The Revision · 2025 week 9

Anybody can show you what they said in week 9.

This shows you what week 9 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 9 · the same 25 teams, ranked twice

as published in week 9

once the season finished

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

Texas A&M1
Indiana2
BYU3
Ohio State4
Alabama5
Oregon6
Ole Miss7
Georgia Tech8
Georgia9
Miami10
Louisville11
Houston12
Texas Tech13
Vanderbilt14
Virginia15
North Texas16
Notre Dame17
South Florida18
Michigan19
Tulane20
Washington21
Texas24
Navy25
Utah26
Memphis28

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, 19 ended up somewhere else and 6 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 9 · 4c34ddec

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

2.28places the average top-25 team moved. Across all 136 ranked teams the pipeline publishes 4.03

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 9, 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.

Central Michigan59 to 77
Nothing about Central Michigan’s 5-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.06
power
3.6⁷³
résumé
7.0
gap
+3.4
90% rank range
22 to 119
South Carolina92 to 74
Nothing about South Carolina’s 3-5 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-5
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.01
power
4.2⁶⁷
résumé
0.6
gap
-3.6
90% rank range
15 to 125
UConn78 to 95
Nothing about UConn’s 5-3 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
5-3
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
8.2⁴⁹
résumé
3.5
gap
-4.7
90% rank range
8 to 108
Kentucky108 to 93
Nothing about Kentucky’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
0.00
power
-0.6¹⁰¹
résumé
-4.0
gap
-3.4
90% rank range
39 to 129
UCLA86 to 72
Nothing about UCLA’s 3-5 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
3-5
schedule odds
1 in 1
rank key
0.02
power
0.4⁹⁰
résumé
2.0
gap
+1.6
90% rank range
31 to 127
Navy12 to 25
Nothing about Navy’s 7-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
7-0
schedule odds
1 in 4
rank key
0.65
power
9.1⁴³
résumé
60.0
gap
+50.9
90% rank range
8 to 97

And inside the published top 25

Notre Dame24 to 17
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
15.4¹³
résumé
19.0
gap
+3.7
90% rank range
2 to 85
Miami15 to 10
Nothing about Miami’s 6-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be harder than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
6-1
schedule odds
1 in 4
rank key
0.62
power
17.0⁹
résumé
24.1
gap
+7.1
90% rank range
2 to 82
Memphis23 to 28
Nothing about Memphis’s 7-1 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
7-1
schedule odds
1 in 3
rank key
0.45
power
12.5²⁶
résumé
20.8
gap
+8.2
90% rank range
4 to 88
Georgia Tech5 to 8
Nothing about Georgia Tech’s 8-0 changed. The schedule turned out to be easier than it looked at the time, so the same results are worth a different amount.
record
8-0
schedule odds
1 in 18
rank key
1.26
power
12.3²⁷
résumé
60.0
gap
+47.7
90% rank range
5 to 89

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 9 said and what week 9 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 →