Ranking Men's DI teams is very difficult. This write has been doing it for over ten years (the first ranking, posted on GoffonRugby, was in January of 2004), and it only gets harder.

Why? The split season hasn't made things any easier. Back in 2004, we had teams playing in the Fall and teams playing in the Spring, but at least they were all in one catch-all DI and all playing 15s. Now you have three separate groups - DIA, DIAA, and Varsity Cup (with teams from the VC slipping in and out of the other two). In addition, you have some teams playing 7s and some playing 15s. So how does a team's 7s performance affect its 15s rankings? We've fielded some emails from coaches and fans and supporters thinking we should take it into account, but that's a fool's game. Too often 7s success doesn't translate into 15s wins.

But we can't ignore it completely, either.

This week, we've made a big move, or series of moves:

1) Teams that aren't playing a lot of 15s or 7s, and not winning much when they do, get dropped out.

2) Teams in the middle of the pack, or who we have to check every year to see where they are in 15s, who are playing just 7s, drop down, but are ranked among themselves in part based on how they've been doing in 7s.

3) Teams that are always good are ranked highly even if they are idle or playing 7s (BYU, Cal, St. Mary's)

4) Teams that are playing well in 15s but come from conferences that aren't strong on the national stage get ranked behind the lower group of good teams that are playing 7s.

So thing of it was a series of groups. Group A is really, really good teams that might be playing 15s, or might be playing 7s. Group B is really good teams playing well in 15s. Group C is really good teams playing 7s. Group D is good teams with good records in their conference in 15s.

This might look as if no program can move past BYU, SMCC, Life, Cal or Arkansas State in the fall, but that's not true. Has Kutztown beaten Army soundly, KU might have moved to #1. Certainly we would have had to look at them for the Top 4. If Lindenwood had blown apart Davenport, we might be thinking Top 4.  If Davenport had beaten Arkansas State, then they might have pushed up that high.

We do have potential kingmaker games coming up. AIC against Kutztown could vault AIC into the upper echelon (if KU wins it will likely just conoslidate their ranking). We're expecting Army v Life Nov 22. If that happens, Army could vault to #1.

Maryland and Clemson face off November 8. If Clemson wins big, they can make a move, also.

As for movers this week, Army moves up (obviously) after beating Kutztown. Davenport moves up after beating Lindenwood (yes, we know Lindenwood had a tragic death in their family a week before, but we have to go by results). Navy's results keep looking good, so they move up, and because they move up, so does Air Force, who beat them Penn State, close losers to Army, get dragged up with Army's move (and a win over Wheeling Jesuit doesn't hurt).

Sorry Lindenwood, but your team lost a Davenport, who lost to Penn State and Arkansas State, and Penn State lost to Army and Kutztown, and we have a really hard time thinking Navy and Air Force are worse than those guys.

Dayton has good timing as their win over Miami PLUS our moving of the 7s-playing colleges means they move up 16 places.

Middle Tennessee State moves in after a strong start in the SIRC. We were going to drop Florida International completely out of our rankings because they are in trouble for fielding an ineligible player. But ... the process is still under appeal and the penalty may well be only one vacated result, and thus we'll keep them in there for the moment.

Western Washington is a weird case in that they have been playing 7s with their top players, and fielding a young squad playing U20 clubs in British Columbia. They are 2-2 in BC, and the idea of playing the youngsters in Canada is a great one, but should it reflect on the WWU 15s 1st team ranking? In the end, with them being so active and at least demonstrating that they have talent, we put them in at #42, with reservations.