The Revision · 2025 week 10

Anybody can show you what they said in week 10.

This shows you what week 10 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 10 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 10

once the season finished

1Indiana
2Texas A&M
3BYU
4Ohio State
5Alabama
6Texas Tech
7Georgia
8Ole Miss
9Virginia
10Louisville
11Oregon
12Texas
13Georgia Tech
14James Madison
15North Texas
16Michigan
17Utah
18Oklahoma
19South Florida
20Memphis
21Notre Dame
22Washington
23Miami
24Vanderbilt
25Illinois

Indiana1
Texas A&M2
Ohio State3
BYU4
Alabama5
Ole Miss6
Georgia7
Oregon8
Texas Tech9
Louisville10
Virginia11
Texas12
North Texas13
Oklahoma14
Georgia Tech15
Notre Dame16
Miami17
Michigan18
South Florida19
Illinois20
James Madison21
Washington22
Vanderbilt23
Utah24
Memphis27

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, 17 ended up somewhere else and 8 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 10 · be07b61f

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

2.40places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 3.78

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 10, 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.

Kentucky83 to 66
Nothing about Kentucky’s 3-5 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-5
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.01
power
1.5⁸³
résumé
1.8
gap
+0.3
90% rank range
30 to 127
UConn73 to 89
Nothing about UConn’s 6-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
6-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
8.2⁴⁷
résumé
3.8
gap
-4.4
90% rank range
8 to 99
South Carolina95 to 79
Nothing about South Carolina’s 3-6 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-6
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.01
power
4.0⁶⁷
résumé
-0.1
gap
-4.1
90% rank range
20 to 125
Jacksonville State75 to 90
Nothing about Jacksonville State’s 5-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
0.7⁹⁰
résumé
3.2
gap
+2.5
90% rank range
22 to 126
UCLA85 to 71
Nothing about UCLA’s 3-5 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-5
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.01
power
-0.2⁹⁸
résumé
1.6
gap
+1.9
90% rank range
32 to 128
Ohio70 to 81
Nothing about Ohio’s 5-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
3.6⁷¹
résumé
3.9
gap
+0.3
90% rank range
16 to 120

And inside the published top 25

James Madison14 to 21
Nothing about James Madison’s 7-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
7-1
schedule odds
1 in 4
rank key
0.57
power
14.1¹⁶
résumé
23.0
gap
+8.9
90% rank range
3 to 79
Utah17 to 24
Nothing about Utah’s 7-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
7-2
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.49
power
20.4⁴
résumé
19.4
gap
-1.0
90% rank range
1 to 52
Memphis20 to 27
Nothing about Memphis’s 8-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
8-1
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.46
power
13.6²⁰
résumé
20.5
gap
+6.9
90% rank range
3 to 78
Miami23 to 17
Nothing about Miami’s 6-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
6-2
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.42
power
17.3⁷
résumé
18.5
gap
+1.1
90% rank range
2 to 63

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 10 said and what week 10 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 →