MRISports.com: MRI Football 2008

MRI Football 2008 - Rankings Week 7

November 3, 2008 | By Benjamin Miraski

Joe Paterno might have a little to complain about in the polls, but not with the MRI. I can only imagine what life was like in the Paterno house on Sunday. Penn State coach Joe Paterno opens his paper, turns on the television to watch a little football, and sees that he gets jumped in the polls.

Something tells me that the Paternos are in the market for a new television.

I can see the shoe flying across the room now, shattering the screen as the AP, the coaches and the BCS show Penn State in third, jumped by Texas Tech.

I can partially understand the vote. Texas Tech beat the top team in the country, and that could mean they were better than a team that didn't play.

Yeah, something like that.

Sorry, this one doesn't make sense to me. Alabama ahead of Penn State makes little sense to me, as Alabama (the Arkansas State game not withstanding) has struggled to prevail over many of its SEC opponents.

If it is any consolation to Penn State, they still lead in the MRI.

Early in the day, it looked as if Penn State were destined to slip to second, but that would have required a win by Texas, something that eluded the Longhorns.

Instead, the idle Nittany Lions held on to the top spot.

They managed to stay ahead of what may be the hottest team in the country, Florida. The Gators rolled another opponent over the weekend, this time in the form of Georgia.

Since its 1-point loss to Mississippi, Florida has outscored its opponents 201 - 43 in four straight wins. The team's performance has been so hot that Tim Tebow has pulled himself from an also ran back into the Heisman Trophy conversation, something that in the first few weeks of the year looked like another failed repeat attempt.

Holding in third place is USC, a team that had the pleasure of destroying one-half of the joke in the Northwest, Washington.

The Trojans will have a tough case to make in the BCS this year though. Unlike years past, the PAC-10 has struggled, and not just against BCS competition, but against teams from the Mountain West too.

So the men from Troy still have a long way to go to erase their performance against Oregon State from the minds of the voters.

The now once-defeated Texas Longhorns fall to fourth this week. Despite a very poor defensive performance, the close loss kept them from falling even further in the standings. Texas now has to hope for an Oklahoma victory over the Texas Tech Red Raiders to have a hope of winning the Big XII South division.

Rounding out the top five this week is TCU, who took out UNLV. While TCU has the loss against Oklahoma, they remain firmly in the hunt for consideration of who is the best non-automatic qualifier team.

The Horned Frogs record might have a blemish but that can quickly be kept from the voters' minds if they can defeat Utah on Thursday night. The win would secure the conference for TCU and place them in the same conversation with Boise State for a BCS slot.

The MRI correctly predicted 72 percent of the games with home field advantage factored in last week. The system has predicted 70.88 percent of games all-time.

Check out all the rankings in week 7 of the football MRI.

MRI Top 25 Rankings

Rank	Team	Record	MRI	LW
1	Penn State	9-0	97.31	1
2	Florida	7-1	93.54	5
3	USC	7-1	91.52	3
4	Texas	8-1	90.15	2
5	TCU	9-1	84.68	6
6	Oklahoma	8-1	83.56	9
7	Texas Tech	9-0	77.54	7
8	Tulsa	8-1	76.87	4
9	Alabama	9-0	75.93	8
10	Boise State	8-0	69.89	13
11	Utah	9-0	68.36	11
12	Oklahoma State	8-1	68.11	12
13	Missouri	7-2	66.75	10
14	Ohio State	7-2	61.03	14
15	BYU	8-1	59.18	16
16	Cal	6-2	59.01	17
17	Georgia	7-2	55.50	15
18	Arizona	5-3	54.13	18
19	Iowa	5-4	48.40	19
20	Michigan State	8-2	48.21	20
21	Oregon State	5-3	47.69	22
22	Minnesota	7-2	46.94	21
23	Oregon	6-3	46.20	24
24	Ball State	8-0	46.15	NR(26)
25	Air Force	7-2	45.83	NR(28)

Teams Dropped From The Top 25: Florida State (LW #23, TW #29), South Florida (LW #25, TW #30)

Other Teams People Might Care About

Rank	Team	Record	MRI	LW
26	Georgia Tech	7-2	43.28	30
29	Florida State	6-2	42.52	23
31	LSU	6-2	41.57	40
32	Northern Illinois	5-3	41.13	31
34	Miami	6-3	38.30	37
35	Notre Dame	5-3	37.96	34
39	Northwestern	7-2	35.21	48
40	Pittsburgh	6-2	34.42	43
41	Wisconsin	4-5	34.23	39
42	Illinois	5-4	33.78	41
43	Nebraska	5-4	33.67	33
46	Vanderbilt	5-3	32.28	42
51	Boston College	5-3	28.58	36
58	Maryland	6-2	27.26	56
67	Tennessee	3-6	21.59	50
68	Duke	4-4	20.78	66
70	Auburn	4-5	20.40	64
71	Clemson	4-4	19.34	70
82	Texas A&M	4-5	5.65	91
84	UCLA	3-5	5.31	86
88	Purdue	3-6	2.23	97
100	Indiana	3-6	-9.17	101
101	Michigan	2-7	-9.85	100
113	Miami(Ohio)	2-6	-27.35	114
119	Washington State	1-8	-66.01	118

Last Place this week: Idaho (2-8) at -73.77. 6th week in a row.

Biggest Gain this week: Oklahoma gained 15.62 points. (Beat Nebraska (62-28))

Biggest Loss this week: UAB lost 18.68 points (Lost to Southern Mississippi (14-70))

Conference rankings this week: Big 12, SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big East, Mountain West, PAC-10, MAC, C-USA, WAC, Sun Belt

The MRI Rankings are copyright 2008 by MRISports.com. Ben Miraski is a reporter for the Medill News Service, edits and writes for MRISports.com and is a featured blogger on FanIQ. Readers can contact Ben at bmiraski@mrisports.com

Posted November 3, 2008 8:31 AM

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