The Revision · 2025 week 1

Anybody can show you what they said in week 1.

This shows you what week 1 should have said. On the left is the ranking that got published that Sunday. On the right is the same week, rebuilt once the season had finished and every opponent had shown what they were actually worth.

Nothing about a team’s own results changes between the two columns. Only what its opponents turned out to be worth.

2025 week 1 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 1

once the season finished

1Central Michigan
2Rice
3LSU
4Georgia Tech
5Auburn
6Wyoming
7Mississippi State
8California
9Iowa State
10Nebraska
11Utah
12Temple
13UNLV
14TCU
15South Carolina
16Tennessee
17Miami
18Washington State
19Wake Forest
20Kent State
21Rutgers
22Northern Illinois
23App State
24Ohio State
25Kansas

Miami1
Iowa State2
LSU5
Ohio State6
Nebraska9
Auburn10
Mississippi State13
Georgia Tech19
Utah20
Rice22
Wake Forest23
TCU25
Rutgers26
UNLV27
Kansas28
California33
Central Michigan34
Wyoming36
South Carolina37
Tennessee41
Washington State47
Kent State58
Northern Illinois59
App State71
Temple83

Read a line’s angle as the size of the mistake. Flat means the week held up. The right-hand column is each team’s place among all 136 teams once the season was over, so a jump in those numbers is a team from outside this 25 moving in ahead of them. Of the 25 teams published that week, 25 ended up somewhere else and 0 stayed exactly where they were.

counts and the mean below are a tally of the published rank_delta field over the rows shown · 2025 week 1 · 8d6a6e80

25 of 25teams in the published top 25 were in the wrong spot, measured against the finished season

19.76places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 16.84

Both figures are about the same week. The top 25 is the part people argue about. The whole field is the part that would catch this model out, and it goes up every week whether it flatters anybody or not.

The receipts, team by team

These are the six teams the finished season moved furthest in week 1, and most of them are outside the published top 25. A poll that only ever showed you its own top 25 would never have to show you that.

Oregon77 to 4
Nothing about Oregon’s 1-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
1-0
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.00
power
10.8³⁰
résumé
60.0
gap
+49.2
90% rank range
46 to 81
Temple12 to 83
Nothing about Temple’s 1-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
1-0
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.05
power
24.6²
résumé
60.0
gap
+35.4
90% rank range
7 to 17
New Mexico State36 to 85
Nothing about New Mexico State’s 1-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
1-0
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.01
power
1.5⁸⁰
résumé
60.0
gap
+58.5
90% rank range
22 to 134
App State23 to 71
Nothing about App State’s 1-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
1-0
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
13.8¹³
résumé
60.0
gap
+46.2
90% rank range
14 to 31
USC87 to 39
Nothing about USC’s 1-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
1-0
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.00
power
13.2¹⁴
résumé
60.0
gap
+46.8
90% rank range
61 to 86
Oklahoma60 to 14
Nothing about Oklahoma’s 1-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
1-0
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.00
power
7.7⁴⁸
résumé
60.0
gap
+52.3
90% rank range
34 to 71

And inside the published top 25

Kent State20 to 58
Nothing about Kent State’s 1-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
1-0
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
-4.1¹⁰²
résumé
60.0
gap
+64.1
90% rank range
18 to 134
Northern Illinois22 to 59
Nothing about Northern Illinois’s 1-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
1-0
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
-4.1⁹⁹
résumé
60.0
gap
+64.1
90% rank range
19 to 135
Central Michigan1 to 34
Nothing about Central Michigan’s 1-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
1-0
schedule odds
1 in 2
rank key
0.18
power
12.3¹⁹
résumé
60.0
gap
+47.7
90% rank range
2 to 118
Wyoming6 to 36
Nothing about Wyoming’s 1-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
1-0
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.12
power
17.1⁶
résumé
60.0
gap
+42.9
90% rank range
3 to 120

It is supposed to shrink, and here is whether it did

September should move a long way when January grades it, and less every week after that. If it ever stopped falling, the weekly poll was never worth reading, and this is the table that would show it.

In week 5 the average top-25 team was 5.24 places out of position. By week 15 it was 0.44. A near-flat figure late in the season is not a boring page. It is the divergence curve doing its job.

week	top 25 moved	mean \|Δ\| top 25	mean \|Δ\| all 136	max \|Δ\| all 136
5	25 of 25	5.24	7.18	28
6	25 of 25	4.00	5.79	25
7	23 of 25	3.88	5.96	23
8	21 of 25	3.24	5.40	24
9	19 of 25	2.28	4.03	18
10	17 of 25	2.40	3.78	17
11	17 of 25	1.64	3.15	13
12	19 of 25	1.60	2.34	13
13	16 of 25	0.80	1.72	8
14	10 of 25	0.56	0.97	5
15	8 of 25	0.44	0.91	5
16	10 of 25	0.48	0.91	5

columns 2 and 3 are a tally over the 25 rows each week published · columns 4 and 5 are printed from 2025/divergence.json

What the two columns measure

Nearly every rankings page carries a plus-minus column, and on screen it looks exactly like this one. That column is the distance between this week’s list and last week’s. This is the distance between what week 1 said and what week 1 should have said, and the two are different measurements that happen to render as the same arrow.

Any ranking that rebuilds the whole season each week is already re-ranking its own past. That is how it works rather than a scandal. Keeping the old answer around is cheap. Publishing the gap is not, and this is the page that does it.

Move one of the settings behind this and watch the board answer →