College Football Power Ratings: Alabama holds steady despite loss to Oklahoma

Ever been in a situation where you’re about to tell somebody something you know will enrage them, and also know that rage will be directed at you, whether you’re responsible for it or not? Of course you have. It’s a part of life.

And I’m having one of those moments right now.

I regret to inform you all that the top four has no changes in the power ratings this week. Why is that a big deal? Well, because you might remember that the No. 4 team last week was the team that had been ranked No. 4 for some time now: Alabama. You might also remember that Alabama lost this weekend at home to Oklahoma.

Oh, and the Oklahoma team that beat Alabama is not ranked in our top 12. I’m going to get dragged!

So this is when I feel compelled to remind you all how power ratings work, and it’s another example of why power ratings should not be a primary consideration for the College Football Playoff field. Those rankings should be based on nothing but results in the current season.

But power ratings are designed to be predictive, not reactive. To do this, they take into account the parts of the football game that are repeatable and have shown over time to be the things that correlate the strongest with success. Or, in other words, they try to take as much of the “luck” and “chaos” out of the equation as possible to get a clearer picture. Of course, you can’t take luck or chaos out of life, and if you could, life wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.

Anyway, this is all my way of telling you that while Oklahoma beat Alabama, and does not have to feel bad about it, or apologize for it, the way Oklahoma went about beating Alabama isn’t exactly a method you can rely on week in and week out. I mean, if you look at another publicly available power rating, SP+ over at ESPN.com, the man behind that system, Bill Connelly, releases the win expectancy for every game based on how the game was played. His numbers say that, if the same game were played 100 times, Oklahoma would win 4.8 of those 100 games. Saturday’s game happened to be one of those 4.8 times.

So while Alabama’s loss hurt it in the human polls, and puts its SEC and playoff hopes in greater jeopardy than before — and rightfully so! — it doesn’t do much damage at all here. Odds via FanDuel Sportsbook 

Fell outside Top 12: Texas