Golden Rankings, week 7

More than halfway through the year, time to reveal our first full Golden rankings:



For an explanation of the ranking system, check out the original site of the rankings. Our rankings differ slightly from his, with the main difference being the inclusion of FCS teams and discounted values for wins over FCS teams based on the overall FCS vs FBS record.

Not surprisingly the top of the poll is dominated by unbeaten teams. For the first time that I can recall, four of the top five teams play each other this week as LSU visits Auburn, and Oklahoma visits Missouri.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we've added a couple of new columns to our chart - offensive average and defensive average. This is a measurement of how teams do scoring wise in relation to the averages of the teams they are playing. So for example, our #1 team Oklahoma is scoring 13.2 points more per game that their opponents usually allow, and are allowing 8.8 points less per game than their opponents normally score.

Top Riser from last week (FBS) - UAB, up 60 places
Biggest Loser (FBS): UTEP, down 46
Top Riser (FCS) : South Dakota State, up 46
Biggest Loser (FCS): Texas State, down 68
Toughest Schedule (FBS): Washington State, Opponent average place in the rankings - 46.71
Weakest Schedule (FBS): UTEP, 173
Toughest Schedule (FCS): Charleston Southern 88.75
Weakest Schedule (FCS): Southern 211.5

Conference rankings show the Big 12 leading the way with the Big Ten holding off the defending champ SEC:

Golden Rankings, defensive averages

We still wait on the Golden team rankings for another week, but as promised, this week will we look at the defensive team rankings. As you may recall, we modified the rankings this year to enter in both scores for each game, instead of just the margin, allowing us to calculate the average points and points allowed for each team, and to measure a team's offensive an defensive performance in each game in relation to their opponents averages. Last week we looked at the top offenses, this week we look at defenses. These are the top ten (11) teams in holding their opponents under their average points per game. Remember that these numbers are the average amount these teams' opponents are scoring under their yearly average.

1)James Madison -- 18.6 -- the slayer of Virginia Tech has only allowed 39 points in four games to teams that are scoring 28 points per game. Granted Liberty and Morehead State are not powerhouse, but this is still impressive, especially considering the Hokies scored 30 on Boise State and 41 on NC State.
t2)Illinois -- 17.4 -- This is what happens when you hold one of the top scoring offenses in the county (OSU) 20 points under their season average.
t2)Arizona -- 17.4 -- This average seems a little more sustainable than the top two. Of course, they still have to play Oregon and Stanford.
4)Miami -- 15.7 -- held Pitt 24 points under their season average
5)Alabama -- 14.9 -- Four out of five opponents held ten points or more below their season average.
6)Penn State -- 14.8 -- This may be a function of the Penn State offense lulling the other team to sleep
7)Navy -- 13.7 -- Helped by a relatively weak schedule.
8)Florida -- 13.1 -- Only Alabama scored more than 17 on them
9)Oregon -- 12.7 -- God help the rest of the country if they keep this stat up, as we all know they will score.
t10)Stanford -- 12.4 -- How good is the Oregon offense? They scored 52 against Stanford and their season average went down.
t10)LSU -- 12.4 -- Even Les Miles can't mismange this defense.

Golden Rankings, Conference Standings

Still to early to debut the Golden Rankings for this season, but just like Golden did, we reveal the conference standings:

Yikes, how bad has it gotten for the Big East? They are just a hair ahead of the Ivy league and are behind the Colonial. Maybe Villanova will want to stay in the better league.

Also wanted to present something new for the rankings this year. This year instead of just entering the margin of victory for each game, I'm entering each team's score. This allows me to keep track of team's average points scored and allowed per game, and also allows me to track how teams do against their opponents averages. This is a somewhat useful metric, as it allows you to take strength of the opposition teams. If two teams are both averaging 30 points per game, but one is doing it against teams that only give up 20 per game, and the other is doing it against teams that give up 35 per game, the first team would appear to be the better offensive team. So here are the top ten offenses in the country, as measured by the amount of points per game they score over what their opponents give up on average:

1) Ohio State 19.9
2) Oklahoma State 19.3
3) Stanford 18.3
4) Oregon 18.3
t5) TCU 17.8
t5) Houston 17.8
7) Nevada 15.8
8) Texas A&M 15.5
t9) Stephen F Austin 15.1
t9) Appalachian State 15.1

Of course, it's still early in the season, but its interesting to see to FCS teams on this list, especially one that's played an FBS team (SFA lost to Texas A&M 48-7 in the opener). Also interesting to note that several of these teams square off this week (OK State vs A&M tonight, Stanford vs the Ducks Saturday night).

Next week we'll look at some defensive numbers.

Golden Program Rankings

It's too early in the season for the regular Golden rankings to really mean anything, but since everyone has played at least one game, we thought we would display something new: out version of program rankings using the Golden system. The concept is rather simple, this years points are added to 75% of last year's points, 50% of the points from two years ago, and 25% of the points from three years ago, and then divided by the total number of games played over the course of the four years. The idea is that this formula accounts for the full range of playing time for most every player currently on a college football roster, with proportionally more weight given to the most recent data.

No suprises near the top with 08 champion Florida and defending champ Alabama at 1 and 3, sandwiched around Texas who has 5 losses over the last four years. What might be surprising is that the Big Ten is the first league with three teams to show up, with OSU, PSU and Iowa all in the top 14, and the Mountain West is the second with TCU, Utah, and BYU in the top 17.

For conference rankings, no surprise that the SEC is up top with only one of their twelve teams, Vandy, with a negative per game average over four years. The Big East is solidly in second, helped by good bowl records in several of those years.

Golden Rankings, 2009 changes

Just like the BCS, our goal here with the modified Golden rankings is to keep tinkering with the system year after year to try and correct the previous year's mistakes, hoping we're not opening up new holes in the process.

Midway through the bowl season, we noticed that the rankings were doing a particularly poor job of predicting the bowl results. For the year we ended up 13-21. When I looked at the losses in detail, I found that in 11 of the 21 losses, the team that won had a higher schedule rating than the team that the rankings predicted to win. Was it possible that we weren't giving strength of schedule enough weight?

I started to think about this in relation to our basketball rankings, and in particular to the way the NCAA calculates RPI for basketball (and other sports). The RPI is calculated based on 25% for a team's record, 50% for the opponent's record, and 25% for the opponent's opponent's record. So, I took a look at two somewhat average teams in last year's rankings. Baylor, which finished 4-8 with an overall rankings of just above -14 and Houston, which finished 8-5, with just under 16 points. When I took a look at where each team earned their points, I found them to be remarkable consistent. Each team got under 14% of their points from their opponent opponent's records, over 50% from opponent's records, and over 30% from their own record and bonuses and penalties for margin of victory or defeat, road wins, and home losses.



Looking at this, I tweaked the overall formula to double the value of the opponent's opponent's record so that each win or loss by the opponent of an opponent counts 0.04 points, instead of just 0.02. This had the following effect on our two average teams:



Immediately I saw percentages more in line with how the RPI is calculated in other sports. Additionally, when I applied these changes to all teams, I found that our bowl predictions flip-flopped in 10 of our 21 losses. That is to say, with this system in place last year, we would have correctly predicted 23 of the 34 games!

At the start of last season, we looked at the way we counted wins and losses for and against FCS teams, and decided to weight those games based on the winning percentage of FBS teams vs FCS teams (97.62% or 82 out of 84 games) measured against the winning percentage of FBS teams against FBS teams (50% by definition). Last year that meant that wins over FCS teams counted slightly more than half as much as a win over an FBS team, and losses to FCS teams counted twice as much as losses to FBS teams. While I like the methodology we used, and the fact that it has the capability to change year to year based on the performance of the FCS teams, there was a slight hole in our logic. We compared the FBS vs FCS winning percentage to 50%, when we should have compared to the FBS winning percentage of home teams since all 84 FBS/FCS games took place on the home field of the FBS teams. So this is what we are going to do this year. While this will boost FCS teams in the rankings, that boost will be counteracted by the extra weighting given to schedule strength through opponent's opponent records. More than likely this change will decrease the penalty incurred by FBS teams for scheduling FCS teams.

Catching up: A response to a Monday post from Doc Saturday

I meant to post this when I saw it on Tuesday but holiday plans and all interfered.

On Monday, the esteemed Dr. Saturday went off on the BCS computers a little, citing the ranking of James Madison, the highest rated team in the FCS in most of the computers. His point, in brief, was that if James Madison can lose to 4-8 Duke by 24 points they have no business being ranked in the top 40, much less the top 25, as they were in the Sagarin ratings as of Monday. As someone who has spent a fair amount of time the last couple of years working on a ranking system, I felt the need to stick up for the computer geeks.

While Doc does mention that eliminating margin of victory does distort the ranking somewhat, he still chides the rankings for missing differences in teams that appear to be blatantly obvious to anyone who has watched more than a minute of college football this year

What he fails to mention, and I think he probably knows, is that the purpose of the computer rankings is different than the purpose of the polls. While it is not clearly stated anywhere, I would guess that most human poll voters vote based on who they think is a better team. Computer rankings, on the other hand, are a mathematical measure of which team has had the better season. They are the ultimate resume rankers. Just as the resume rankers produced rankings early in the season that made little sense (East Carolina at #1) to people expecting rankings to be a measure of team strength, computer rankings don't make sense if you expect them to be a measure of team strength, instead of season strength.

As with most resume rankers, the more data input into the rankings, the more they tend to converge with the general consensus of which teams are best. The problem that most of the computer ranking systems have with FCS teams is that there are limited opportunities to measure FCS teams against FBS teams, and most of those opportunities are slanted towards the FBS teams (i.e. FCS teams never get home games). Most would agree that if James Madison played more than one FBS team they wouldn't be ranked in the top 25. But until we have a system where FCS teams get multiple games against FBS teams, the computer rankings will be imperfect.

The computer rankings are fine for what they set out to do, measure teams based on what they have accomplished in the season, as opposed to some sort of intangible assessment of which teams are best.

Golden Rankings for 2008

As our loyal readers (all three of them) may remember, we ended last season by taking a look at the effectiveness our ranking system as opposed to Golden's original system. As you may recall, the two systems differ in how they deal with FCS teams. My system ranked all Division I teams, FBS and FCS, and treated wins and losses over FBS teams equally with wins or losses over FCS teams. Golden's system does not include games with FCS teams unless the FCS team beats the FBS teams.

We looked at how the two rankings systems did in predicting the bowls:

Was there a difference in how the two ranking sets did in predicting the outcome of the bowl games?At the heart of it, a power ranking system like these two is really designed to help predict future outcomes. So which system was better? Mine, but not by much. Golden's system went 16-16, mine went 18-14, with one match-up, West Virginia/Oklahoma, a virtual dead heat before the game. We differed on four games: The aforementioned Fiesta bowl, the Motor City Purdue/CMU clash, the Insight Bowl's Indiana/Oklahoma State game, and the USC/Illinois Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl went to Golden, the rest to me.

and came to the following conclusion:

So what does this all mean? Is it worth the time and effort to include FCS teams in the rankings?I would say yes, but I do feel that the system needs to be refined to count wins over FCS teams less than wins over FBS teams (say 0.75
wins) and losses to FCS teams extra.

So I started to think about how would could quantify the difference between FBS and FCS teams in a way that could applied in a logical fashion in the rankings. At first I asked myself, "What is it that makes FBS teams better than FCS teams?" Scholarships? Most FBS teams have the max number of 85 players on scholarship, whereas FCS teams vary in the number of scholarships they offer. Nice idea, but it would be difficult to get an accurate read on the number of players on scholarship at most of the FCS teams. Athletic budget? Again, certainly a contributing factor to the disparity between the two levels of Division I football, but next to impossible to accurately measure.

Upon reflection, I realized the key question is not why are FCS and FBs teams, but how are they different. I took a look at the winning percentages of FBS and FCS teams from last year, and tried to apply that as a factor to wins and losses. With games against lower division teams eliminated, FCS teams had an overall winning percentage of about 47.5%, while FBS teams were at 52.5%. I awarded one point for every win or loss against an FBS team, and approximately 0.9 for every win over an FCS team (the percentage difference between the two overall winning percentages), and 1.1 for every loss to an FCS team, and applied this to the 2007 results. What I found that it made little difference in the final rankings. The bowl predictions didn't change at all. The top FCS teams fell a few spots, but we still had a number of them in the top 30, including North Dakota State, which played an incredibly weak schedule, even by FCS standards.

So I thought about taking the head to head winning percentage, which was about 85% for the FBS teams and using that as a factor. Too big a difference if we applied that directly. I then realized that I still wasn't asking myself the right question. The real question was, "What is the difference in winning probabilities when an FBS team plays another FBS team or plays an FCS team?" That is to say, if FBS teams win at a 85% clip over FCS teams, there is a 35% better chance they will win than if they were playing another FBS team, where the winning probability is 50% by definition.

So this is how we are going forward with the rankings this year. Every win or loss against an FBS team will count for one point (plus other bonuses or penalties). Each win or loss against an FCS team will be multiplied by a factor (or the reciprocal of that factor) that measures the difference of FBS winning percentage versus FCS and FBS internal winning percentage (50%). When I applied this system to last years results, I found our bowl predictions improved by two games to 20-12, and several of our top FCS teams made significant drops including the aforementioned ND State. The top FCS team Appalachian State finished in the low 20s, two spots below Michigan, which seems reasonable.

Titletown

After watching the Red Wings skate away with their 11th Cup last month, and the Celtics win their 17th NBA title, I started to wonder which city has the most championships won over the course of history, or more importantly, which city had the best "championship percentage". So I put together the chart below, with data courtesy of the official league websites, supplemented by Wikipedia.
A few notes:
-I included seasons and championships from the NFL, AAFC, AFL and CFL for football; NBA and ABA for basketball; NHL for hockey; and World Series champs for baseball.
-I only included cities that had more than 50 total seasons and at least one championship.
-Seasons were assigned to city, not to the franchise. So for example, the Dodgers had 55 seasons and 1 championship in New York (Brooklyn), and 50 seasons and 5 championships in LA.
-The years / championship ratio is based on the current number of teams in that metro area. So for example, the NY/NJ metro area, which averages a championship once every 11+ seasons, should win about four championships every five years, based on the nine teams it currently has.
-I did not include college football or basketball for two reasons:
1) The football championships are mythical, and no one can agree who won in which year. Alabama claims 12 national championships, I'm sure Auburn doesn't recognize any of them;
2) The difficulty in assigning college towns to metro areas. Sure USC, and UCLA are clearly part of the LA metro area, but what about towns like Athens, Ann Arbor, or South Bend?

So, without further ado, here it is:



-Edmonton wins the prize with 18 championships in 88 seasons. Boston, not New York, is the top American city.
-Obviously the addition of the CFL helps the Canadian teams a lot. Edmonton, for example, has won 13 Grey Cups in 59 seasons.
-No surprise that the Original Six cities take four of the top seven spots. Much easier to win championships with only five opponents than in modern leagues of 30 plus teams.
-Seven U.S. cities have won championships in all four sports: New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Philly, Pittsburgh (won an ABA championship) and most recently, LA, with the Ducks' Cup in 07.
-This list further emphasizes a point I was making earlier this year when talking about why SEC football has such a hold on citizens of the south. Professional sports in this country, were, until the last 50 years or so, a phenomenon limited to the Northeast and Midwest. The successful teams on this list are there in part because of the traditions they have established. a young kid growing up in Boston learns about being a Red Sox fan from his parents, who learned from their parents, and so on. That fandom translates to ticket sales, merchandising, and big television contracts. In Atlanta,a young fan learns about being a Tiger fan from his dad who grew up in Michigan, and takes the Braves as an adopted team.
-Finally, as far as long suffering fans, it's hard to argue with Cleveland as the biggest losers on the list, who has only seven championships in over 200 seasons. Of those championships, one came from a team no longer there (the Rams), and four were from a league that no longer exists (the Browns in the AAFC. Philly also has a pretty dubious history, with only 15 championships in 332 seasons, 7 of which came from now departed teams (Warriors and A's). And of course, New Orleans, which has yet to win a professional championship.

Bracketology 2/11/08

Last Four In: 1)Mississippi State; 2)NC State; 3)Miami; 4)Ohio State
First Four Out: 1)USC; 2)Illinois State; 3)West Virginia; 4)Oklahoma

South Region
Little Rock
1) Memphis
16) Alabama State (SWAC) or Lafayette (Patriot)
8) UNLV
9) Arizona

Denver
4) Indiana
13) Miami
5) Texas
12) Syracuse

Washington DC
3) Xavier
14) Santa Barbara (Big West)
6) Arkansas
11) Wright State

Anaheim
2) Georgetown
15) Cornell (Ivy)
7) South Alabama
10) Virginia Commonwealth

East Region
Raleigh
1) Duke
16) Portland State(Big Sky)
8) Florida
9) Houston

Anaheim
4) St. Mary's
13) Ohio State
5) Notre Dame
12) Stephen F. Austin

Tampa
3) Michigan State
14) Siena (MAAC)
6) Texas A&M
11) Marquette

Anaheim
2) UCLA
15) UNC-Ashville (Big South)
7) Missippi
10) Kent State

Midwest Region
Raleigh
1) North Carolina
16) Hampton (MEAC)
8) Pitt
9) Baylor

Denver
4) Stanford
13) Davison
5) Wisconsin
12) UMass

Birmingham
3) Vanderbilt
14) Utah State (WAC)
6) Dayton
11) Oral Roberts

Omaha
2) Drake
15) Robert Morris (Northeast)
7) Kansas State
10) Clemson

West Region
Tampa
1) Tennessee
16) Austin Peay (Ohio Valley)
8) BYU
9) Purdue

Washington DC
4) UConn
13) NC State
5) Washington State
12)Creighton

Little Rock
3) Butler
14) Mississippi State
6) Rhode Island
11) Western Kentucky

Omaha
2) Kansas
15) Belmont (Atlantic Sun)
7) Gonzaga
10) Louisville

2/4 Bracketology

The first week in February brings some jumps up (Uconn) and Down (Ole Miss) in our weekly bracketology, with more big changes to come, given this week's schedule. As I write this, the top dogs in the WCC, Gonzaga and St. Mary's are in overtime. The top two teams in the Missouri Valley, Drake and Illinois State meet in Normal, Illinois on Tuesday. UCLA visits suddenly struggling Washington State on Thursday, Florida and Tennessee battle on Tuesday, and of course, Duke and Carolina renew their classic rivalry.
Last Four In: 1)Miami; 2)Umass; 3)West Virginia; 4)George Mason
First Four Out: 1)St. Joseph's; 2)USC; 3)Wright State; 4)Illinois State

South Region
Little Rock
1) Memphis
16) Alabama State (SWAC) or Northern Arizona (Big Sky)
8) South Alabama
9) Clemson

Anaheim
4) St. Mary's
13) George Mason
5) Texas
12) Seton Hall

Tampa
3) Michigan State
14) Boise State (WAC)
6) UNLV
11) Virginia Commonwealth

Anaheim
2) UCLA
15) Cornell (Ivy)
7) Florida
10) Pitt

East Region
Raleigh
1)North Carolina
16)Lafayette (Patriot)
8) Arizona
9) Baylor

Denver
4) Xavier
13) Stephen F Austin (Southland)
5) Indiana
12) West Virginia

Birmingham
3) Vanderbilt
14) UNC-Ashville (Big South)
6) Gonzaga
11) Purdue

Omaha
2) Drake
15) Robert Morris (Northeast)
7) Marquette
10) Houston

Midwest Region
Raleigh
1) Duke
16) Hampton (MEAC)
8) Arkansas
9) Oklahoma

Washington DC
4) Rhode Island
13) Oral Roberts (Summit)
5) Washington State
12) Syracuse

Little Rock
3) Butler
14) Rider (MAC)
6) Mississippi
11) Akron

Birmingham
2) Georgetown
15) Belmont (Atlantic Sun)
7) Texas A&M
10) Ohio STate

West Region
Tampa
1) Tennessee
16) Austin Peay (Ohio Valley)
8) Kansas State
9) BYU

Denver
4) Stanford
13) Davidson (Southern)
5) UConn
12)UMass

Washington DC
3) Wisconsin
14) Santa Barbara (Big West)
6) Dayton
11) Miami, Fla

Omaha
2) Kansas
15) Maryland - Baltimore Cty (America East)
7) Notre Dame
10) Kent State

Bracketology?

Ok, ok, new BB rankings are up, but I decided to add something to it. Long before "bracketology" was a part of our cultural lexicon, I used to gather with my boys around this time of year, and try and put together our version of the NCAA tournament. We used to love doing it so much, that we would expand the tournament and include all Division I teams in a giant, 5-week extravaganza. Of course after we made the bracket, we had to fill it out. So, I decided to present a prospective NCAA field, based on the Golden Rankings. Some of the seedings are a little out there (Drake as a 2 seed?), but rather than make subjective adjustments, I decided to let the rankings stand on their own. I'll leave the filling out to the rest of you.
Some guidelines:
-31 automatic qualifiers, 34 at-large teams
-Teams are seeded in a "snake-like" manner, whereby the lowest one seed gets the highest two seed, and the lowest two seed gets the highest three seed, etc.
-Teams were moved up or down the snake to avoid inter-conference match-ups as much as possible. Non-conference rematches (such as Georgetown-Memphis) were not avoided.
-For the one bid conferences, I took the team with the highest current ranking
-South Region plays the West, East plays the Midwest in the Final Four
-Last Four In: Illinois State, Cleveland State, UConn, UMass
-First Four Out: Purdue, Duquesne, Syracuse, Creighton

South Region
Little Rock
1) Memphis
16) Alabama State (SWAC) or Md-Baltimore Cty (America East)
8) Kansas State
9) Ohio State

Birmingham
4) Wisconsin
13) UConn
5) Mississippi
12) Illinois State

Birmingham
3) Washington State
14) Wagner (Northeast)
6) South Alabama
11) Mississippi State

Washington DC (I'm not sure if the Hoyas will be allowed to play here, so it might have to be switched)
2) Georgetown
15) UNC-Ashville (Big South)
7) UNLV
10) USC

East Region
Raleigh
1)North Carolina
16)Belmont (Atlantic Sun)
8) Pittsburgh
9) Arkansas

Denver
4) Texas
13) Northridge (Big West)
5) Florida
12) Seton Hall

Anaheim
3) UCLA
14) Davidson (Southern)
6) Dayton
11) Houston

Omaha
2) Drake
15) Austin Peay (Ohio Valley)
7) Gonzaga
10) Texas A&M

Midwest Region
Omaha
1)Kansas
16)Cornell (Ivy)
8)Miami
9)Virginia Commonwealth

Little Rock
4) Vanderbilt
13) Sam Houston State (Southland)
5) Xavier
12) Cleveland State

Anaheim
3) St. Mary's
14) Boise State (WAC)
6) Arizona
11) West Virginia

Tampa
2) Michigan State
15) Lafayette (Patriot)
7) Oklahoma
10) Clemson

West Region
Raleigh
1) Duke
16) Northern Arizona (Big Sky)
8) Kent State
9) Marquette

Denver
4) Indiana
13) Oral Roberts (Summit)
5) Stanford
12)UMass

Washington DC
3)Butler
14) Marist (MAAC)
6) Rhode Island
11) BYU

Tampa
2) Tennessee
15) Hampton (MEAC)
7) Baylor
10) Notre Dame