The Revision · 2025 week 5

Anybody can show you what they said in week 5.

This shows you what week 5 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 5 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 5

once the season finished

1Indiana
2Memphis
3Oklahoma
4Texas A&M
5Oregon
6Texas Tech
7Georgia Tech
8Ole Miss
9Ohio State
10Houston
11Vanderbilt
12Iowa State
13North Texas
14Louisville
15BYU
16Miami
17Illinois
18UNLV
19Utah
20Missouri
21Maryland
22Navy
23Georgia
24Arizona State
25Michigan

Texas A&M1
Miami2
Oregon3
Indiana4
Iowa State5
Ohio State6
Texas Tech7
Oklahoma8
Illinois9
North Texas10
Ole Miss11
Louisville12
Georgia Tech13
BYU14
Vanderbilt15
Memphis16
Houston19
UNLV20
Missouri21
Georgia22
Utah26
Michigan27
Arizona State28
Maryland29
Navy40

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, 25 ended up somewhere else and 0 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 5 · fe62b1d9

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

5.24places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 7.18

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 5, 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.

UConn77 to 105
Nothing about UConn’s 3-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-2
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.06
power
8.5³¹
résumé
2.9
gap
-5.7
90% rank range
8 to 114
Washington51 to 23
Nothing about Washington’s 3-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-1
schedule odds
1 in 2
rank key
0.18
power
6.2⁴⁷
résumé
12.4
gap
+6.1
90% rank range
9 to 121
Army102 to 78
Nothing about Army’s 1-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
1-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
1.0⁷⁵
résumé
-5.8
gap
-6.8
90% rank range
13 to 132
North Carolina78 to 101
Nothing about North Carolina’s 2-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-2
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.06
power
-2.7¹⁰⁴
résumé
2.1
gap
+4.7
90% rank range
25 to 133
Kentucky90 to 68
Nothing about Kentucky’s 2-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-2
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.05
power
-2.7¹⁰⁵
résumé
0.4
gap
+3.1
90% rank range
25 to 134
Notre Dame66 to 46
Nothing about Notre Dame’s 2-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-2
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.11
power
9.2²⁷
résumé
7.1
gap
-2.1
90% rank range
2 to 98

And inside the published top 25

Navy22 to 40
Nothing about Navy’s 4-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-0
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.48
power
11.2²¹
résumé
60.0
gap
+48.8
90% rank range
14 to 106
Memphis2 to 16
Nothing about Memphis’s 5-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-0
schedule odds
1 in 8
rank key
0.92
power
14.0¹²
résumé
60.0
gap
+46.0
90% rank range
5 to 101
Miami16 to 2
Nothing about Miami’s 4-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-0
schedule odds
1 in 4
rank key
0.62
power
11.3²⁰
résumé
60.0
gap
+48.7
90% rank range
9 to 114
Houston10 to 19
Nothing about Houston’s 4-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-0
schedule odds
1 in 6
rank key
0.76
power
6.3⁴⁶
résumé
60.0
gap
+53.7
90% rank range
8 to 114

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 5 said and what week 5 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 →