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Lambert Power Rankings, 10/4/2008

In the spirit of the release of the GPI and other official ranking systems this week, I'm going to once again try something new and attempt to devise a "power ranking" for all of FCS East schools from DC to Maine. Let's call them the "Lambert Power Rankings".

It's formula-based and it's not something too difficult for my tiny little head to wrap itself around. Rising up the "Lambert Power Rankings" is easy: win games on your schedule, especially conference games and games vs. Eastern teams. Oh yeah, and play good teams, too: there's a "degree of difficulty" to my power rankings: beat up on patsies and it won't count as much as an FBS win.

Here are the first power rankings:

1. James Madison (CAA, 5-1, 59.5 points)
2. Richmond (CAA, 4-2, 52 points)
3. New Hampshire (CAA, 4-0, 45 points)
4. Villanova (CAA, 4-1, 45 points)
5. Cornell (Ivy, 3-0, 34.5 points)
6T. UMass (CAA, 4-1, 33 points)
6T. Central Connecticut State (NEC, 4-1, 33 points)
8. Liberty (Big South, 5-0, 30.75 points)
9. Lafayette (Patriot, 4-1, 30.5 points)
10. Hofstra (CAA, 2-3, 30 points)

There you have it.

[UPDATE] I thought it might be interesting to compare my (admittedly informal) ranking system to the Gridiron Power Index, or GPI, that was just released today by the College Sporting News. Here's the Top 10 Eastern schools from that system:

1. James Madison (1.00)
2. New Hampshire (4.13)
3. Richmond (5.25)
4. Villanova (7.13)
5. UMass (10.50)
6. Delaware (20.50)
7. Liberty (21.63)
8. Northeastern (24.88)
9. William & Mary (28.50)
10. Cornell (29.13)

Surprising that Delaware, Northeastern, and William & Mary are in the GPI at this point, while in my more informal one Hofstra, CCSU, and Lafayette are the teams in instead.

Here's the GPI of all the Patriot League schools.

47T Holy Cross (40.25)
50 Colgate (41.75)
53 Lafayette (43.25)
64 Fordham (50.13)
73 Bucknell (56.75)
74 Lehigh (56.88)
103T Georgetown (74.38)

Of the eight playoff conferences, the Patriot League right now would be considered seventh-best autobid conference out of eight autobid conferences, ranking 9 overall (behind six of the other seven playoff conferences, the Great West Football Conference, and the Ivy League). They rank ahead of the MEAC, the eighth autobid conference, by a pretty wide margin (51.91 to 61.94).

Notably, the Patriot League as a conference is .02 percentage points above the Big South (51.91 vs. 51.93), who is getting an automatic autobid in 2010.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Wow! We will really have hit an all-time low if we lose to the higher ranked Bucknell. Maybe I should worry about Georgetown too. And this is all Lembo's fault, right?

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