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