brutal schedule and some close losses, and better than their record suggests, but still clearly well below Top 10 territory.) But even more so, the way these games played out is instructive because Washington State and Memphis played themselves into the exact same situation. Both led by one point and then allowed the opposing team to take a chip shot field goal as time expired (meaning they didn't win it with their defense). Neither team blocked the field goal (meaning they didn't win it with their special teams). Both teams *should* have lost. There was no difference in what the teams did at the end of the game to earn a win or a loss with their play on the field. The only difference is the performance of the other team's kicker. Oregon hit their chip shot and Tulsa missed theirs. If both Oregon's and Tulsa's kickers had connected, or if both had missed, there would be zero argument against the fact that Washington State's close loss (or somewhat lucky win) against Top 10 Oregon would merit a bigger boost or smaller drop in the rankings than Memphis' result. And if the situation was flip flopped and Tulsa's kicker connected while Oregon's kicker missed, a 5-3 Washington State would almost certainly be ranked above a 6-2 Memphis in all the polls, even amongst ardent resume voters. Once again, this isn't a case where both teams had similar games but one team made clutch plays at the end that the other didn't. The difference in outcomes is literally down to what the other team's kicker did. This is why I shy away from weighing W-L heavily and ignoring aggregate opponent-adjusted performance. Close games are so heavily influenced by one or two plays either way, and most importantly by what a given team's opponent does, that it's hard to accurately determine how much of the ultimate outcome should be ascribed to the winning team's skill and how much should be ascribed to other factors. Reducing your evaluation of teams down to W-L record leaves you at this point in the season with only 8 data points, which is way too granular to ensure accurate predictive results.

Provisional Poll Voters

User	Rank	Reason

Blue = Human
Red = Computer
Green = Hybrid

Bold = before the AP poll was published
Normal = after the AP poll was published

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