The Revision · 2025 week 11

Anybody can show you what they said in week 11.

This shows you what week 11 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 11 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 11

once the season finished

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

Indiana1
Texas A&M2
Ohio State3
BYU4
Alabama5
Oregon6
Georgia7
Texas Tech8
Ole Miss9
Notre Dame10
Texas11
North Texas12
Oklahoma13
South Florida14
James Madison15
Georgia Tech16
Vanderbilt17
Miami18
Michigan19
Illinois20
USC21
Tulane22
Utah23
Houston25
Virginia27

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 11 · 025dc687

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

1.64places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 3.15

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 11, 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.

Southern Miss36 to 49
Nothing about Southern Miss’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 2
rank key
0.19
power
7.1⁵⁵
résumé
13.1
gap
+6.0
90% rank range
13 to 112
Iowa41 to 28
Nothing about Iowa’s 6-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
6-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.17
power
12.6²³
résumé
12.1
gap
-0.5
90% rank range
5 to 90
Jacksonville State68 to 81
Nothing about Jacksonville State’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
0.04
power
1.8⁸⁶
résumé
5.6
gap
+3.9
90% rank range
19 to 123
Penn State98 to 85
Nothing about Penn State’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
0.00
power
9.4⁴¹
résumé
-1.4
gap
-10.8
90% rank range
9 to 99
Kentucky69 to 58
Nothing about Kentucky’s 4-5 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-5
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.04
power
4.6⁶⁶
résumé
5.4
gap
+0.8
90% rank range
23 to 118
Georgia Southern86 to 97
Nothing about Georgia Southern’s 4-5 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-5
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.01
power
-0.0¹⁰¹
résumé
1.3
gap
+1.3
90% rank range
35 to 126

And inside the published top 25

Georgia Tech10 to 16
Nothing about Georgia Tech’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 5
rank key
0.70
power
11.5²⁹
résumé
23.8
gap
+12.3
90% rank range
7 to 95
Utah19 to 23
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
0.53
power
20.7⁴
résumé
19.6
gap
-1.0
90% rank range
1 to 51
Illinois24 to 20
Nothing about Illinois’s 6-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
6-3
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.43
power
10.4³⁶
résumé
17.8
gap
+7.4
90% rank range
8 to 94
James Madison12 to 15
Nothing about James Madison’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 5
rank key
0.69
power
14.8¹⁶
résumé
23.8
gap
+8.9
90% rank range
3 to 68

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 11 said and what week 11 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 →