The Revision · 2025 week 7

Anybody can show you what they said in week 7.

This shows you what week 7 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 7 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 7

once the season finished

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

Indiana1
Texas A&M2
Miami3
Ohio State4
Texas Tech5
BYU6
Alabama7
Ole Miss8
South Florida9
Oregon10
Georgia Tech11
Georgia12
Illinois13
LSU14
Washington15
UNLV16
Oklahoma17
Memphis18
Tulane19
Utah20
Virginia22
Navy23
USC24
Vanderbilt25
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, 23 ended up somewhere else and 2 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 7 · 06f93f3a

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

3.88places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 5.96

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 7, 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.

UCLA107 to 84
Nothing about UCLA’s 2-4 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-4
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.01
power
0.7⁸⁷
résumé
-3.5
gap
-4.2
90% rank range
27 to 124
App State54 to 75
Nothing about App State’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
0.11
power
0.5⁸⁸
résumé
8.5
gap
+7.9
90% rank range
22 to 131
UConn70 to 90
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
8.1⁴²
résumé
4.9
gap
-3.2
90% rank range
7 to 109
Purdue112 to 93
Nothing about Purdue’s 2-4 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-4
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.01
power
1.8⁷⁶
résumé
-4.3
gap
-6.1
90% rank range
12 to 127
Arizona68 to 50
Nothing about Arizona’s 4-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-2
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.07
power
3.7⁶⁷
résumé
5.6
gap
+1.9
90% rank range
20 to 125
Florida Atlantic87 to 105
Nothing about Florida Atlantic’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
0.02
power
1.2⁸⁴
résumé
0.3
gap
-0.9
90% rank range
18 to 132

And inside the published top 25

Memphis9 to 18
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 7
rank key
0.86
power
13.3¹⁴
résumé
60.0
gap
+46.7
90% rank range
5 to 93
Navy14 to 23
Nothing about Navy’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 5
rank key
0.67
power
7.6⁴³
résumé
60.0
gap
+52.4
90% rank range
9 to 111
Oregon19 to 10
Nothing about Oregon’s 5-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-1
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.51
power
17.0⁷
résumé
22.1
gap
+5.1
90% rank range
2 to 75
Vanderbilt18 to 25
Nothing about Vanderbilt’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
0.51
power
21.2²
résumé
23.0
gap
+1.8
90% rank range
1 to 74

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 7 said and what week 7 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 →