BCS Week- BCS Computers

As part of it's rankings the BCS includes 6 computer rankings (all without margin of victory). Here's a breakdown of all 6, with some thoughts on they're accuracy. For those of you looking for dirt on the BCS, look at the last 3.

Sagarin Elo Ratings

Jeff Sagarin is THE big name in sports rankings systems, and without including him the BCS would be making a serious mistake. His Elo system is not his primary ranking, but it is the one that fits BCS requirements (the other is predictive). The Elo system is based off the rankings used by chess players, which has worked well over the years, but he doesn't give details.

Peter Wolfe's Ratings

Peter Wolfe is another big name, and he also has some very good rankings. His are probably the most mathematically sound, he uses the Bradley-Terry method to find the ratings that maximize the probability that the results of the real world happened. It's a great basis, but the one problem is that under that method all undefeated teams should have infinitely high ratings. Since this doesn't happen he presumably includes some limiting factor, but it's likely sort of arbitrary, reducing the mathematical rigorousness.

Ken Massey Ratings

Ken Massey doesn't give many details on his BCS ranking system, but it gives good results and his other ratings are documented as being mathematically solid. I'm guessing actually that his ratings are similar to mine, but I'm not sure. Even if they stunk though he'd deserve to be included for all his contributions to the rating community.

Anderson Hester Ratings

There is very little description for these ratings, but from what there is I see two problems.

1. They only include opponents record and opponents opponents record. This does not look deep enough into strength of schedule, and over rewards teams in weaker conferences (all conferences will have roughly .500 for both records, regardless of strength).

2. They include a conference rating as part of strength of schedule. Should New Mexico's losses reflect negatively on playing TCU? I don't think so.

Fortunately for the AH ratings the two flaws kind of cancel each other out. There are still better ways to rank teams though.

Colley Matrix Ratings

The Colley Matrix Ratings are great because they are mathematically sound and he even gives details on how the ratings work. They are not so good though, because they don't rank teams very well. He uses FBS games (and FCS vs FBS games in a weird way) only, but I've programmed his system and here's how the top 10 looks with all 730 teams:

1. Auburn

2. LSU

3. TCU

4. North Central

5. Boise St

6. Oregon

7. Stanford

8. St Thomas

9. Missouri

10. Wesley

Not only is LSU now ahead of TCU, but there are suddenly teams from other divisions like D3 St. Thomas up there. Does North Central deserve to be there? No, and this flaw severely limits the Colley Matrix method.

Richard Billingsly Rankings

Billingsly's rankings are by his own admission the least mathematically complex of the BCS rankings. They were also created through a process of his own tinkering. While it's neat that he was able to just mess with the games until it works, that involves way too much personal bias to be a part of deciding the national championship. The other, more glaring problem is that he uses the previous year's final rankings as part of his formula. While it's true that teams don't change too much between years, each season should be completely separate if you're evaluating the national champion of that year. He admits that the preseason rankings have an effect on undefeated teams. In week 8 of the BCS this year Missouri averaged 6th in the computer polls and was in the top 10 in all but Billingsley's, where they were unranked because they didn't play well last season. A system like that definitely should not be a part of the BCS.

So 3 systems (Anderson/Hester, Colley, Billingsly) should not be included in the BCS, who replaces them? Here are three of my favorites:

Pugh Ratings- These have great math behind them, and the work too.

Doktor Entropy Ratings-These are commonly cited as a good set of rankings, although they'd have to be adjusted to join the BCS.

Random Walker Rankings-Randomly ranking monkeys is a cool premise, with some neat theory behind it.

BCS Week- Philosophy

College football has always occupied an odd spot in the sporting landscape. Unlike pro football, players can't commit all their time to football (some do actually go to school), and unlike college basketball players can't play 40 times a season, or multiple times a week. Because of a limited schedule, it's traditionally been impossible to have a true champion. High school sports deal with this by having state champions, but as a nationwide sport college football had to settle on the "mythical national championship" selected by polls. Sometimes the MNC worked well, but occasionally it would result in multiple champions from various different polls. The BCS was established to help solve that problem, but who's satisfied with a 2 team playoff? Aren't there other qualified teams? How can a team win every single game they play, but still not win a championship? How to pick a championship team is a difficult task, but that's what I'm going to look at over the next week starting here.

What Do Championships Reward?

Many people would say that the best team in a league wins the championship. I would contend though that this isn't true. They actually reward the most successful team, and they should. A team that beats Washington by 30 points is probably better than a team that beats them by 5. Even when one team loses to another, they can often actually be better. 9-2 Virgina Tech lost to 6-5 James Madison, from the FCS. The Hokies are absolutely better, but they had an off day and an unlucky game. How much of a role does luck play? Here's a look at how often the better team wins in the 6 best conferences in football over the last couple years, using this method.

	2008	2009
ACC	0.76	0.5
Big 12	0.86	0.93
Big Ten	0.82	0.84
MWC	0.98	1
Pac-10	0.83	0.91
SEC	0.87	0.84
Average	0.85	0.84

So while luck plays a smaller role in college football than other sports, it still changes the result in 15% of top level games. That's where the difference between the best teams and the most successful teams enters. You can't reward Virginia Tech for being the best team, you have reward James Madison for winning.

What Ranking System To Use

The goal of playing a game though is just to win, not to win by any given amount. Take the example from earlier, where Team A beats Washington by 30, and Team B beats them by only 5. If you are predicting who wins games, you should pick Team A, but if you want to reward a champion you should rate both teams equally. Because of this, I think the BCS is right not to include margin of victory, and when selecting a champion I'll use my No MoV rankings. I'm going to criticize the BCS plenty this week but I'll credit them here, they do a pretty good job of focusing on the goal: winning football games.

College Football Top 25 11/21

It's the start of BCS Week here at Kobe, Tell Me How My Stats Taste, and in honor of a Big Game victory/mostly because I have free time over Thanksgiving break there will be a post each day on the BCS and NCAA football's championship system. We're going to start off the week the same way as always though, with the top 25.

Rank	Team	W	L	Rating	SOS
1	Boise St	10	0	663.2	32.73
2	Oregon	10	0	542.71	50
3	TCU	11	0	538.56	32.02
4	Stanford	10	1	531.33	75.83
5	Ohio State	10	1	397.1	39.95
6	Alabama	9	2	377.12	51.12
7	Oklahoma	9	2	287.72	69.93
8	Missouri	9	2	255.31	63.23
9	Auburn	11	0	224.18	56.08
10	Oklahoma St	10	1	222.03	45.13
11	Arkansas	9	2	221.07	54.33
12	Texas A&M	8	3	218.67	76.28
13	Nebraska	9	2	218.63	49.7
14	South Carolina	8	3	206.24	67.75
15	Iowa	7	4	199.57	48.81
16	Virginia Tech	9	2	194.33	45.4
17	Arizona	7	3	187.57	61.9
18	LSU	10	1	182.9	56.82
19	Florida	7	4	174.02	65.18
20	Oregon St	5	5	164.47	121.77
21	Florida St	8	3	160.52	48.31
22	Wisconsin	10	1	153.42	35.3
23	Arizona St	4	6	148.57	81.44
24	Southern Cal	7	4	146.51	103.48
25	Miami FL	7	4	132.74	56.64

That's right, with a dominating victory over a good Fresno State team the Boise State Broncos have moved into the top ranking slot. Other than that, the rankings have remained pretty steady, except for USC's drop. At this point in the season, there's been enough games played that only surprising games really alter the rankings very much. Even teams further back in the pack stayed pretty steady. Here's a look:

48

Texas

5

6

60.79

55.63

57

Washington

4

6

49.98

142.52

61

Iowa St

5

7

45.36

78.66

66

Northwestern

7

4

41.21

31.41

415

Georgetown DC

4

7

0.5

0.77

No MoV rankings can change a lot though still, because they are further from the true rankings. Here's a look at the top 10:

Rank	Team	W	L	Rating	SOS
1	Auburn	11	0	26.46	6.61
2	Oregon	10	0	24.27	6.06
3	TCU	11	0	24.11	6.02
4	Missouri	9	2	23.61	9.77
5	Stanford	10	1	23.29	7.49
6	LSU	10	1	23	7.4
7	Oklahoma	9	2	22.78	9.42
8	Boise St	10	0	22.59	5.64
9	Oklahoma St	10	1	21.91	7.04
10	Texas A&M	8	3	20.13	10.72

The big news here is that both TCU and Boise St. moved up in the rankings (which is true in the BCS too). At this point, they are shooting to do two things with the rankings: stay ahead of the one loss teams, and pass Auburn if they lose. Right now, I think they'll stay ahead of LSU, and I'm guessing one of them would pass Auburn but it will be very close. I also am convinced that Boise State will finish ahead of TCU in the BCS standings as long as they win out. Why that's true will be covered more in the upcoming BCS week.

Games of November 20th

The end of the season is approaching, and there are some big games surrounding the teams followed at K,TMHMST. How's this week's slate gonna look? Here are the predictions, which hopefully do better than last week.

Ohio State 25 Iowa 21

A promising season may turn into a very mediocre one for the Hawks at Kinnick today.

Stanford 27 Cal 22

This game is dangerous though because as highlighted earlier this week, Cal is a very strong home team.

Illinois 28 Northwestern 21

The game will be close, but thanks to safety issues the game at Wrigley will still be a one sided affair.

Texas A&M 28 Nebraska 24

With home field advantage the rising Aggies will take down the Cornhuskers.

USC 32 Oregon State 30

Both these Pac-10 teams are stronger than their records.

Georgetown 26 Marist 20

Can the Hoya's end the season with a win? Sounds good to me.

Last Week: 2-4 (disaster)

This Season: 32-17

New NFL and NBA rankings

Each week I have a chance to go over the college football rankings, but I haven't had a chance recently to look at the professionals. What's up in the NBA and NFL (besides me being embarrassed by the Detroit Lions)?

Here's four trends to look at going ahead:

1. The NFC West sucks.

Anybody who follows football already knew this, but having 24th ranked St. Louis as their best team is almost unbelievable. Ishan stands a chance at winning his bet that the 49ers make the playoffs (made when they were 0-5) but I think the winner is goint to be the Rams. That's right Masta' P, your St. Louis Rams will beat Seattle on January second for their 7th win of the season, clinching the division by tiebreaker over the Seahawks.

2. The Bears aren't just lucky.

Yeah, the Bears have won some close games this season. They've lost some too though, and updating the rankings through today they'd project to have 6.23 wins at this point, not too far from the 7 they actually have. They have a touch finishing schedule (average opponent rating of 1.67, right in between the Colts and Patriots) but with the parity in the NFL this year they are still predicted to have 2.73 wins. A 10-6 Chicago Bears team? That could make the playoffs.

3. The Heat will "get better".

Yeah, they're 7-4, but they're atop the power rankings and should be 9-2 (9.09 wins exactly). As the season goes on those mistakes will iron out, and I project them to finish at 67-15 at their current pace. They'll probably regress to the mean some, but the MiAmigos are still a very good team, probably the best in the NBA.

4. The Hornets are for real.

Chris Paul's return (not "CP3" a terrible excuse for a nickname) and the new focus on defense are a big deal. They boast the best record in the NBA at 9-1, and THEY'VE PLAYED THE TOUGHEST SCHEDULE. Once the easier teams roll in, they'll kick even more butt. At this rate, they'll finish the season 70-12! Don't expect that, but do expect them to stick around as a legitimate dark horse contender.

The Most Dangerous (Big) Game

It's Big Game week here at Stanford, and in honor of getting my ticket earlier today I'm going to post on one of the most bizarre patterns so far this year, Cal's home and away difference this year. While being just 5-5 and playing terribly in all of their road games, the Golden Bears have managed to run train against opponents at home, even holding the Oregon offense in check last Saturday when they almost stunned the Ducks. Using Points Line Rating (it's easier to calculate on a game by game basis) here's a look at how Cal has preformed at home:

Overall rating: 54.6

49 point win over UC-Davis (16.1)- 65.1 game rating

45 point win over Colorado (39.1)- 84.1

28 point win over UCLA (44.4)- 72.4

33 point win over Arizona St (52.9)- 85.9

2 point loss to Oregon (70.5)- 68.5

Cal has averaged a rating of 75.2 at home this season. Even factoring out usual home field advantage (4 points) that would make them the best team in college football. So sure, Stanford's playing a 5-5 team this week, but even without considering the rivalry, it'll be a dangerous game for the Cardinal.

College Football Top 25 11/14

A terrible football weekend involved many disappointments, from Iowa's terrible loss, to poor predictions (2-4?!), to IM flag football teams being eliminated by the Baby Seal Clubbers. To add to the disappointment, there were no big upsets on top. So presumably the standings don't change? They did. Here's the top 25:

Rank	Team	W	L	Rating	SOS
1	Oregon	10	0	581.37	53.56
2	Boise St	9	0	520.31	28.33
3	TCU	11	0	494.14	29.38
4	Stanford	9	1	464.13	74.07
5	Alabama	8	2	430.04	70.44
6	Ohio State	9	1	394.25	32.45
7	Oklahoma	8	2	244.99	65
8	Missouri	8	2	239.03	62.03
9	Auburn	11	0	232.93	58.27
10	Arkansas	8	2	220.89	49.78
11	Oklahoma St	9	1	218.98	51.57
12	Nebraska	9	1	210.08	39.67
13	LSU	9	1	208.43	60.61
14	Texas A&M	7	3	201.75	65.75
15	Southern Cal	7	3	192.46	97.52
16	Iowa	7	3	192.07	39.65
17	South Carolina	7	3	187.85	78.68
18	Arizona	7	3	180.97	59.72
19	Virginia Tech	8	2	180.48	41.36
20	Florida St	7	3	159.27	48.33
21	Florida	6	4	158.05	77.18
22	California	5	5	155.82	82.18
23	Arizona St	4	6	148.01	81.13
24	Miami FL	7	3	145.88	50.39
25	Wisconsin	9	1	140.27	32.46

TCU played terrible against San Diego State, and through that has lost their hold on the number one spot. Boise State has continued to dominate, and Oregon beat a pretty good Cal team. Iowa, after a terrible loss, has now dropped to the middle of a pack of 7-3 teams, while 9-1 Wisconsin has finally snuck in. Why is Wisconsin ranked so low still? Poor strength of schedule is the main culprit, along with lucky wins over Arizona St. and Iowa. They remind me a lot of the 12-1 Iowa team last year that still ended up ranked about 20th.

Here's some other relevant teams:

56

Texas

4

6

51.43

62.52

61

Iowa St

5

6

42.97

66.14

64

Northwestern

7

3

41.57

26.23

66

Washington

3

6

40.14

157.5

421

Georgetown DC

3

7

0.51

0.89

These teams, except Northwestern, are not playing for much anymore, but they do have a chance to wreck havoc on the upper level teams, just as Northwestern did to Iowa. At this point in the season, that's what it's about for many teams, and the only hope for teams like TCU and Boise State looking to move into the championship game.