Well we had a bunch of stuff happen, didn't we? 

In the end, the rankings held up pretty well. Notre Dame College, which we moved to #1 at Week 10, was indeed the best team in NCR's D1. St. Bonaventure or Brown? Well we knew it was close, and it turned out to be. Bonnies beat Brown by two points and we're not too bothered that Brown was ranked one spot ahead at #2.

We did ponder putting Indiana at #2, and there is an argument for that. But overall when you look at the level of competition and, if not common opponents, then common opponents of opponents, St. Bonaventure's body of work is a little stronger. So, yes, IU, you could argue #2, but to unseat a team that makes a final you have to have a really unimpeachable case. And losing 26-13 as opposed to 33-10 isn't going to do it.

Fordham did very well in beating Southern Nazarene, and they prompted us to take a much, much closer look at the Liberty scores. Specifically, we looked at Siena, Iona, Fordham, Fairfield, AIC, and Dartmouth. We tracked all the results within that group and promptly turfed out Siena because they were obviously the top of that group of six.

So now we were down to five. Iona was clearly the best of that group, but the we used their results to rank teams from the point of view of each program.

(For example: Fairfield lost to Iona but beat Dartmouth by 11 and Fordham by 4. So you'd rank them Iona, Fairfield, Fordham, then Dartmouth. AIC? We'd look at secondary results and in fact Fairfield and AIC had five common opponents. Fairfield beat two of them, AIC beat one. Overall Fairfield was 2-3 -24, and AIC 1-4 -71. So AIC is ranked lower than Fairfield. They beat Fordham (close) but lost to Dartmouth so we end up ranking AIC 5th out of those group.)

That process produced this stack ranking for those five Liberty teams: Iona, Fairfield, Fordham, Dartmouth, AIC. It's really close among those last three, and, yes, Fordham did indeed lose to AIC but the score was 13-11, and Fordham did well to play Iona tough (19-12) and Fairfield tougher (22-18) before beating Southern Nazarene 26-13 over the weekend. They also, by the way, beat Binghamton, a Liberty D1AA playoff team.

So Fordham goes back into the rankings at #14. (Remember we took them out because we were relying solely on close losses and needed a win to help. We got two.)

So that's our list. #1 is a no-doubter. #2 through #3 are essentially equal. #7 through #11 have very little between them. #14 through #18 is a blanket finish, too.