[CTcard]

A specific huh? with the RPI

At #67, Tennessee ranks ahead of seven Pac-11 teams.

Tennessee has lost to Middle Tennesse, East Tennessee State, and Morehead State, and 2-20 to James Madison.  And they've been swept by LSU and South Carolina, the 11th and 12th ranked teams in the SEC.  And they're ranked well ahead of Oregon and Cal.  

What about Tennessee, and its record this year, justifies that?  

And the only explanation that seems to make sense is that they're in SEC, so they no worse than a top 70 team.

You might want to check out Boyd's World ISR rankings that I linked to above. At one point I had read through how he constructed his algorithm and thought it was reasonably mathematically sophisticated, but to tell the truth I do not remember the details right now. 

I also don't know enough to comment specifically about Tennessee - for middling baseball teams specific bad losses don't really tell you that much. In Boyd's ISR Tennessee (25-22) appears at #77, behind #45 Arizona (25-17), #55 cal (25-17), #69 UW (21-19), and #73 Oregon (21-21), but ahead of #93 $C (19-21) etc. 

Of course if you really want to see what the computers say generally, you can check out the Massey composite of rankings. A few of those are questionable. 
https://www.masseyratings.com/cbase/compare.htm

[CTcard]

A specific huh? with the RPI

At #67, Tennessee ranks ahead of seven Pac-11 teams.

Tennessee has lost to Middle Tennesse, East Tennessee State, and Morehead State, and 2-20 to James Madison.  And they've been swept by LSU and South Carolina, the 11th and 12th ranked teams in the SEC.  And they're ranked well ahead of Oregon and Cal.  

What about Tennessee, and its record this year, justifies that?  

And the only explanation that seems to make sense is that they're in SEC, so they no worse than a top 70 team.

You might want to check out Boyd's World ISR rankings that I linked to above. At one point I had read through how he constructed his algorithm and thought it was reasonably mathematically sophisticated, but to tell the truth I do not remember the details right now. 

I also don't know enough to comment specifically about Tennessee - for middling baseball teams specific bad losses don't really tell you that much. In Boyd's ISR Tennessee (25-22) appears at #77, behind #45 Arizona (25-17), #55 cal (25-17), #69 UW (21-19), and #73 Oregon (21-21), but ahead of #93 $C (19-21) etc. 

Of course if you really want to see what the computers say generally, you can check out the Massey composite of rankings. A few of those are questionable. 
https://www.masseyratings.com/cbase/compare.htm