UPS and DOWNS for Tuesday, the first week of November!

As the college football playoff committee puts out its rankings tonight, and Following Football has done the same over the last two days for all 285 pro and college teams we cover, it's a great time to look at which teams have had a surprisingly UP season, and which ones have been startlingly DOWN...

WHO'S UP? Well, what about the Cincinnati Bengals and the Carolina Panthers? Everyone who saw both of them at 7-0 starting November raise your hands. OK, we've identified the liars in the room...

WHO'S DOWN? It's not hard to find struggling teams in the NFL, but a couple we saw in the playoffs last year are the Baltimore Ravens and the Detroit Lions. Tough schedule, sure - close games, yes - but somewhere in there, you've got to stand up and win a couple of those games.

WHO'S UP? Three "usual suspects": the Green Bay Packers, the Denver Broncos, and the New England Patriots. Remarkable to watch Peyton be Peyton again, but Rodgers and Brady have left no doubt that they're still at the top of their games. And all three have defenses to get them the ball.

WHO'S DOWN? Again, who do you expect? The Tennessee Titans, of course, who just fired another coach...the Cleveland Browns, who continue to put up with Manziel for some odd reason...the Chicago Bears weren't expected to do much, and still haven't lived up to expectations... and even with their shiny new QB, the Tampa Bay Bucs are barely better than they were at this point last year.

WHO'S UP? There are signs of life in Oakland...in Minnesota...in Atlanta...in St. Louis. Parity is always the stated goal of the NFL admin, but what you really want is the feeling as a fan base that any year could be THE YEAR!

WHO'S DOWN? When you've got a fan base like the Sasktachewan RoughRiders do, arguably the best in the Canadian Football League, and you were expecting to be contending for the Grey Cup, when you were right on the heels of the eventual champion Calgary Stampeders all season...and you go a miserable two and fifteen heading into the final week of the season...yeah, the green is blue this year. The Riders were actually eliminated from playoff contention six weeks ago...in a league where 2/3 of the teams make the playoffs. THAT'S impressive in its badness.

WHO'S UP? When you went 2-16 last year in your first campaign as an expansion franchise, you can be forgiven if a successful second season in your mind was, say, six wins. Looking at the two expansion clubs in the AFL (Gold Coast and GWS), they went through about that - two bad years, then two mediocre years. But instead, the Ottawa RedBlacks are one win away from an Eastern Division championship in their second year - already guaranteed a winning record at 11-6, all they need to do is win OR not lose by more than five points at home on Saturday to the Hamilton Ti-Cats...not the first choice of opponents in this situation, especially since it's the Ti-Cats who will earn the title if you fail. But just to have this opportunity in your sophomore campaign! CONGRATULATIONS, OTTAWA!

WHO'S DOWN? My attention span for Canadian football once the American season hit full steam in late September. It was frustrating, because I knew I didn't have the time or energy to stay abreast of every single thing in the NFL, NCAA, and the CFL - and as the footy season was reaching its climax down under, it was the mid-to-late weeks of the Canadian season that got the short shrift. To our readers, I apologize. But of course, all we can do is our best, and we'll continue to do that for you.

WHO'S UP? At the moment, we have our top four "theoretically playoff bound" FBS teams (in the humble opinion of Following Football ACNC!) - LSU, Clemson, Alabama, Notre Dame. To most observers we've heard, the first two names are almost indisputable at the moment (things change quickly in college football, though!), and the other two could be replaced by any of close to a dozen teams: TCU, Baylor, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St, Michigan St, Ohio St, Florida, Stanford, Iowa, Utah, even Memphis or Toledo. (Probably not Idaho, though.)

WHO'S DOWN? Which teams thought they'd be in the mix at this point and aren't? There are some obvious candidates: Georgia, Auburn, Oregon, USC, Tennessee, There are some others whose fan bases might have thought it feasible - but that's another story.

WHO'S UP? There are some remarkable positive stories this fall of teams who weren't expected to fare as successfully as they have, as there are every year. That doesn't make them any less worth applauding: Florida (new head coach Jim McElwain has them sitting at #7 on the Following Football ranking at the moment; finished the 2014 season at #34), Michigan (Harbaugh took a team who finished at #67 last year, bottom half of the FBS, and has them at #14 right now), Houston (up from #69 last year to an undefeated 8-0 at #21 and looking at a possible New Year's bowl); and Temple (similar story arc, moving from #79 to current #22, having just taken Notre Dame to the brink). There are lower eschelon stories as well: Southern Miss moved from tier S up to its current tier L; Tulsa has bounded from tier T up to tier N this year. Vanderbilt from tier R up to its present place in tier I; and Northwestern, who beat Stanford to start the year, Duke for its only legitimate defeat (ahem, Miami), and moved from last year's tier M and #78 all the way into tier G and position #35.

WHO'S DOWN? And then... there are the sob stories. The ones you tsk tsk about behind their backs. The ones who (in your opinion) deserve a bad year every once in a while... How about Texas? Charlie Strong's first year looked promising! But with a blowout, embarrassing loss to Notre Dame (well, ok), embarrassing near-misses against California and OK State (hmmm...), a bad loss at TCU (eww...), a surprise win in the Shootout (hey! Maybe...) followed by definitive losses to two foes they used to pick their teeth with the last two weeks: K-State and Iowa State. Read that again. Iowa State! The Texas offense was not only shut out, they never got past the ISU 40 yard line.

But that pales next to Nebraska, who fired a coach who gave them nine wins a season every year - AGAIN. A decade ago, they fired Frank Solich because he wasn't Tom Osborne. The man they hired to replace him...was no Frank Solich. Disaster - they didn't even make .500! In desperation, they brought in NU guy Bo Pelini - colorful, successful, nine wins a season, just like Solich (who went on to be one of the most successful coaches in MAC history). Seven years of Pelini NOT being Tom Osborne was enough for the faithful, and they brought in Mike Riley, a very nice man with a mediocre program at Oregon State, who has produced a mediocre program at Nebraska, finding exciting ways to lose close games to good teams and sometimes to bad teams like Purdue last weekend.

South Carolina was doing badly enough that the Head Ball Coach simply walked away into retirement. Central Florida saw the same story with Head Resume Inflator in the lead walking role. Whether the story ends the same way at Virginia Tech in Frank Beamer's last year remains to be seen. It looks like Minnesota's going to be hanged if they allow Jerry Kill's epilepsy-induced retirement to end the same way, thankfully.

WHAT'S NEXT? Who knows? And isn't that the beauty of football? It's the best reality show there is - all the drama, the competition, the tension of the staged TV events, except it's actual reality! There IS no script! Maybe Texas turns it around! Maybe Florida nosedives the rest of the way! Maybe Jim Harbaugh takes Michigan to four miraculous victories against Ohio State, Iowa in the B1G title game, the semifinal and the NC game, and the Blue rule the nation! Or...just as unlikely...maybe they lose every game from here on out, including a 59-0 shutout by the Buckeyes. That's the point - we can't know ahead of time! So sit back, turn on the TV, go to a game if you're close enough, and enjoy the ride!

"Big 12 expansion is not just a possibility..."

Not that it's going to happen just yet, but here's an article from a visit with OU president David Boren, laying out the timetable (in the next ten years) for the expansion of the Big 12 back to (at least) 12 - expansion which "is not just a possibility, but an inevitability" for the long-term survival of the league.

Pat Forde evaluates the current college coaching carousel - capiche?

Actually, that's all I need to say...

Comparing the final rankings...

It's always interesting to compare opinions, especially when the entire point of sports is to enjoy the competition between your guys and their guys and in doing so, comparing the two teams - and in the context of an entire season, comparing your guys to a slough of "their guys" and deciding how far up the ladder your guys are. (Ladies: "guys" is meant as a unisex term here.)

So, with that in mind, here's a list based on the Following Football #1-128 tiered ranking system that includes the final poll from the AP writers, the Sagaring rating system (if you need a primer in the Sagarin system, let me know!), the Massey Index (which compares and compiles 91 different computer and human ranking systems and then provides us with (for lack of a better term) a 'consensus' result), and the Superlist, which combines the six known meta-lists and gives us a different kind of consensus!

(The Sagarin rating and rank are in red simply to make the two connect visually better. The actual Sagarin rankings include the FCS teams: Eastern Michigan is really #208 in the country, out of 252! Also, the letters on the Massey rankings are tiers, just like FF uses: while these come from our hand, they're denoting the natural breaks in the totals - where there's a big gap between schools and where the groupings are.)

				Final		Final	Final	Final
Final			Final	Sagarin		Massey	Superlist	AP
Ranking	Team	Conf	Record	rating		Ranking	Ranking	rank
A1	Ohio St	b10	14-1	100.81	1	A1	1	1
A2	Oregon	pac	13-2	95.71	4	A2	2	2
A3	Alabama	sec	12-2	96.83	3	A3	3	4
A4	Florida St	acc	13-1	84.86	16	B7	6	5T
A5	TCU	b12	12-1	99.58	2	A4	4	3
B06	Michigan St	b10	11-2	93.36	6	B+5	5	5T
B07	Baylor	b12	11-2	90.57	7	B8	8	7
B08	Georgia Tech	acc	11-3	87.42	12	C09	11	8
B09	Mississippi St	sec	10-3	89.19	9	C12	14	11
B10	Georgia	sec	10-3	95.13	5	B6	7	9
B11	UCLA	pac	10-3	84.71	17	C11	9	10
C12	Ole Miss	sec	9-4	89.82	8	C10	10	17
C13	Missouri	sec	11-3	85.06	15	D13	13	14
C14	Kansas St	b12	9-4	84.48	19	E20	24	18
C15	Clemson	acc	10-3	87.03	13	D15	12	15
C16	Wisconsin	b10	11-3	83.48	21	D14	15	13
C17	Auburn	sec	8-5	88.40	11	E16	17	22
D18	Boise St	mw	12-2	77.43	36	E17	19	16
D19	Arizona St	pac	10-3	81.96	25	E19	16	12
D20	USC	pac	9-4	84.19	20	E18	18	20
D21	Arizona	pac	10-4	77.76	33	E22	20	19
D22	LSU	sec	8-5	85.53	14	F25	26
D23	Utah	pac	9-4	82.75	23	F26	23	21
E24	Texas A&M	sec	8-5	82.82	22	G29	27
E25	Stanford	pac	8-5	84.61	18	F24	22
E26	Arkansas	sec	7-6	88.48	10	F23	21
E27	Nebraska	b10	9-4	81.09	29	G28	30
E28	Oklahoma	b12	8-5	81.47	27	G30	31
E29	Louisville	acc	9-4	80.60	30	G27	28	24
E30	Marshall	cusa	13-1	82.36	24	E21	25	23
E31	Notre Dame	ind	8-5	79.83	31	H+32	32
E32	Minnesota	b10	8-5	76.17	37	H34	35
E33	Duke	acc	9-4	74.99	41	I40	40
F34	Florida	sec	7-5	81.48	26	H+31	29
F35	South Carolina	sec	7-6	77.56	35	I39	38
F36	Colorado St	mw	10-3	69.51	60	I38	37
F37	Memphis	aac	10-3	76.11	38	H33	34	25
G38	West Virginia	b12	7-6	78.53	32	I+36	36
G39	Washington	pac	8-6	74.34	43	J+43	39
G40	Cincinnati	aac	8-4	71.48	55	J46	53
G41	Miami-FL	acc	6-7	75.08	40	K49	51
G42	Utah St	mw	10-4	72.70	49	J+41	45
H43	North Carolina St	acc	8-5	73.21	45	J+42	42
H44	Maryland	b10	7-6	72.39	52	K54	48
H45	Tennessee	sec	7-6	81.39	28	H35	33
H46	Northern Illinois	mac	11-3	68.08	65	K53	54
H47	Rutgers	b10	8-5	70.53	59	J47	41
H48	Penn St	b10	7-6	73.55	44	K55	49
H49	Air Force	mw	10-3	67.79	69	J45	47
I50	Texas	b12	6-7	72.42	51	K51	52
I51	Oklahoma St	b12	7-6	72.46	50	K50	44
I52	Iowa	b10	7-6	73.13	46	L+57	56
I53	Boston College	acc	7-6	74.36	42	J48	50
I54	Kentucky	sec	5-7	73.04	47	M70	64
J55	Central Florida	aac	9-4	71.18	56	K56	61
J56	East Carolina	aac	8-5	69.44	62	L62	69
J57	BYU	ind	8-5	71.61	53	K52	55
J58	Louisiana Tech	cusa	9-5	77.57	34	I37	46
J59	Virginia Tech	acc	7-6	75.30	39	J44	43
J60	Navy	ind	8-5	68.05	66	L+58	57
K61	North Carolina	acc	6-7	67.60	70	M69	63
K62	Georgia Southern	sun	9-3	69.47	61	L59	62
K63	UL-Lafayette	sun	9-4	66.68	71	M66	67
K64	Western Kentucky	cusa	8-5	66.24	73	L64	70
Final			Final	Sagarin		Massey	Superlist
Ranking	Team	Conf	Record	rating		Ranking	Ranking
K65	California	pac	5-7	71.55	54	M65	58
K66	Oregon St	pac	5-7	66.05	75	N76	71
K67	Michigan	b10	5-7	70.70	58	L63	59
L68	Western Michigan	mac	8-5	64.84	80	N75	78
L69	Houston	aac	8-5	67.89	68	M-71	75
L70	Pitt	acc	6-7	70.86	57	M68	72
L71	Illinois	b10	6-7	65.10	77	N+73	73
L72	Nevada	mw	7-6	64.28	81	N+74	74
L73	Toledo	mac	9-4	68.01	67	L61	65
M74	Texas Tech	b12	4-8	66.48	72	O+78	77
M75	Virginia	acc	5-7	72.79	48	L60	60
M76	Rice	cusa	8-5	68.39	64	M67	66
M77	San Diego St	mw	7-6	64.12	82	N-77	79
M78	Northwestern	b10	5-7	69.29	63	M-72	68
N79	Temple	aac	6-6	65.00	79	O81	83
N80	Bowling Green	mac	8-6	57.13	98	P89	90
N81	Arkansas St	sun	7-6	65.04	78	P+83	86
N82	Central Michigan	mac	7-6	62.07	87	P86	88
O83	Fresno St	mw	6-8	59.13	92	P88	85
O84	UTEP	cusa	7-6	61.44	89	O82	80
O85	UAB	cusa	6-6	65.30	76	O+79	82
O86	Washington St	pac	3-9	66.18	74	O80	76
O87	Texas St	sun	7-5	58.75	93	P90	92
O88	Appalachian St	sun	7-5	61.82	88	P87	95
O89	Kansas	b12	3-9	58.31	94	Q95	91
O90	Syracuse	acc	3-9	62.97	84	P91	87
O91	South Alabama	sun	6-7	55.89	104	Q96	98
P92	Purdue	b10	4-8	62.34	86	Q94	94
P93	Ohio	mac	6-6	54.80	107	R099	104
P94	Middle Tennessee	cusa	6-6	60.79	91	P+84	84
P95	Colorado	pac	2-10	62.93	85	Q+93	93
P96	Iowa St	b12	2-10	61.38	90	R+97	96
Q097	UL-Monroe	sun	4-8	55.96	103	S107	108
Q098	Ball St	mac	5-7	57.68	96	R102	105
Q099	Wyoming	mw	4-8	56.46	102	R098	97
Q100	Buffalo	mac	5-6	53.54	110	S108	114
Q101	Wake Forest	acc	3-9	56.50	101	S+103	102
Q102	Indiana	b10	3-9	64.04	83	P+85	81
R103	Hawai'i	mw	4-9	56.78	100	S106	101
R104	Old Dominion	cusa	6-6	58.08	95	Q+92	89
R105	South Florida	aac	4-8	52.68	114	S109	110
R106	New Mexico	mw	4-8	55.18	105	R101	99
R107	Vanderbilt	sec	3-9	57.14	97	R100	100
R108	FIU	cusa	4-8	56.99	99	S104	106
S109	Florida Atlantic	cusa	3-9	53.75	109	T+112	111
S110	Akron	mac	5-7	54.86	106	S110	112
S111	Tulane	aac	3-9	53.29	112	T+111	107
S112	Army	ind	4-8	51.59	117	T116	116
S113	North Texas	cusa	4-8	52.95	113	T115	113
S114	Southern Miss	cusa	3-9	53.54	111	T113	115
T115	San Jose St	mw	3-9	52.04	115	T114	109
T116	UT-San Antonio	sun	4-7	54.31	108	S105	103
T117	Miami-OH	mac	2-10	50.26	118	U120	121
T118	Troy	sun	3-9	46.10	123	U122	122
T119	Tulsa	aac	2-10	48.43	119	U118	118
T120	UNLV	mw	2-11	46.94	121	U121	119
U121	Kent St	mac	2-9	47.47	120	U119	120
U122	U Massachusetts	mac	3-9	51.69	116	U117	117
U123	U Conn	aac	2-10	44.70	125	V+123	123
U124	Idaho	sun	1-10	46.66	122	V125	127
U125	Eastern Michigan	mac	2-10	38.77	128	V126	126
U126	SMU	aac	1-11	39.15	127	V124	124
V127	New Mexico St	sun	2-10	45.20	124	V127	125
V128	Georgia St	sun	1-11	41.00	126	V-128	128

A few interesting things to notice:  Yes, Ohio State gets #1 in all systems, but not really unanimously. TCU actually had the highest Sagarin rating by two full points before the Buckeye beatdown on Oregon's finest...Florida State's position is as uncertain as ever: we still have them fourth, since we had them top four and in the playoff before it started; but some organizations drop them out of the top four, and in fact their rankings range from 4 down to 16!...Michigan State's in the top six in every system. Big month for the B1G!...Lotta love for Marshall in the final analysis - top 25 in all set-ups except ours...Also hard to believe the last place team in a division could be in the top 25, but Arkansas' annihilation of Texas and the last few games of their season is pushing their stock up into the high twenties!...Florida, Tennessee, Virginia Tech, and Louisiana Tech are all getting much higher rankings from all of the other systems than we gave them: I guess we're going to have to take another look, aren't we?...Certain combinations you tend to look for automatically, right? Nebraska finished ahead of Oklahoma across the board; Michigan is generally ahead of their directional schools, especially up-and-coming Western Michigan...Speaking of Broncos, how about Boise State, carrying the banner for the small programs once again - the first non-power conference team to win three BCS/New Year's Six games (only one to PLAY in that many, too!)...If this really was Alabama-Birmingham's last year of football, they fared commendably: 6-6, with every ranking between 76 and 85....The dis-honor of the lowest Power Conference team goes to Wake Forest, although within the FF rankings, Vanderbilt fell below the Demon Deacons....And, as always, the Bottom Twelve or so are set in concrete, with virtually identical membership from all four rating systems (Army gets its nose in twelfth from the bottom on the Sagarin scale) - Miami - OH, Troy, Tulsa, UNLV, Kent St, UMass, UConn, Idaho, Eastern Michigane, SMU, New Mexico St, and last place holder, Georgia St. A lack of sincerity in our congratulations to ALL of you!