College Football Transitivity Rankings - Week 7

After a relatively tame set of games, not a lot has changed in the Transitivity Rankings. Let's see where everyone stands after seven weeks of action (if you're new to this series, you can check out a brief description of the rankings in last week's entry.)

At the top of the rankings, the most upwardly mobile were Memphis, Michigan State, and Iowa. All three picked up solid victories on Saturday and saw their rankings improve by double digits. Less fortunate was Texas A&M, who was number 2 last week but dropped to number 20 after their loss to Alabama.

A quick browsing of the rankings will identify two teams whose positions violently disagree with this week's AP poll. The first is AP number 23 Duke. This system is not at all impressed with the Duke's victories, as the Blue Devils rank just 68th in wins, and 50th overall. The other team is Washington State, which the Transitivity Rankings have slotted at number 15, but the voters aren't even mentioning. There's a good reason for this, namely the Cougars' season-opening loss to FCS Portland State. This ranking system completely ignores games against FCS competition, hence it only sees a one-loss team with a decent number of transitive wins to its name. I'd expect this anomaly to work itself out eventually, but for now we'll have to live with it.

Interactive Path Finder

Want a little more information on who has beaten whom, transitively speaking? Then dive into our interactive path finder! If ridiculously long paths are your thing, then you'll want to pick one of Buffalo, Rice, Vanderbilt, or Western Kentucky as your winning team, and either Fresno State or UNLV as your losing team. Any one of these selections reveals a 14-game shortest path. In terms of actual, point-to-point distances, the longest path stretches nearly 15,000 miles between winner Buffalo and loser UCF.