Paul Prattles On

Welcome Back! The Power Rankings are much improved this year, and so far I'm pretty happy with how they are working.  They are still far from perfect, but they're much better than when I first introduced them 2 years ago.  If you've been following me for 2 years, then you'll know that the 1st year was marred by too many ties in the rankings.  Last year was better, but there were still too many ties.  This week, there are no ties again- 2nd week in a row!  One other thing I'm happy about is that my rankings contain no "knee jerk" reactions.  One loss won't drop a team 30 spots, nor will a big win move them that far. First, a few clarifications about the rankings.  I assign a point value to each win and loss.  Depending on how far away a team is from the ones above or below, and how those teams did, a team may move up or down, or may not move at all.  A team may win and move down, or lose and move up, or stay the same.  It all dep...

Welcome back! What an exciting weekend of college football- close games, big upsets, and blowouts (of course).  3 of the top 4 teams- and the 3 predicted by most to finish at the top- all lost, and the 3 teams that led the ACC Coastal going into the weekend all lost.  Chaos reigns! There were no games against FCS competition this week. One interesting tidbit: 5-win teams were only 8-12 this week.  3 of those wins (and losses) were to other 5-win teams.  That means that when 5-win teams played against teams with a lesser record (none played a 6 or 7 win team), they were 5-9. Here is how the games turned out, and some thoughts on each (or at least most). FBS vs FBS games SMU hung on to defeat Houston on Thursday night, 34-31.  The Mustangs remain undefeated, and are set up for a big game against Memphis on Saturday (ESPN Gameday will be there!).  The Cougars were expected to do well this year, but are...

Welcome back! Last week was back to normal, as I went 49-13 for a .790 win percentage!  Overall, I am 396-107, which is still 78.7%.  Still not too bad, but I'm still below 80%, and I'm afraid I'll probably stay there for the rest of the season.  My goal now is to stay above 75%!  There are a lot of interesting games this week as most teams have finished their non-conference slate, but there are a few still remaining.  There is only no games against an FCS program this week. I will be out of town this weekend, so I will be keeping up with scores by phone, and occasionally seeing part of a game here and there. On to the predictions! Thursday, October 17 SMU @ Houston - The Mustangs are one of the surprise teams in all of CFB, but this is a dangerous game playing on the road against the Cougars.  SMU stays undefeated, but it won't be easy.  SM...