The Playoff rankings are out and 50% of the conversation this week is about where the committee has each team ranked. First of all, on my radio shows and podcasts this week, I will make ZERO comments about the rankings as they are meaningless at this point. When I did my weekly podcast with Stephen Hartzell and Wayne Cook for Learfield, we made a “No Playoff Rankings FREE zone”. There are three full weeks of football left, there will be upsets and everything will sort itself out. I will talk about the rankings the final week of November but honestly won’t even look at them. You can talk about strength of schedule, resume, and head-to-head matchups but the VEGAS power ratings tell you the true strength of every team. These ratings tell you who would be favored if the teams met and by how much. They have all those huge hotels and casinos in Vegas because they know who the best teams are.

When I worked for ESPN full time, I put out a weekly article entitled the Vegas Power Ratings. I still have all the sources that I used to produce that article as it featured my plus/minus ratings which closely resemble Vegas’s numbers as well as three different casinos including the fine folks over at the Westgate Las Vegas Sportsbook @SuperBookSports.

This is not the AP poll but gives you an idea of how much teams would be favored over another team if they met on a neutral field. I use these to get an idea of lines on upcoming games. Keep in mind just because a team beat someone last week does not mean they would be favored over them in the Vegas ratings. I will update these each week during the year as always.

As an example, Arkansas lost to BYU at home in a game Arkansas had a 424-281-yard edge. BYU is 5-2 and Arkansas is 2-6. If you were an AP voter you would have BYU vastly ahead of Arkansas. If the two matched up again Arkansas would be favored at home by 2 TD’s despite have a much weaker record and having lost to BYU head to head. If Texas was to play Oklahoma again this week, Texas would be favored even though Oklahoma beat them outright. If Oregon played Washington on a neutral field, Oregon would be favored by 5, despite the fact Washington beat them at home (Oregon had a 541-415 yard edge).

Here is the twelfth edition of the 2023 Vegas Power Ratings!