The Revision · 2025 week 12

Anybody can show you what they said in week 12.

This shows you what week 12 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 12 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 12

once the season finished

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

Indiana1
Texas A&M2
Ohio State3
BYU4
Oregon5
Georgia6
Ole Miss7
Texas Tech8
Alabama9
Oklahoma10
Notre Dame11
North Texas12
Miami13
USC14
Georgia Tech15
Michigan16
James Madison17
Vanderbilt18
Illinois19
Utah20
Texas21
Virginia22
Tulane23
Arizona State25
Houston26

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, 19 ended up somewhere else and 6 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 12 · 2e15f1cc

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

1.60places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 2.34

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 12, 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.

Iowa45 to 32
Nothing about Iowa’s 6-4 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
6-4
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.15
power
14.6²¹
résumé
12.3
gap
-2.3
90% rank range
5 to 88
UConn62 to 69
Nothing about UConn’s 8-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
8-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.05
power
9.3⁴⁶
résumé
7.8
gap
-1.5
90% rank range
10 to 101
Florida State75 to 68
Nothing about Florida State’s 5-5 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-5
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
13.3²⁷
résumé
5.0
gap
-8.3
90% rank range
6 to 90
Florida78 to 71
Nothing about Florida’s 3-7 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-7
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
8.4⁵¹
résumé
4.3
gap
-4.0
90% rank range
15 to 103
Penn State82 to 75
Nothing about Penn State’s 4-6 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-6
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.01
power
12.3³²
résumé
3.0
gap
-9.3
90% rank range
7 to 89
Michigan State108 to 101
Nothing about Michigan State’s 3-7 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-7
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.00
power
0.5⁹⁸
résumé
-2.5
gap
-3.0
90% rank range
39 to 130

And inside the published top 25

James Madison12 to 17
Nothing about James Madison’s 9-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
9-1
schedule odds
1 in 5
rank key
0.74
power
16.9¹⁵
résumé
25.7
gap
+8.8
90% rank range
3 to 64
Utah15 to 20
Nothing about Utah’s 8-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
8-2
schedule odds
1 in 5
rank key
0.68
power
23.3⁴
résumé
22.5
gap
-0.8
90% rank range
1 to 42
Miami18 to 13
Nothing about Miami’s 8-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
8-2
schedule odds
1 in 4
rank key
0.62
power
21.2⁷
résumé
21.9
gap
+0.7
90% rank range
2 to 46
Illinois23 to 19
Nothing about Illinois’s 7-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
7-3
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.49
power
11.6³⁶
résumé
19.7
gap
+8.1
90% rank range
7 to 96

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 12 said and what week 12 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 →