The Revision · 2025 week 13

Anybody can show you what they said in week 13.

This shows you what week 13 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 13 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 13

once the season finished

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

Indiana1
Texas A&M2
Ohio State3
BYU4
Oregon5
Georgia6
Ole Miss7
Texas Tech8
Oklahoma9
Alabama10
Notre Dame11
North Texas12
Michigan13
Miami14
James Madison15
Vanderbilt16
Utah17
Texas18
USC19
Tulane20
Virginia21
Arizona State22
South Florida23
Navy24
Georgia Tech25

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, 16 ended up somewhere else and 9 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 13 · 53151ddb

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

0.80places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 1.72

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 13, 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.

Central Michigan67 to 75
Nothing about Central Michigan’s 7-4 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
7-4
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
5.1⁷⁰
résumé
6.4
gap
+1.3
90% rank range
22 to 110
Penn State73 to 65
Nothing about Penn State’s 5-6 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-6
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
14.6²⁴
résumé
6.0
gap
-8.6
90% rank range
7 to 77
Iowa39 to 32
Nothing about Iowa’s 7-4 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
7-4
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.17
power
13.9²⁸
résumé
14.2
gap
+0.3
90% rank range
8 to 80
Troy63 to 70
Nothing about Troy’s 7-4 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
7-4
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.03
power
0.7⁹⁸
résumé
7.1
gap
+6.4
90% rank range
40 to 127
Wisconsin66 to 59
Nothing about Wisconsin’s 4-7 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-7
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
2.1⁹¹
résumé
6.5
gap
+4.5
90% rank range
44 to 126
Auburn56 to 61
Nothing about Auburn’s 5-6 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-6
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.04
power
14.4²⁶
résumé
8.7
gap
-5.7
90% rank range
7 to 81

And inside the published top 25

Miami17 to 14
Nothing about Miami’s 9-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
9-2
schedule odds
1 in 5
rank key
0.67
power
21.6⁸
résumé
23.2
gap
+1.6
90% rank range
2 to 44
James Madison13 to 15
Nothing about James Madison’s 10-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
10-1
schedule odds
1 in 6
rank key
0.74
power
17.0²⁰
résumé
26.0
gap
+9.0
90% rank range
3 to 64
North Texas14 to 12
Nothing about North Texas’s 10-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
10-1
schedule odds
1 in 5
rank key
0.72
power
18.1¹⁷
résumé
25.4
gap
+7.3
90% rank range
2 to 56
Texas A&M1 to 2
Nothing about Texas A&M’s 11-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
11-0
schedule odds
1 in 390
rank key
2.59
power
22.2⁶
résumé
60.0
gap
+37.8
90% rank range
1 to 50

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 13 said and what week 13 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 →