I've commented on other people's rankings because I didn't think that they were reflective of the relative strengths of the teams-based on who they've beat and who they've lost to. So instead of focusing on others, I decided to develop my own rankings.

The philosophy for this ranking is simple: Reward teams that have "good wins" and don't punish teams with "good losses". For these rankings, "good wins" are wins over teams that have lots of wins-especially wins over Power-5 opponents. And "good losses" are losses to teams that haven't lost a lot of games. So a team like Alabama, which has wins over Ole Miss (7 wins) and Tennessee (6 wins) is rewarded, but they are also not punished for losing to Texas which has only lost 1 game.

The math for these rankings is simple:

• When you beat an opponent, you get points based on how many wins that opponent has. If it is a Power-5 team, you get 2 points for every win that opponent has. If it is a Group-of-Five team, you get 1 point per win. No points are awarded for a win over a FCS team.
• When you lose, you lose 1 point for every loss that opponent has if it is a Power-5 team and 2 points for every loss that opponent has if it is Group-of-Five team. If you lose to a FCS team, that is -10 points (but that shouldn't matter for any of the top-25 teams).

As an example, Utah has 6 wins and 2 losses.

• Utah gets 10 points for their win over Florida (5 wins)
• Utah gets 6 points for their win over Baylor (3 wins)
• Utah gets 0 points for their win over Weber State (FCS)
• Utah gets 12 points for their win over UCLA (6 wins)
• Utah loses 2 points for their loss to Oregon State (2 losses)
• Utah gets 6 points for their win over California (3 wins)
• Utah gets 14 points for their win over USC (7 wins)
• Utah loses 1 point for their loss to Oregon (1 loss)

Total 45 points

Contrast that with James Madison.

• JMU gets 0 points for their win over Bucknell (FCS)
• JMU gets 4 points for their win over Virginia (2 wins)
• JMU gets 6 points for their win over Troy (6 wins)
• JMU gets 3 points for their win over Utah State (3 wins)
• JMU gets 4 points for their win over South Alabama (4 wins)
• JMU gets 6 points for their win over Georgia Southern (6 wins)
• JMU gets 4 points for their win over Marshall (4 wins)
• JMU gets 4 points for their win over Old Dominion (4 wins)

Total: 31 points

Hopefully you can see that this is more than just about wins and losses. You are rewarded for who you beat. Beating Florida State is worth more than beating Liberty. And if you lose, who you lose to matters. Losing to a 1-loss team like Texas hurts a lot less than losing to a 6-loss Virginia or Pittsburgh team (looking at you, North Carolina and Louisville).

You'll notice that this doesn't take into account margin of victory or which team is home. Those are factors that I may include at a later time. But for now there isn't anything in these results that I think would dramatically change if those were included and the math is simple and the process easy to understand.

You'll notice that some top-25 teams are not on this list. UCLA has only 1 win over a team with a winning record (Coastal Carolina) to go along with their 2 "good" losses to Utah and Oregon State. Air Force has not played a Power-5 opponent (and won't until possibly their bowl game), and they have 1 win over a team with a winning record: Wyoming. Tulane also has only 1 win over a team with a winning record (Memphis), and a loss to 1-loss Ole Miss.

Obviously this has to be updated each week to see how each teams does as well as how well each team's opponents faired. For example, UW gained points this week because they beat Stanford, but also because Boise State, Arizona, Oregon, and Arizona State won, too. And while teams can't control how good their opponents are, you also shouldn't be rewarded as much just for winning a game against a bad team. Over the course of a season, this should even out to an extent-as long as you win and don't lose games against bad teams.

For UW, their next 4 opponents are currently 7-2, 6-2, 6-2, and 4-4. Winning those games will improve their ranking compared to a team like Alabama which is still scheduled to play a FCS team (where they will get 0 points). And UW can also hope that some of the teams that they beat like Arizona and Arizona State keep winning. And that bad part for some Husky fans will be wanting Oregon to keep winning as well.

I'm sure that the CFP rankings won't look like this when they come out tomorrow. I'd almost guarantee that Georgia is ahead of UW in those rankings and that Texas and Alabama are behind UW. And Oregon will be above Utah as well. Maybe by the end of the season these rankings will look more like the CFP rankings. If not, maybe they should.