Originally Posted by
Olympic Fan
I saw a similar thread on a rival board ... naturally they were delusional and not "Fair and Balanced" like we are. But it got me thinking about an in-state ranking.
If I had ranked the top in-state schools (1-A and 1-AA) before the season, based only on informed estimates, I would have had:
1. Wake Forest (ranked in the AP top 25)
2. East Carolina
3. Appalachian State (No. 1 in 1-AA)
4. North Carolina
5. N.C. State
6. Duke
7. Elon (No. 15 in 1-AA)
8. Western Carolina
9. North Carolina Central
10. Winston-Salem State
After the first week -- AND BASED SOLELY ON THE FIRST WEEK'S PERFORMANCE (not preseason projection), my list would look like this:
1. East Carolina (1-0 beat a ranked 1-A team on a neutral field)
2. Wake Forest (1-0 handily beat a 1-A team on the road)
3. Duke (1-0 handily beat the No. 3 ranked 1-AA team at home)
4. North Carolina (1-0 barely beat the No. 10 1-AA team at home)
5. Western Carolina (1-0 routed Div 11 Shorter)
6. NC A&T (1-0 routed Div II JC Smith)
7. App State (0-1 routed by top 10 LSU on the road)
8. N.C State (0-1 routed by South Carolina on the road)
9. Elon (0-1 lost to 1-AA Richmond, the No. 6 1-AA team)
10. Campbell (0-1 lost to 1-AA Birmingham Southern)
Not ranked: NCCU (0-1) and Gardner-Webb, Davidson and Winston-Salem State, which haven't played yet.
In my mind, a win (even over a bad team) counts more than a loss. Aming winners, I ranked them by the quality of victims more than margin ... among the 0-1 teams, I tried to rank them among the quality of the teams that beat them.
Obviously, that's not how I rate the strength of the various teams. I'm sure the list will change a lot as the season plays out. Still, it's a fun snapshot of how the NC teams rank after one week.