Big 12 Power Rankings 2022.11.17

So I am trying something different for the rankings this week. I am bringing in a point system to help figure out where each team fits. The point system does not reward winning at home or punish losing on the road. Why should a team benefit from doing what they should do? It tries to reward a team or punish a team for doing what it shouldn’t, winning on the road and losing at home. I think it gives a better idea of how a team is performing on the field when each team does not get to play the same number of home games. A team playing 5 road games has more opportunity to be high in the rankings because they get an extra shot at doing the unexpected while a team playing 5 home games does not get extra credit for winning an extra game at home.

The point system is very simple and with so many teams so tightly bunched in the standing, I needed a way to figure out which teams have really outperformed the other. The system tries to account for the unbalanced schedules teams play while at the same time removing expectation bias from the rankings.

Points are awarded as follows:

• Home win +0
• Road win +2
• Neutral site win +1
• Neutral site loss -1
• Home loss -1
• Road loss +0

So this season though TCU has dominated with total wins, they have the advantage of an extra home game. K-State with two fewer conference wins also has 1 less home game on its schedule. So the system still has TCU at the top, but not by such a large gap that K-State could not overtake them if they win out and TCU losses this week to Baylor. It also puts KU ahead of Texas Tech despite KU’s loss to Tech this past weekend. Like TCU, Tech has the advantage of having 5 home games to KU’s 4. KU got an extra shot to do something unexpected this season and they took advantage of it by beating West Virginia on the road while Tech has no road wins.

The results of applying the point system (the point total for each team is to the right of their name) are below and represent this week’s rankings:

1. TCU: 6
2. KSU: 5
3. Baylor: 4
4. OSU: 2
5. Texas: 2
6. KU: 1
7. Texas Tech: -1
8. OU: -1
9. West Virginia: -2
10. Iowa St.: -3