(01-16-2020 08:58 PM)slhNavy91 Wrote:  

(01-15-2020 05:18 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  I don't care which 8-5 teams in the P5 are, hypothetically better than Army, Navy or Air Force at year's end. If any one of the service academy programs wins 11 or more games any given year ... rank ’em ahead of the eight- and seven-win P5s. Those young men at Army, Navy and Air Force are American heroes and deserve credit and respect that goes beyond how good their teams are vis-a-vis so-called conventional P5 programs.

I'll never lose sleep if an 8-5 P5 that has played a rough schedule is ranked below an 11-2 Air Force that has not.

I'm a hard-ass about this.

Rankings that follow in Massey Composite, 77 ranking systems compiled

Impressive to have lost to #1,3,4,7,12 (A&M's) but Navy or Air Force coulda woulda chalked up those "quality losses."
Texas' don't even look as good: lost to #1,10,18, 36, 53 vs Navy losing to #9, 13 and AF to #20,#23. Navy had 3 or 4 wins better than two of those Texas losses.

So, instead of talking about the quality losses, let's look at wins.

Navy: #22, 31, 32, 49, 78, 86, 97, 99, 117, 125, FCS
Texas: #17, 32, 33, 56, 71, 84, 106, 119
TA&M: #33, 47, 62, 74, 115, 120, 121, FCS

AF: #46, 52, 55, 65, 67, 98, 99, 101, 109, 123, FCS
Texas: #17, 32, 33, 56, 71, 84, 106, 119
TA&M: #33, 47, 62, 74, 115, 120, 121, FCS

I would say it is a pretty solid case to rank Navy over both of those (Texas is closer, but the losses to teams that would have been in the middle of Navy's wins give the edge to Navy).
AF less so versus Texas, but easily over TA&M when you look at the resume, especially the bottom half of A&M's wins.

I agree, you don't need to give Navy a "service academy bonus" of some kind to conclude they deserved to be ranked ahead of Texas and TAMU. The numbers say they should. Even though I have little doubt that Texas and TAMU are better than Navy and that Navy couldn't have survived their schedules playing against the more talented teams. I would expect Navy to do worse vs TAMU's schedule than TAMU did, and TAMU to do better vs Navy's schedule than Navy did. But that is a speculative opinion not a fact.

BTW, with 82 rankings in, the AAC is still a smidge better than the ACC in the MC conference rankings.