Texas A&M football rated as one of the teams most deserving of playoff spot

Texas A&M football lands within top ten of 'most deserving' teams for playoff spot

Texas A&M football has been on quite the run here recently, winning six games in a row headed into this weekend's decisive matchup with LSU. The Ags have had some impressive wins in that stretch, most of all over Missouri a few weeks ago, but a victory this weekend would likely top them all.

In the course of a college football season, you come across many different ways of breaking down a team's strength and their resume. Those two are often confused, but—while they are related—they are completely different.

A power rating measures team strength, and is therefore meant to be forward-looking and predictive. Resume rankings measures team accomplishments, and is therefore meant to be backward-looking and descriptive.

One of the most prominent statistical profile builders in the college football atmosphere, Kelley Ford of KFord Ratings, releases both power ratings and resume rankings each week. His resume rankings, which he calls the "most deserving" rankings, measure how a team performs, including scoring margin, relative to their strength of schedule.

Ford has the Aggies making a jump in the latest edition of these rankings, moving up to 10th.

Since this is descriptive, it should not be taken as a prediction that the Aggies will be making the playoff—you can instead think of this as a way of saying that, if the playoff were to start today, the Aggies are one of the teams that should make it in, according to the numbers.

That in itself is an encouraging sign. As I said, though, a win over LSU this weekend—especially a decisive one—would go a long way here as well towards building the case for A&M to be in the 12-team field come selection Sunday.