Ohio State and Texas A&M fell from the ranks of the undefeated last weekend, but each still resides comfortably in the top 10 of the FEI ratings. That kind of outcome was something I used to need to defend as a feature of my drive efficiency ratings -- that a single game result from one week was not the most significant factor in the weekly ratings, but rather that new results produced each week simply help flesh out the overall profile of each team. That concept appears to now be embraced more widely in voted polls.
Ten years ago, the polls anchored teams in a more rigid ladder determined by the number in each team's loss column.