The Revision · 2025 week 6

Anybody can show you what they said in week 6.

This shows you what week 6 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 6 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 6

once the season finished

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

Texas A&M1
Miami2
Texas Tech3
Oregon4
Indiana5
Ohio State6
Illinois7
Oklahoma8
North Texas9
Ole Miss10
Georgia Tech11
Alabama12
BYU13
Iowa State14
Memphis15
UNLV16
South Florida18
LSU19
Georgia20
Virginia21
Vanderbilt22
Missouri24
Utah27
Houston28
Western Kentucky36

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 6 · a671ed1d

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

4.00places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 5.79

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 6, 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.

Kentucky92 to 67
Nothing about Kentucky’s 2-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
-3.2¹⁰⁵
résumé
-0.9
gap
+2.3
90% rank range
35 to 134
UConn72 to 92
Nothing about UConn’s 4-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-2
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.06
power
8.6³²
résumé
4.1
gap
-4.6
90% rank range
8 to 108
Florida76 to 56
Nothing about Florida’s 2-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.04
power
7.6³⁹
résumé
2.2
gap
-5.4
90% rank range
6 to 109
App State69 to 87
Nothing about App State’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
-3.6¹⁰⁷
résumé
4.4
gap
+8.0
90% rank range
28 to 131
Central Michigan81 to 99
Nothing about Central Michigan’s 3-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.04
power
0.6⁸²
résumé
2.2
gap
+1.6
90% rank range
14 to 131
Texas60 to 77
Nothing about Texas’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
0.08
power
14.4¹²
résumé
6.6
gap
-7.8
90% rank range
2 to 100

And inside the published top 25

Western Kentucky23 to 36
Nothing about Western Kentucky’s 5-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-1
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.40
power
1.8⁷²
résumé
19.9
gap
+18.0
90% rank range
18 to 130
Memphis6 to 15
Nothing about Memphis’s 6-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
6-0
schedule odds
1 in 8
rank key
0.89
power
14.0¹³
résumé
60.0
gap
+46.0
90% rank range
5 to 92
Houston19 to 28
Nothing about Houston’s 4-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-1
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.48
power
6.1⁵¹
résumé
21.5
gap
+15.4
90% rank range
11 to 115
Utah20 to 27
Nothing about Utah’s 4-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-1
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.47
power
17.0⁷
résumé
21.3
gap
+4.2
90% rank range
2 to 80

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 6 said and what week 6 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 →