by Brian Fremeau

Maybe you saw the fall of USC coming this year. Maybe you had a hunch that the loss of an entire two-deep linebacker corps to NFL rosters during the last few seasons would be too much to overcome. Maybe you suspected that the offense and defense would struggle to maintain consistency in the absence of dynamic coordinators that had moved on to head coaching gigs of their own. Maybe you thought this wasn’t the right time for a freshman quarterback, however talented, to step in and maintain the Trojans’ unprecedented track record of success.

Maybe. But did you really think you’d be watching the Stanford Cardinal deliver the kill shot? There were plenty of other viable Pac-10 candidates with the potential to dethrone USC at the beginning of the year, but Stanford was far from the most popular pick. Even three short weeks ago, head coach Jim Harbaugh’s team had dropped two in a row to Oregon State and Arizona -- each by double digits -- and appeared more like a nuisance than an actual threat to any of the league’s contenders.

But after back-to-back drubbings of Oregon and USC -- each ranked in the BCS Top 10 at the time of the game -- Stanford is now the hottest, most dangerous team in the nation. Running back Toby Gerhart is steamrolling his way to New York for the Heisman ceremony, and freshman quarterback Andrew Luck is making people wonder why so much fuss has been made about USC’s Matt Barkley. And now Harbaugh is either about to sign a big fat contract extension or strike while his iron’s hot and make a move to the NFL or a higher-profile NCAA gig.

Whether or not it’s a factor in his career plans, Harbaugh might want to think about other recent breakout seasons and the often fleeting nature of college football turnarounds. We use Program FEI for our projection tool baseline because in the big picture, college football teams don’t dramatically advance their program status overnight very often. During the last five seasons, the biggest single-season breakouts were almost always followed by at least some sort of step back the following year.

By this metric, the most impressive rebuilding job at the moment is actually Al Golden’s turnaround at Temple -- a program that ranked dead last in Program FEI heading into the 2008 season. The Owls haven’t run over multiple top-10 opponents this year like Stanford, but they are very obviously taking the next step forward after emerging from the depths of despair. We’ll need a few more years to evaluate the long-term impact of either coach on the revival of their respective programs, but it remains to be seen if they’ll stick it out or move on to greener pastures.

One quick housekeeping note: I discovered an error in the strength of schedule formula I was running over the past few weeks. It was treating home field advantage inversely, lowering a home team's win expectation data and raising a road team's. This error was isolated to the SOS output only, which is produced as a function of the FEI ratings, not the other way around. It also did not impact any of the FEI Forecasts, which have consistently credited home field advantage in favor of the home team.

Of note in the now corrected SOS data, TCU's schedule to date rates just as strong as any of the other undefeated candidates. That is likely to change down the stretch, as Alabama and Florida will still meet and Cincinnati will play its strongest Big East opposition in the final weeks of the year. But for now, there aren't many reasons to doubt the Horned Frogs are just as qualified for consideration as any of the others.

Week 11 FEI Top 25

The principles of the Fremeau Efficiency Index (FEI) can be found here. Like DVOA, FEI rewards playing well against good teams, win or lose, and punishes losing to poor teams more harshly than it rewards defeating poor teams. Unlike DVOA, it is drive-based, not play-by-play based, and it is specifically engineered to measure the college game.

FEI is the opponent-adjusted value of Game Efficiency (GE), a measurement of the success rate of a team scoring and preventing opponent scoring throughout the non-garbage-time possessions of a game. Like DVOA, it represents a team's efficiency value over average. Strength of Schedule (SOS) is calculated as the likelihood that an elite team would win every game on the given team's schedule to date. SOS listed here does not include future games scheduled.

Only games between FBS teams are considered in the FEI calculations. Preseason projections are not a factor in the current calculations. Current FEI ratings are a function of results of games played through Nov. 15th.

FEI ratings for all 120 FBS teams are now listed in the stats page section of FootballOutsiders.com. Click here for current ratings; the pull-down menu in the stats section directs you to 2007 and 2008 ratings.

Posted by: Brian Fremeau on 18 Nov 2009

10 comments, Last at 20 Nov 2009, 6:59pm by TV_Pete