The Revision · 2025 week 15

Anybody can show you what they said in week 15.

This shows you what week 15 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 15 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 15

once the season finished

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

Indiana1
Oregon2
Ohio State3
Georgia4
Texas A&M5
Texas Tech6
BYU7
Ole Miss8
Oklahoma9
Alabama10
Notre Dame11
Miami12
Vanderbilt13
James Madison14
Texas15
Utah16
Tulane17
Navy18
USC19
Michigan20
North Texas21
South Florida22
Virginia24
Arizona25
Houston28

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, 8 ended up somewhere else and 17 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 15 · ed65f2d5

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

0.44places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 0.91

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 15, 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.

Army55 to 60
Nothing about Army’s 6-5 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
6-5
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.04
power
7.2⁶⁶
résumé
9.1
gap
+1.9
90% rank range
24 to 111
Illinois27 to 23
Nothing about Illinois’s 8-4 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
8-4
schedule odds
1 in 2
rank key
0.31
power
12.3⁴¹
résumé
18.3
gap
+6.0
90% rank range
14 to 96
Iowa30 to 26
Nothing about Iowa’s 8-4 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
8-4
schedule odds
1 in 2
rank key
0.27
power
16.6²³
résumé
17.4
gap
+0.8
90% rank range
7 to 79
Minnesota59 to 55
Nothing about Minnesota’s 7-5 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
7-5
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.04
power
4.5⁷⁷
résumé
9.1
gap
+4.5
90% rank range
37 to 118
South Carolina87 to 83
Nothing about South Carolina’s 4-8 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-8
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.00
power
8.3⁶⁰
résumé
3.5
gap
-4.8
90% rank range
22 to 111
Houston25 to 28
Nothing about Houston’s 9-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
9-3
schedule odds
1 in 2
rank key
0.31
power
12.7³⁷
résumé
18.4
gap
+5.7
90% rank range
12 to 92

And inside the published top 25

Arizona23 to 25
Nothing about Arizona’s 9-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
9-3
schedule odds
1 in 2
rank key
0.35
power
15.7²⁵
résumé
18.9
gap
+3.3
90% rank range
7 to 73
Georgia3 to 4
Nothing about Georgia’s 12-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
12-1
schedule odds
1 in 84
rank key
1.92
power
22.6¹⁰
résumé
35.4
gap
+12.8
90% rank range
2 to 44
Ohio State4 to 3
Nothing about Ohio State’s 12-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
12-1
schedule odds
1 in 80
rank key
1.90
power
29.4³
résumé
36.6
gap
+7.2
90% rank range
1 to 24
BYU6 to 7
Nothing about BYU’s 11-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
11-2
schedule odds
1 in 45
rank key
1.66
power
19.8¹⁵
résumé
32.5
gap
+12.8
90% rank range
4 to 61

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 15 said and what week 15 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 →