Gophers 36th best team in the country per The Athletic.

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on rankings in general, IMHO - if you start out ranked in the top-20 - especially in the top 10 or 15 - you have to lose several games before you fall out of the rankings.

but if you start the season and you are not ranked, you have to rattle off a lot of wins - and beat some higher-ranked teams - if you want to move into the rankings.

there appears to be a presumption that a team that starts the season ranked is a "good" team, while a team that starts the season un-ranked is not a "good" team. and it takes a lot of evidence to the contrary to get voters to change their perception of a team.

or, to paraphrase Newton's Laws of Motion:

a Ranked team tends to remain ranked until acted on by an equal and opposite force.

an un-ranked team tends to remain un-ranked until acted on by an equal and opposite force.

(I will save the lecture on force X mass = acceleration for another day.)
 

Illinois is 37th after the loss to MN. What were they at gametime?
 

Unfortunately, the USC win looks less impressive to pollsters as each week goes by. They might not even make a bowl game. Heck, UCLA might end up with a better record.
 


I wonder what the Gopher’s record (and ranking) would be playing the schedules of some of the teams ranked above them. Lol

Lots of BS in most rankings.
 


Anywhere in the 25-40 range feels about right. We have a few decent wins (USC, UCLA (??), Illinois), but also losses to three mediocre teams. We'd be ranked if we'd beaten any of UNC, Michigan, or Iowa - so it goes.

I also have a much harder time caring about the AP & Coaches polls these days. They quite literally mean nothing - perhaps a mild recruiting boost if you're consistently top 25, but even that doesn't seem to matter much.
 





Preseason Ranking

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Michigan (5-4), Florida State (1-8), Utah (4-4), Oklahoma (5-4), Oklahoma State (3-6), Kansas (2-6), USC (4-5), NC State (5-4).

Granted it was going to be hard to predict some programs playing in new matchups, in new conferences.
 





matt said:
Illinois dropped 11 spots for losing and we moved up 5 spots for winning.
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There are other factors involved though. They had to move both teams to get us in front of them but you also can't launch us in front of teams we don't deserve to be in front of like the ones who beat us head to head (though you could make a case for us being better than Michigan pretty easily at this point)
 

Washington received 4 votes in the latest top 25 rankings. Eeeesh.
 

with the transfer portal (and NIL), teams can change so much from season to season. that makes any pre-season rankings a much more difficult proposition. is every voter going to take a deep dive into the personnel changes for every team? I tend to think not.

like it or not, a lot of this still comes down to reputation - "Well, they were good last year, so they're probably going to be good again this year."

only, with the portal and coaching changes, a team like Michigan or Washington can go from the National Championship game to a mid-level team in its conference in one off-season.
 

FredCoxRocks said:
Washington received 4 votes in the latest top 25 rankings. Eeeesh.
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Looked up the opponent's overall win % of the teams with 4-2 and 3-3 conference records for the teams they lost to. Bold is their worst loss)

MN 3 losses have a .593 overall win % (UNC, IA, MI)
WI 4 losses have a .697 overall win % (ALA, USC, PSU, IA)
IA 3 losses at .720 (ISU, tOSU, MSU)
WA 4 losses at .765 (Wazzu, Rutgers, IA, IN)
MI 4 losses at .771 (TX, WA, IL, OR)
IL 3 losses at .846 (PSU, OR, MN)

Best Wins?
MN= IL
WI= NW or Rutgers
IA= MN
WA= MI or USC
MI= MN
IL= MI
 

short ornery norwegian said:
(I will save the lecture on force X mass = acceleration for another day.)
Click to expand...
Before you hit the lecture circuit, I feel the need to inform you that net force is equal to mass times acceleration, not acceleration equaling net force time mass. The science teacher in me couldn't overlook it 😄

Newton's Second Law of Motion

Newton's second law describes the affect of net force and mass upon the acceleration of an object. Often expressed as the equation a = Fnet/m (or rearranged to Fnet=m*a), the equation is probably the most important equation in all of Mechanics. It is used to predict how an object will...
www.physicsclassroom.com www.physicsclassroom.com
 

Ski-U-Ham said:
Before you hit the lecture circuit, I feel the need to inform you that net force is equal to mass times acceleration, not acceleration equaling net force time mass. The science teacher in me couldn't overlook it 😄

Newton's Second Law of Motion

Newton's second law describes the affect of net force and mass upon the acceleration of an object. Often expressed as the equation a = Fnet/m (or rearranged to Fnet=m*a), the equation is probably the most important equation in all of Mechanics. It is used to predict how an object will...
www.physicsclassroom.com www.physicsclassroom.com
Click to expand...

you blinded me with science!
 

I think our record results are consistent with a very middle of the pack big ten team. We are 4-2, but we lost our only game to a B1G team with a winning conference record, we are 1-1 against teams with an even conference record, and 3-0 against B1G teams with a losing conference record. Add in a loss to a losing ACC team, and I'm not offended by a ranking in the mid thirties.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
or, to paraphrase Newton's Laws of Motion:

a Ranked team tends to remain ranked until acted on by an equal and opposite force.

an un-ranked team tends to remain un-ranked until acted on by an equal and opposite force.

(I will save the lecture on force X mass = acceleration for another day.)
Click to expand...
Ranking "inertia" so to speak.
 

Word said:
Ranking "inertia" so to speak.
Click to expand...
Where feels most inequitable about the ranking inertia is when ranked teams beat other ranked teams who end up being bad. I feel like, if we had been ranked when we played USC, we would have gotten a big bump for beating a ranked team, and that bump would not have been adjusted back out of our ranking when it turned out they were bad. But, since we weren't ranked then, if we approach a spot where we might move into the rankings, we just have a win against a bad USC team and don't get any credit for them being ranked when we played them (which i actually think is the correct way to look at it, but it's frustrating that ranked teams seem to get to keep the credit for a good win against a team people thought we're good but turned out to be bad).
 


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