Current Ratings and Tiers...

Here's something we haven't posted in awhile, at least not formally... Here are the Following Football ratings system numbers for the AFL and CFL, respectively. (50 is average on the AFL system; 30 is average for the CFL clubs.)

AFL)
Hawthorn (15-6) - 89.1 (set a record rating in their hot streak at 108.1)
West Coast (15-5-1) - 80.1
Adelaide (13-7-1) - 78.7 (at their high for the year, playing their best for the year)
Sydney (15-6) - 76.0
Richmond (14-7) - 72.7
Western (14-7) - 68.3
Fremantle (17-4) - 62.9 (the low rating is very indicative of the way they've played the last month)
Port Adelaide (11-10) - 62.8 (similarly, the Power have played like a finals team recently)
North Melbourne (13-8) - 62.5
Geelong (10-9-2) - 48.2 (the large gap indicates the Cats really didn't belong in finals this year)
Collingwood (10-11) - 43.1 (down from their high of 60.0 before calamity struck)
GWS (11-10) - 40.8 (the last of the "competitive" teams)
St. Kilda (6-14-1) - 27.7 (started the season at 10.8)
Gold Coast (4-16-1) - 24.9 (started at 46.7 before the injuries hit)
Melbourne (6-15) - 20.2
Essendon (5-16) - 19.1 (have dropped over thirty points since round 9)
Brisbane (3-18) - 17.7
Carlton (4-17) - 4.9 (a record low; started the season at 37.5)

CFL)
Hamilton (6-3) - 41.6 (a product of the dominant nature of their victories)
Calgary (7-2) - 40.3 (started the season #1 and has declined from a very high 46 rating since)
Edmonton (6-3) - 34.8
Montreal (4-5) - 33.4 (surprisingly high for a 4-5 team, but their last two wins were impressive)
Toronto (6-3) - 28.9 (surprisingly low for a 6-3 team, but down five points since week 5)
BC Lions (3-5) - 25.5
Saskatchewan (0-9) - 23.5 (indicative of the close losses most games have been)
Ottawa (5-4) - 21.6 (climbed a long way from the sub-10 rating at the end of last year)
Winnipeg (3-6) - 20.4

As for the National Football League and the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision, we use a tiered system, especially at first, to separate groups of teams, refusing to distinguish close differences until a larger body of work allows us to do so more accurately. We strive to start from a neutral perspective for all teams to begin with, but the combination of what we see and hear in pre-season and the recent history of each team does make it almost necessary to break the body up into largish groups - as we mentioned yesterday, we're pretty sure Oklahoma will still be better than Georgia State this year!

So, here are our opening tiers for the NFL, with teams in no particular order:
Tier I: New England, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Green Bay, Seattle, Arizona, Denver, Baltimore, Dallas and Philadelphia.
Tier II: Buffalo, Houston, KC, Carolina, St. Louis, Miami, New Orleans, Detroit, San Diego, Cincinnati, NY Giants, Atlanta and Minnesota.
Tier III: Chicago, Jacksonville, NY Jets, Cleveland, Washington, Oakland, Tampa, Tennessee, and San Francisco.
> Assuming those could be completely wrong is always a good idea - like the CFP committee, we try to start fresh every week and re-evaluate each team on its then-current body of work. If San Francisco kicks the Vikings behind from here to Malaysia, we'll adjust their position accordingly.

And finally, college football starts this weekend! We've divided the 128 FBS teams into four general tiers to start from, but rather than write them all out here, just take last year's final list and draw dividing lines at the quarter marks, about 32 to the tier. That's not a bad estimation of our starting groups! Wednesday, we'll lay out our predictions for the OFFICIAL opening week of the college football season, as well as Round 23 of the AFL season and the eleventh week of the CFL! (If anyone's betting on the last pre-season games of the NFL, when the starters probably won't even play... you deserve whatever you get.)