The Fan Misery Index - Week 10:

Welcome back to the Fan Misery Index, temporarily headquartered in Gainesville, FL.

If you are unfamiliar with the rules of the FMI you can find them here and here.

I like to think that every season of the FMI will be like Conway’s Game of Life. We will set an initial state and a set of rules, and our organisms will live their lives as we analyze the population as a whole for patterns. There will be shooters like Rutgers and their unstoppable downward trajectory. There will be steady state oscillations like Maryland’s oscillations between Second and Third Circle. We may find other large scale movements from which we will draw half-baked conclusions.

This week our game is returning to form. There are more teams back in the original Third Circle than we have seen in weeks. Why are the First and Third Circles so much more heavily populated than any others? What secrets does this metric hold? Why was Colorado ever in the First Circle? These questions are why we do our macabre research. That, and the fact that a bye week means that Ohio State is still stuck in the Third Circle which is just the best.

Let’s take a look at the board.

MISERY OF NOTE

• It is still far too early to make any conclusions from this experiment and there are a lot of games left to lose in embarrassing fashion. There are a handful of teams out there who make me believe that this metric represents the actual experience of their fans. Among those are Purdue, TCU, Army, and Arkansas. Look at what has happened over the weeks with those teams and how their fans would actually feel about the results. The system isn’t perfect, but we are on to something.
• Oh Louisville. I promise you that the Ninth Circle is the bottom of this pit no matter how hard you keep digging. Losing a conference game by 61 points is pretty good hustle, though. College football Satan is thinking about making you a graduate assistant after your eligibility is up.
• How about them Black Knights? Congrats to a service academy for coming as close to enjoyment as is possible in college football. It won’t last. Eat at the Arby’s on base.
• Florida lost to unranked Mizzou by three touchdowns giving us a 4 tier swing for the first time in weeks. The Gators have moved like a stabbed rat all season, but they have nothing on Maryland who have moved 8 times in 10 weeks! The Terps could find a way to jump a level on a bye week.