Alabama jumped from No. 4 to No. 2 in this week's resume ranking after winning at Mississippi State. The Crimson Tide is now within striking distance of Texas and is likely to overtake the Longhorns with a win over Georgia this week, even if Texas beats Oklahoma. Taking down the struggling Sooners -- even on a neutral field -- won't bring a major resume boost for the Longhorns.
But beating an elite team like Georgia -- even at home -- would register in a big way for Alabama. Our meritocratic resume-ranking system assigns a numeric value between 0 and 1 to every victory. That value is determined by how likely an average No. 25-ranked team in the CBS Sports 138 would be to win the game.
The value is calculated based on the opponent's CBS Sports 138 ranking and where the game was played. For example, a home win over the No. 2-ranked team (Georgia) would yield a +0.89 boost to Alabama's resume score. That's because an average No. 25 team would only be expected to defeat the No. 2-ranked team 11% of the time in a home game.
There's a lot of chatter around college football about "good losses," and some even prop up a silly idea that teams should have value added to their resumes for merely playing against difficult opponents. Well, if that's the case, then let's put Arkansas in the CFP. That's obviously ridiculous.
But our system finds the middle ground; in addition to quantifying the value of wins, it acknowledges that not all losses are created equal. If Alabama loses to Georgia, it only receives a -0.11 hit to its resume score. That would be a minor ding on the Crimson Tide's ledger, and it reflects that the average No. 25-ranked team would lose a home game against the nation's No. 2 team 89% of the time.
But if Ohio State loses at home to No. 73 Maryland this week, its resume score will take a brutal -0.87 hit that will be challenging to recover from. Here's where things stand in a meritocratic resume ranking entering Week 6. No. 78 Texas State (+0.12) Week 1: W vs.
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