I hate to do two football-related posts in a row, but...

... let's polish up the college football weekend just finished. Here are our rankings and tiers for the Power Five conference teams (the full set, #1-67, is viewable on College Football tab, on the blog header):

	Power Five	Oct 30
1	Alabama	A+5
2	Michigan	A+2
3	Clemson	A +
4	Ohio St	A
5	Washington	B +
6	Oklahoma	B +
7	Louisville	B -
8	Auburn	B -
9	Wisconsin	C
10	LSU	C
11	Baylor	C
12	Ole Miss	C -
13	Florida St	D +
14	Oklahoma St	D
15	USC	D
16	Texas A&M	D -
17	Florida	D -
18	Virginia Tech	D -
19	West Virginia	E +
20	North Carolina	E +

Our only difference in the top four as of now is that we still have Ohio State above Washington, on their complete body of work. They may be squeezing out victories by their teeth, but they still win. As everyone else reminds you, the Michigan/Ohio State situation will probably take care of itself when they play in a month...but our FOLLOWING FOOTBALL tier system doesn't punish teams for losing games by small margins as underdogs, as voters do - so we'll see what happens! Again, the entire list for each category is available on our "College Football" tab.

Here's the current top teams in the Group Of Five conferences, currently fighting it out for the guaranteed New Year's Six bowl berth:

	Group of Five	Oct 30
1	Western Michigan	D +
2	Houston	D
3	Western Kentucky	E +
4	Navy	E
5	San Diego St	E
6	Louisiana Tech	E -
7	Toledo	F +
8	Boise St	F
9	South Florida	F -
10	Appalachian St	F -
11	Temple	G +
12	Tulsa	G
13	Memphis	G
14	Georgia St	H
15	Middle Tenn	H -
16	Wyoming	I

With Boise State's loss to Wyoming (by a safety? Weird...), it becomes Western Michigan's to lose, if they can stay unbeaten and win their conference title. Houston and Boise will have to hope for losses ahead of them, as one of the primary criteria is winning your conference title, no matter how pretty the rest of your record is. As always, the other 44 teams are listed in the "College Football" tab.

Finally, here are the top teams in the FCS rankings, as determined by the FOLLOWING FOOTBALL tier system (patent pending, your mileage may vary)...

	FCS rankings for	Oct 30
1	North Dakota State	F -
2	Jacksonville State	G
3	Northern Iowa	H +
4	South Dakota State	I
5	Eastern Washington	I
6	James Madison	I
7	Charleston Southern	I -
8	Central Arkansas	I -
9	Richmond	J +
10	Youngstown State	J
11	Sam Houston St	J
12	Chattanooga	J
12	The Citadel	J
14	Coastal Carolina*	J -
15	Montana	J -
16	Lehigh	J -
17	Illinois State	K +
18	Western Illinois	K
19	New Hampshire	K -
20	McNeese State	L +
21	Northern Arizona	L +
22	Penn	L +
23	Harvard	L
24	Princeton	L
25	North Dakota	L
25	Villanova	L
27	UT-Martin	L -
28	Colgate	L -
28	Samford	L -
30	Indiana State	M +
31	Cal Poly SLO	M +
31	Southern Utah	M +

The bold teams are currently leading or tied for the lead in their conferences; St. Francis-PA, Liberty University, and the University of San Diego are also leading their respective conferences and would get an automatic playoff bid to the field of 24 if the playoffs started this week. But they don't, so there's still plenty of time to shuffle these teams around before Thanksgiving! (Coastal Carolina is transitioning into FBS next year, so they're not eligible for the playoffs; additionally, the Ivy League, SWAC, and MEAC do not choose to participate in the playoff schema of their own volition.) Given all of that, the 21 teams dabbed in yellow, along with the three conference winners above (the Northeast, Big South, and Pioneer leagues), would be the most obvious choices for the 24-team playoff field were the season ending today.

FINALLY, let's see how our predictions did...For the FIRST TIME all season, we beat the odds makers with our point spread lines, after a couple of ties and near misses the last three weeks: 24-23. (Hey, a win's a win!) Here's the copy from last week, with our comments in BLACK...

ACC) Clemson by 3 over FSU (PERFECT!); Georgia Tech by just 1 1/2 over Duke (NEAR PERFECT!); we favor Pitt by half a point over VaTech (Hokies won. Shoot.); and our big upset pick is Notre Dame over Miami by 2 (NAILED IT! Won by three!)

Big Ten) The three most interesting games are Illinois over Minnesota by one on our board (completely wrong); Wisconsin by 8 over Nebraska (WON in OT); and Michigan whomps MSU (not much of a whomp, but UM won),

Big 12) Our upset pick is Oklahoma St over West Virginia by two (or MORE! GOT it!). We also like Baylor at Texas by 3-4. (Got it wrong because UT nailed a last minute kick. Oh well.)

Pac 12) With Las Vegas sinning sitting in the middle of Pac-12 territory, you sometimes get odds that don't match reality because there are too many local fans of certain teams. USC is one of those - betting on the underside of their spread is usually a good idea just because that's how Vegas sets those odds. We have USC by 7.5 over Cal; Vegas has the spread at sixteen points! (And they were right. THIS time...) Similarly, we have UW over Utah by four, Vegas favors them by ten. (Split the diff - they won by seven!)

SEC) Two major upsets in the SEC where we are WAY different than the oddsmakers - we like Georgia over Florida by one (WHOOPS!) and Ole Miss over Auburn by four (Whoops again!).

AAC) Three important games in the American conference this weekend - Houston is favored by nine over UCF; we have the line at 17. (We were wrong.) We disagree completely on the other two: we like SMU by 2.5 (NAILED it); Vegas likes Tulane by 2.5; and in the most critical game, we'll take the Naval Academy (-2) over USF (ended up wrong on this one, but I'd pick them again tomorrow.)

C-USA) No significant differences from the Vegas lines in our forecasts: we think Southern Miss and MTSU should only be one TD favorites instead of two over Marshall and FIU, respectively. (NAILED IT - FIU lost by seven, Marshall by ten.)

MWC)  See previous comments about certain teams: Boise St is one of them, as the oddsmakers seem to think they're 14 points better than Wyoming (we have it at -4, and they LOST BY 2!). New Mexico -0.5 @ Hawaii should be interesting, (UNM won) but not as much as the dead man walking in Fresno St: FF says +7, Vegas says +14 against Air Force, and this time I'm thinking Vegas is right: the coaching situation's worth at least that extra TD. (Split the diff - ten point Air force win)