The poll (or ranking) starts out with the previous year's final poll, then I average that with the coaches preseason and the order that the teams are predicted to finish in their conference (I do use a little personal opinion there, but it is mostly from SI). I then factor in schedule strength (based on previous year's finish). I rank the conference number 1's at the top of the first-poll, so as to be fair to all conferences. From then on out, it is all based on who you play & how you perform. Sub-FCS games get a flat point and FBS games get points awarded on their rank in the FBS power poll. As a result. teams that play an all-FCS schedule have an advantage. I expect every team to win, so even if a team schedules a money-game, it makes no difference ...you lose, you drop. The reason I did this is because the purpose of the poll/rank is to determine the teams to go to the play-off. Additionally, many teams are very good (Penn, Holy-Cross, Florida A&M, Duquesne, Dayton and others) but play in a poor conference. This way they can still earn a sport in the play-off. Conference games are factored at a lower rate the OOC games, as they are traditionally more difficult; same with away games vs home. Then we adjust each week.
For example. teams 1-24 get 10-points for the coming week. If they play a weaker opponent, they lose points. There are a number of factors that add or remove starting points. So if #5 is playing #55, and the difference is 13.5 points ...#5 has to beat #55 by 13.5-points just to break-even, as I expect them to win. In some cases, weaker teams will play well against a better opponent and they will actually earn more points than the winner. These points are then added to the final score of each game. I then award points as follows:
1-point for each 7-points scored. So if you score 24-points, your team will receive 3.4 points. The reason that I do this is just in case a team has a bad game, they are not penalized too harshly.
The point factors are always the same, but amounts will vary each week of the season. We assume injuries and other items to take their toll on teams. At the end of the regular-season we take the #1's from each conference and put them in the post-season as AQ's. We rank the conferences overall and within each region. Then we round out the at-large participants based on NCAA region and total points. This is to ensure that each region and conference is fairly-represented. We end the poll on the last day of the regular-season; as it is not fair for a team who keeps on playing to have opportunity to move up, when another team does not.
A lot of people hate the way I set up the rankings, because they feel the top-16, 24, or whatever teams should go ...I do not feel that way. I feel that recruiting is damaged when a conference dominates. For example, the OVC has been down for a while, but historically they are a top-conference ...same goes with the SoCon. Recruits are going to skip going to local schools, or conference schools based on the ability to go to the post-season. Thus conferences never have tough teams. Now if recruits know that the OVC has the same number of team going to the post-season, they will not skip to the MVFC, MEAC, or CAA. In the end it is much more fair.
