Phil Steele’s Vegas Top 25: Forget the Scoreboard, Who Would Vegas Favor?
Bo Marchionte
Host · Writer
Additionally, Phil Steele offers a unique perspective on the Top 25.
There are college football rankings, and then there is the wonderfully obsessive world of Phil Steele.
Steele has been producing his annual college football preview since 1995, building a reputation around an almost ridiculous volume of statistics, projections and power ratings. His approach has long gone beyond simply asking who won Saturday. He has used multiple sets of power ratings, and his Vegas ratings are designed to answer a distinctly different question:
Who would be favored if these teams played now?
That distinction makes his latest Vegas Power Ratings fascinating.
Steele currently has Ohio State No. 1 despite Texas beating Ohio State. Georgia sits second and Texas third. As a result, Notre Dame and Indiana make up his top five.
The Top 25:
- Ohio State -135.76
- Georgia – 134.87
- Texas – 134.55
- Notre Dame -134.38
- Indiana – 132.90
- Miami (FL) – 131.24
- LSU – 130.89
- Alabama – 130.39
- Oregon – 130.22
- Tennessee – 126.67
- Ole Miss – 126.16
- Florida – 125.70
- USC –25
- Mississippi State – 124.93
- Texas A&M – 124.59
- Oklahoma – 124.38
- Utah –83
- Michigan – 121.69
- Texas Tech – 121.65
- Penn State – 121.34
- BYU – 121.32
- South Carolina – 120.97
- Missouri – 120.00
- Iowa – 119.97
- Louisville –76
But Ohio State over Texas is where this gets interesting.
As Steele explains it, an AP voter essentially has to respect the head-to-head result. Texas beat Ohio State, so placing the Buckeyes ahead of the Longhorns becomes difficult to justify on a traditional ballot.
The Average Game Grade looks at the game differently.
Texas possessed the home-field advantage and one of its best home crowds, while Ohio State led 20-3 at halftime with a 240-97 advantage in yardage. Ohio State finished with a 372-336 edge in total yards and, according to Steele, trailed for only 25 seconds. A missed field goal with 4:16 remaining prevented the Buckeyes from going ahead by nine.
Steele’s Average Game Grade gave Ohio State a 126.6 for the performance compared with 122.2 for Texas.
Texas won the football game. Steele’s system nevertheless judged Ohio State’s performance more favorably.
That sounds contradictory only if a power rating is treated like a poll. It isn’t.
Furthermore, Steele describes the Average Game Grade as having no starting point for any team. His Vegas ratings serve another purpose: approximating how the betting market would price teams against onee another.
Additionally, that produces the deliciously strange conclusion sitting atop Steele’s board:
- Texas owns the win. Ohio State owns the 1 Vegas rating.
- If they met again on a neutral field, Steele says Ohio State would be a slight favorite.
- The scoreboard tells us what happened.
- However, Phil Steele attempts to forecast what may happen next.
Therefore, he is brilliant and continues to provide us with some of the absolute best material on college football.
