Check out the NCAA Football standings over at Yahoo! Sports.
How is Penn State at the top of the Big Ten?
I know that in reality it is just a big ol’ tie for first place. But I can think of a couple logical ways to sort it.
Alphabetically seems to be the most logical. Easy to implement, easy to understand. Indiana is in first place.
Another method that could be used is to sort by the rankings. So Wisconsin has the best ranking of the undefeated Big Ten teams, so they go to the top of the list. This system is a little awkward because not everybody is ranked. But maybe after the ranked teams, then you sort the unranked alphabetically.
I have no idea how they compiled the version that is on their website though. Was it maybe by the chronological time of the games or something?
But no matter what ranking system is used, Michigan should fall to the bottom. You just cannot be allowed to lose to a team from the division formerly known as 1AA.
Update: I was just checking around some of the other websites to confirm that they sort by team name when teams are tied in the conference. CBSSports.com does. ESPN doesn’t. I clicked on ESPN’s expanded standings to see if I could figure out what they were doing but couldn’t figure it out.
But, I did figure out that Yahoo! Sports seems to be using the amount of points scored to sort teams that have the same number of wins and losses. I can live with that. But what in the world is ESPN doing?