AP Ranking

[FightWinDrink]

Read in The Athletic that, until yesterday, Tech held 3rd place for the longest unranked streak in the Power 4 - behind only Rutgers and Vandy.

Edit: This seems implausible, but I'm not going to do the research to confirm it.

its true because Vandy was last ranked in 2014 and Rutgers in 2013. Kansas, Illinois, and Colorado were all longer streaks too that got broken in the last 2 seasons. most of the other mid/low tier schools have popped in the rankings for 1 or 2 weeks at some point like UVA being ranked 25 for 1 week in 2018. Easiest time to break into the rankings is early in the year and we havent been very strong starters lately since we keep playing pretty tough games early season like Clemson, ranked Ole Miss etc.

2016 we ran into Clemson game 4 and losing 2 other games right after put us in a spot where we could never recover a ranking despite finishing with 9 wins

2017 we opened with Tennessee and lost in double OT. had we won that game and made it to 4-0 (we won the next 3 games) we prob would have been ranked. Got clobbered on the back half of that schedule anyway

2018 was just a disaster first half of the season. really bad loss to USF.

2019 opened the season with #1 Clemson and the rest of the season didnt get any better

2020 actually managed to win against a big name on paper week 1 against FSU but then got smoked by good UCF in non con killing any chance of us thinking about rankings (we werent good anyway)

2021 another GC masterclass losing to NIU in week 1

2022 our 1st and 3rd game were against #4 Clemson and #20 Ole Miss. never had a chance but we still owe UCF a gift basket for finishing the job

2023 Choked against Louisville and had a strong Ole Miss again in game 3


If we did our schedule like VT and did a 4 game non con of Vandy, Rutgers, Marshall, Old Dominion (2024) or Purdue instead of Vandy like they did last year and pulled off a 4-0 we'd have a good shot of being ranked just by making it to 4-0 even if we ended up being a 7-5 level team. So it was a mix of us being bad and also not doing ourselves any favors with scheduling.


Another good example is Illinois in 2022. Prob not that great of a team but did manage to get to 8-5 (worse than our 2016 team that was never ranked). Got ranked on the back of beating: Wyoming, UVA, Chattanooga, the worst Wisconsin in 14 years (finished 7-6), and a classic 9-6 win over Iowa. so a good part of making the lower end of the rankings is just having the right schedule and not being so bad you can't beat your G5 and bottom of conference opponents (which we couldnt do under the last guy)

 

[roadkill]

its true because Vandy was last ranked in 2014 and Rutgers in 2013. Kansas, Illinois, and Colorado were all longer streaks too that got broken in the last 2 seasons. most of the other mid/low tier schools have popped in the rankings for 1 or 2 weeks at some point like UVA being ranked 25 for 1 week in 2018. Easiest time to break into the rankings is early in the year and we havent been very strong starters lately since we keep playing pretty tough games early season like Clemson, ranked Ole Miss etc.

2016 we ran into Clemson game 4 and losing 2 other games right after put us in a spot where we could never recover a ranking despite finishing with 9 wins

2017 we opened with Tennessee and lost in double OT. had we won that game and made it to 4-0 (we won the next 3 games) we prob would have been ranked. Got clobbered on the back half of that schedule anyway

2018 was just a disaster first half of the season. really bad loss to USF.

2019 opened the season with #1 Clemson and the rest of the season didnt get any better

2020 actually managed to win against a big name on paper week 1 against FSU but then got smoked by good UCF in non con killing any chance of us thinking about rankings (we werent good anyway)

2021 another GC masterclass losing to NIU in week 1

2022 our 1st and 3rd game were against #4 Clemson and #20 Ole Miss. never had a chance but we still owe UCF a gift basket for finishing the job

2023 Choked against Louisville and had a strong Ole Miss again in game 3


If we did our schedule like VT and did a 4 game non con of Vandy, Rutgers, Marshall, Old Dominion (2024) or Purdue instead of Vandy like they did last year and pulled off a 4-0 we'd have a good shot of being ranked just by making it to 4-0 even if we ended up being a 7-5 level team. So it was a mix of us being bad and also not doing ourselves any favors with scheduling.


Another good example is Illinois in 2022. Prob not that great of a team but did manage to get to 8-5 (worse than our 2016 team that was never ranked). Got ranked on the back of beating: Wyoming, UVA, Chattanooga, the worst Wisconsin in 14 years (finished 7-6), and a classic 9-6 win over Iowa. so a good part of making the lower end of the rankings is just having the right schedule and not being so bad you can't beat your G5 and bottom of conference opponents (which we couldnt do under the last guy)

I agree – early rankings are very much influenced by absolute W/L record, and teams that schedule a bunch of cupcakes on the front end have a good shot at breaking into the rankings even if they aren’t very good. Obviously we don’t do that, thus our streak.

 

[stinger78]

Not sure I care. We were a top 25 team in 2016 for sure. Had we been anointed one, we’d likely have started out ranked in 2017. It’s a sad game. Just win, baby!

 

[billga99]

Not sure I care. We were a top 25 team in 2016 for sure. Had we been anointed one, we’d likely have started out ranked in 2017. It’s a sad game. Just win, baby!

Huge game against Syracuse this week. If we win and hold serve against VMI, Key's approach of one game at a time will be huge against Louisville. Win that game (and Syracuse) would keep us ranked for at least 4 weeks. That would be terrific.