I just noticed some smaller numbers next to the team name on the power rankings. I'm wondering what these signify. It appears they are how far above or below "mediocrity" the team is, which means most of my teams are near 0, but it seems there's a little more to it than that. I don't remember seeing these in other power ranking lists in real life.

Yeah, its a first

It's the power ranking "score" for each team. Basically, on a neutral playing field, if two teams are playing each other, the final score differential should be determined by the difference of the two team's scores. I decided to expose that number to give a better idea of the distance between two teams in the power ranking algorithm.

The score is basically the numbers each team is assigned to get the lowest error rate when running that algorithm over all the games used to generate the score (with a 3-point HFA).

I just want to make sure I am understanding correctly. In the USFL/WFL league, in week 9 of the season, my team, the 29th Power ranked 4-4 Houston Gamblers are playing the 14th Power ranked 5-3 Oklahoma Outlaws. The smaller number beside Houston is -6.1 while Oklahoma's smaller number is -0.1

Going into week 9 game of the season, the Outlaws are favored to win our matchup by 3 points. (Outlaws (-3) @ Gamblers)

By your explanation, am I ALREADY predetermined to lose by 6 points even though being the suggested underdog by a FG?

It's just the point spread (a prediction), which is artificially capped at 14 pts so nobody gets their feelings hurt.

Home field advantage is worth 3 points in the point spread.

Get rid of the cap! Then when I get my clock cleaned I can at least feel better about beating the 28pt spread! I'm only half kidding.