The Revision · 2025 week 8

Anybody can show you what they said in week 8.

This shows you what week 8 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 8 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 8

once the season finished

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

Indiana1
Texas A&M2
Ohio State3
BYU4
Alabama5
Georgia Tech6
Oregon7
Georgia8
South Florida9
Miami10
Louisville11
Oklahoma12
Ole Miss13
Texas Tech14
Illinois15
Notre Dame16
North Texas17
Tulane18
Virginia19
Houston20
Vanderbilt21
Arizona State22
Navy26
James Madison28
UNLV33

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, 21 ended up somewhere else and 4 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 8 · 7a38e08e

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

3.24places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 5.40

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 8, 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.

Kentucky106 to 82
Nothing about Kentucky’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
0.4⁹¹
résumé
-3.0
gap
-3.3
90% rank range
27 to 127
Central Michigan63 to 83
Nothing about Central Michigan’s 4-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.06
power
2.7⁷²
résumé
5.9
gap
+3.2
90% rank range
12 to 120
UConn58 to 76
Nothing about UConn’s 5-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-2
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.09
power
8.2⁴⁶
résumé
7.6
gap
-0.6
90% rank range
7 to 111
App State84 to 101
Nothing about App State’s 4-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
4-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
-1.4¹⁰⁵
résumé
1.8
gap
+3.2
90% rank range
43 to 129
Arkansas110 to 94
Nothing about Arkansas’s 2-5 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
2-5
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.01
power
8.3⁴³
résumé
-3.3
gap
-11.7
90% rank range
6 to 101
Florida64 to 49
Nothing about Florida’s 3-4 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-4
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.06
power
6.5⁵²
résumé
5.6
gap
-0.9
90% rank range
10 to 117

And inside the published top 25

Navy12 to 26
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 4
rank key
0.64
power
8.1⁴⁷
résumé
60.0
gap
+51.9
90% rank range
8 to 107
Notre Dame24 to 16
Nothing about Notre Dame’s 5-2 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-2
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.44
power
13.2¹⁵
résumé
17.9
gap
+4.7
90% rank range
2 to 91
UNLV25 to 33
Nothing about UNLV’s 6-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
6-1
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.44
power
-0.3⁹⁵
résumé
20.0
gap
+20.3
90% rank range
36 to 129
James Madison22 to 28
Nothing about James Madison’s 6-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
6-1
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.49
power
11.5²¹
résumé
21.5
gap
+10.0
90% rank range
4 to 102

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 8 said and what week 8 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 →