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DYTS? Ratings 2016 Week 7

Time for week 2 of Does Your Team Suck. Do the Broncos suck? In the world of college football, the transitive property seems to be entirely forgotten and rightfully so. Houston is a playoff contender? Navy beats Houston. Air Force beats Navy handily. Air Force loses a close one to New Mexico. All hail New Mexico, a true playoff contender (who happened to lose to Rutgers). Does Rutgers suck?

All of this merely goes to show how difficult it can be to truly assess the quality of a team. It should be remembered, that this rating is meant to assess the quality of a teams wins, it does not include expectations about future games. For example, it is quite likely that Alabama will win its next 5 games; however, those games still need to be played, so this rating system would not make such an assumption. This should be kept in mind when reviewing the results. Eventually there should be some correspondence between body of work and quality of team, but there is a lot of football to be played.

METHODOLOGY

For an intro to the model, please look at DYTS intro

Several people believe that losses should be included. While the model doesn't penalize losses, losses do change the model by affecting conference strength assessments. This can have a profound effect. In summary, a teams loss has systemic effects even it they aren't direct. This also makes calculations easier.

Again, for simplicity, I have decided not to include scoring in the model. While this would certainly improve things (because it would more closely correspond with the eye test), it makes things more complex than I would like at this time. I may include scoring differences next year. Including scoring can be problematic if you have a coach who eases up in the second half and plays backups or if you have a coach who likes to run up the score against hapless opponents.

I appreciate most of the feedback given about the intro. Egnowit was especially helpful at pointing out some glaring problems with my initial attempt.

I fixed a couple of these problems, but I have yet to address the problem that arises when a team (using the eye test) is 1-0 in conference but has performed poorly OOC gives its winning opponents more credit than they "seem" to deserve. This is not unexpected; the model is based on wins and not expectations. I haven't found a satisfying way to include this in the model yet, but I may include it next year. (If I'm still interested).

RESULTS

The conference strengths have been adjusted to reflect this weeks results. Here is what I obtained:

Big 10 15.16% -0.26% 16.76% -3.21%
ACC 14.00% 0.36% 16.64% 2.87% ↑1
SEC 12.83% 0.38% 15.22% -0.73% ↓1
Pac-12 11.57% 0.50% 12.32% 0.58%
MAC 9.53% -0.16% 8.73% 1.72% ↑2
MWC 7.48% -0.13% 7.97% -1.10%
AAC 11.57% -0.19% 7.90% -1.90% ↓2
Sun Belt 5.94% -0.10% 5.90% -1.07%
Big 12 8.16% -0.97% 5.58% 1.87%
CUSA 3.77% 0.58% 2.96% 0.94%

The 2nd column represents the absolute strength of a conference based on its OOC wins (adjusted for conference size). The 3rd column represents the change from the previous week's rating. The 4th column is the most important. It represents the strength of a conference after adjusting for quality of wins. The 5th column indicates the change from the previous week. The last column shows ordinal changes in ranking.

The Big 10 grew much weaker this week, but is still #1, slightly edging out the ACC, who grew the most. The Big12 strengthened but is still much weaker than expected. The biggest result for us is that the MAC is stronger than the MWC. It's not by much, but it means that Western Michigan's in-conference wins are more valued than ours.

Using the 4th column above, I calculated the strengths of each team's wins. Here is what I obtained:

Clemson ACC 0.4114 1 ↑2
Tennessee SEC 0.4033 2
Alabama SEC 0.3765 3 ↑2
Michigan BIG10 0.3539 4 ↓3
Western Michigan MAC 0.3525 5 ↑7
North Carolina ACC 0.3055 6 ↑26
Utah PAC12 0.2906 7 ↑11
Texas A&M SEC 0.2896 8 ↓4
Florida State ACC 0.2685 9 ↓2
Boise State MW 0.2643 10 ↓4
Nebraska BIG10 0.2503 11 ↑2
Pittsburgh ACC 0.2366 12 ↑5
Auburn SEC 0.2309 13 ↓4
Ohio State BIG10 0.2090 14 ↓6
Wisconsin BIG10 0.2002 15 ↓5
Stanford PAC12 0.1949 16 ↑16
NC State ACC 0.1844 17 ↑3
Florida SEC 0.1727 18 ↑10
California PAC12 0.1641 19 ↓3
Georgia SEC 0.1564 20 ↑10
USC PAC12 0.1557 21 ↓2
UCLA PAC12 0.1481 22 ↑19
BYU IND 0.1480 23 ↑18
Appalachian State SB 0.1469 24 ↑2
Ole Miss SEC 0.1399 25 ↓10
Penn State BIG10 0.1389 26 ↓12
Eastern Michigan MAC 0.1387 27 ↑20
Syracuse ACC 0.1373 28 ↑45
Washington State PAC12 0.1328 29 ↑16
South Alabama SB 0.1305 30 ↓8
Colorado PAC12 0.1303 31 ↑5
Oklahoma State BIG12 0.1301 32 ↑24
Northwestern BIG10 0.1281 33 ↓6
Virginia Tech ACC 0.1267 34 ↑12
Maryland BIG10 0.1250 35 ↓24
San Diego State MW 0.1240 36 ↓5
Minnesota BIG10 0.1235 37 ↑1
West Virginia BIG12 0.1229 38 ↑19
Central Michigan MAC 0.1202 39 ↑14
Air Force MW 0.1190 40 ↓19
Toledo MAC 0.1186 41 ↓6
Houston AMER 0.1163 42 ↑10
Arizona State PAC12 0.1102 43 ↓9
Arkansas SEC 0.1082 44 ↑33
Washington PAC12 0.1042 45 ↓1
Miami ACC 0.1009 46 ↓9
Vanderbilt SEC 0.1004 47 ↑38
Troy SB 0.0985 48 ↑1
Oklahoma BIG12 0.0941 49 ↑39
Idaho SB 0.0925 50 ↑20
Kentucky SEC 0.0882 51 ↑7
Louisville ACC 0.0844 52 ↑13
Connecticut AMER 0.0839 53 ↓30
East Carolina AMER 0.0832 T54 ↓30
Oregon PAC12 0.0832 T54 ↓30
Wyoming MW 0.0823 56 ↓27
Navy AMER 0.0797 57 ↓14
Georgia Tech ACC 0.0786 58 ↑43
Army IND 0.0777 T59 ↑2
Buffalo MAC 0.0777 T59 ↑2
Southern Mississippi CUSA 0.0766 61 ↓10
New Mexico State SB 0.0728 62 ↓12
Notre Dame IND 0.0716 T63 ↑12
Michigan State BIG10 0.0716 T63 ↑13
LSU SEC 0.0716 65 ↓6
Mississippi State SEC 0.0681 66 ↓6
Duke ACC 0.0671 67 ↓3
Virginia ACC 0.0594 68 ↑11
Utah State MW 0.0590 69 ↓14
Iowa BIG10 0.0588 70 ↑29
Texas State SB 0.0582 T71 ↓27
Missouri SEC 0.0582 T71 ↑10
Wake Forest ACC 0.0577 73 ↓34
Old Dominion CUSA 0.0574 74 ↓2
Cincinnati AMER 0.0559 75 ↓35
Memphis AMER 0.0546 76 ↓13
UNLV MW 0.0538 77 ↑31
Arizona PAC12 0.0532 T78 ↓30
Hawai'i MW 0.0532 T78 ↓9
Rutgers BIG10 0.0532 T78 ↓7
New Mexico MW 0.0532 T78 ↑30
South Florida AMER 0.0502 82 ↓4
Oregon State PAC12 0.0411 83 ↓9
Ball State MAC 0.0403 84 ↓17
Middle Tennessee CUSA 0.0402 T85 ↑1
Temple AMER 0.0402 T85 ↑22
Arkansas State SB 0.0399 87 ↓19
Baylor BIG12 0.0391 88 ↓1
South Carolina SEC 0.0387 89 ↑13
Massachusetts IND 0.0377 90 ↓6
Indiana BIG10 0.0308 91 ↓2
UCF AMER 0.0303 92 ↓2
Akron MAC 0.0291 T93 ↓13
Miami (OH) MAC 0.0291 T93 ↑24
Tulsa AMER 0.0279 95 ↑5
Purdue BIG10 0.0278 96 ↓30
San José State MW 0.0266 97 ↑20
Texas BIG12 0.0212 98 ↓3
Colorado State MW 0.0204 99 ↓3
Texas Tech BIG12 0.0203 100 ↓8
Georgia Southern SB 0.0202 101 ↑5
Texas San Antonio CUSA 0.0200 T102 ↓9
Louisiana Tech CUSA 0.0200 T102 ↓5
Western Kentucky CUSA 0.0200 T102 ↑8
SMU AMER 0.0197 T103 ↓10
Tulane AMER 0.0197 T103 ↓21
UTEP CUSA 0.0197 T103 ↓20
Kansas State BIG12 0.0188 108 ↓17
Florida Intl CUSA 0.0103 109 ↑6
Boston College ACC 0.0061 110 ↓12
TCU BIG12 0.0018 111 ↓8
Nevada MW 0.0014 112 ↓7
Ohio MAC 0.0013 113 ↓9
Illinois BIG10 0.0012 114 ↑3
Kent State MAC 0.0007 115 ↓4
Louisiana Lafayette SB 0.0005 T116 ↓5
Georgia State SB 0.0005 T116 ↓5
Louisiana Monroe SB 0.0005 T116 ↓1
North Texas CUSA 0.0002 T118 ↓3
Marshall CUSA 0.0002 T118 ↓1
Charlotte CUSA 0.0002 T118 ↓1
Northern Illinois MAC 0.0000 T119 ↓8
Kansas BIG12 0.0000 T119 ↓2
Iowa State BIG12 0.0000 T119 ↓2
Fresno State MW 0.0000 T119 ↓2
Bowling Green MAC 0.0000 T119 ↓2
Florida Atlantic CUSA 0.0000 T119 ↓2
Rice CUSA 0.0000 T119 ↓2

The model has obtained some surprising results. I especially enjoyed how different it responds than the typical poll rankings. BSU obviously weakened because of Beaver and Cajun losses and because their conference strength weakened. Tennessee got embarrassed by Alabama, but is still ranked #2. The model still respects their 5 wins.

Western Michigan has jumped the Broncos (BW BW to BW). They have one more win than we do, but still. Hopefully, our conference strength can improve (we can do that with a victory against BYU this week). North Carolina and Utah get some much due respect. Stanford (which started this whole mess) is certainly not a dumpster fire, although Mcaffery's injury could hurt them later.

California is somehow still hanging around. (Oh yeah, they beat Utah, who is currently atop the Pac-12 South.) Georgia lost to Vanderbilt and gets a nice boost in the rankings. Syracuse is the biggest gainer with their victory over VT. Does VT suck? Does Syracuse suck?

Hope you enjoy the results!

ERRATA

I failed to include Charlotte's win over FAU last week.

I mistakenly used FAU instead of FIU when calculating the OOC strength of Indiana.

This content was not created by OBNUG and therefore may not meet our standards. On the contrary, it probably exceeds them.

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