Wednesday, July 29, 2009

2009 Projected FBS Conference Winners

I don't do these kinds of predictions very often, and, when I do, they're a little rougher than my game predictions. However, I thought it would be fun to project out to the end of the season, accounting for schedules and home field advantage, to make an educated "computer guess" as to who are likely winners of their conferences. Keep in mind that computer predictions are less prone to "speculate" on big year-to-year swings, so don't be surprised if things are not substantially different from last year. One key factor to note: Home field advantage makes its biggest difference against a well-matched opponent. It has little affect on mismatches. So, teams contending for their conference championship tend to be favored if they face their toughest challengers at home. With that, here goes...

ACC: There is little doubt that the ACC is among the most consistent of the BCS conferences. Maybe not a lot of top 10 teams, but LOTS of top 40 quality teams. In the Atlantic, Florida State should edge out an improved Clemson team by a win. Wake and BC are also contenders. In the Coastal, Virginia Tech should have an even bigger advantage over North Carolina. Georgia Tech could also challenge.

Big 12: In the North, the edge goes to Missouri, but not by much. Kansas will give them a run. I'll have to "wait and see" on Nebraska. In the much stronger South, the schedules seem to favor Oklahoma over Texas. Oklahoma State and Texas Tech will need to outperform to be in the running.

Big East: Pittsburgh looks to be the front-runner, with several teams on their heels: West Virginia, Rutgers, USF, a fading Cincinnati, and Connecticut. Not much I can add to this.

Big Ten: It looks like a dead heat between Penn State and Ohio State. It seems unlikely that both those teams would stumble and give an improving Iowa team an opening.

C-USA: In the East, the Pirates of East Carolina should be favored to repeat, but Southern Miss will make it tough on them. Look for the rest of the East to finish at or below 0.500 in the conference. In the West, I'd also give Tulsa a similar edge over Houston. Rice and UTEP will round out the top four.

MAC: Overall, the MAC could host the most exciting conference race in the country, with pretty consistent performers top to bottom. The East will be very tight with Temple, Buffalo, and Bowling Green leading the pack and Akron and Ohio U. on their tails. In the West, Central Michigan is favored to knock off reigning champ Ball State. Closely-matched Western Michigan, Northern Illinois, and an improved Toledo will fill the next three slots behind the Chippewas and Cards.

MWC: TCU's Horned Frogs should win at least 6 conference games to take the title, but only if Utah and BYU let them. The rest of the group will watch from the sidelines.

Pac-10: USC is almost a lock -- almost. Cal or Oregon will need to overachieve to knock them off. Oregon State, Arizona, and Stanford should still finish at or above 0.500 in the conference. It doesn't look good for the rest of the "Pac."

SEC: In the East, Florida should coast to victory over a fading Georgia. The rest will do well to finish 0.500 in the conference. In the West, the scheduling favors a surging Ole Miss team slightly over Alabama. If not for Florida busting the curve, the West would easily be the stronger half of the conference.

Sun Belt: The Troy Trojans should have little trouble claiming the crown, trailed in the distance by a tight pack consisting of Arkansas State, an experienced MTSU team, Floridas Int'l and Atlantic, and a sliding La-Lafayette.

WAC: Boise. Period. OK, not really. Nevada could make a run at the Broncos.

One last thing... I would love to do the other divisions, but #1, this is a hobby, it doesn't pay the bills, and my time is limited. #2, finding easily accessible info on returning starters, etc. is next to impossible for all but the FBS and FCS. If you're interested, I can send you the data I have and tell you how to crunch the numbers yourself. If you're savvy with Excel, it's not hard. That's the best I can do.

Monday, July 27, 2009

al.com, Atomic Football, and more...

We're very much looking forward to having al.com host our college football rankings and predictions this year. In case you don't know, al.com is the online home of The Huntsville Times, The Birmingham News, and the Mobile Press-Register). We would like to say thank you to the IT and news folks there for making the process of getting integrated into their web site an easy one.

So, why are we excited? Well, we certainly look forward to increasing our visibility to college football fans. That, of course, has its ups and downs. Over the years, we have received a lot of very positive feedback from folks all over the country. Once in a while though, college football fans being a "passionate" lot, we do get the occasional nastygram.

I make it a standing principle to try to reply to all of our email and to do so respectfully. This is not always easy, particularly when you just can't see eye-to-eye with someone, but I have found that if I try to respond kindly, make an effort to see the other person's perspective, and don't get sucked into name-calling, I have (so far) been able to smooth things over and conclude every exchange on a positive note -- agreeing politely to disagree, resolving misunderstandings, making reasonable concessions.

While it is "just" football (that phrase might earn me an email all by itself), it is also a microcosm of life. And strangely, folks who might not be very transparent in life are rarely so opaque when they're talking football. You can be pretty sure they're telling you exactly what they think and feel. So, while we may regard conversation on "news, sports, and the weather" as light fair, perhaps sports (or at least football) doesn't belong in that category. Sometimes it's the only time someone will give you a glimpse of who they really are.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

More on "Simple Head-to-Head"

OK, you have two top-ranked teams - the Cartersville Chipmunks and the Portstown Possums. During the regular season, the two teams met head-to-head once in additional to eleven other common opponents. The Possums won the head-to-head matchup. Both finished 11-1. Which one deserves to play the undefeated Artersburg Aardvarks for the national championship?

Easy problem, right? The Possums won the head-to-head matchup. Therefore, they're the better team. Therefore, they should play in the championship. 'Nuff said.

Hmmm. You know, as long as we don't look any closer, the problem appears to be solved. Portstown and Artersburg play for the trophy. Everybody's happy.

But is "simple head-to-head" really so simple? Let's dig deeper...

Portstown won the head-to-head matchup but lost to someone else, in this case, the Forcester Fleas. Since Cartersville and Portstown played identical schedules and 11-1 Cartersville's only loss was to Portstown, then Cartersville must have beaten Forcester.

So, that means Portstown lost to Forcester who lost to Cartersville who lost to Portstown. Therefore, if "head-to-head" means that Portstown is better than Cartersville, then Cartersville must be better that Forcester and Forcester is better than Portstown. But if Cartersville is better than Forcester and Forcester is better than Portstown, then either Cartersville is better than Portstown or... since A better than B and B better than C doesn't mean A is better than C, we must have no clue what "better" means. So, what does all this complicated stuff mean?

It means many things?

#1 Ranking teams isn't as easy as ranking all winners ahead of losers. Sooner or later you will arrive at a contradition.

#2 If we had to define "head-to-head," it is simply that we hate to see teams ranked slightly behind teams they beat. If they're way behind in the rankings, we comfortably ignore it, but if they're close, we seem to come unglued. This is a very inconsistent position -- "big upsets" are tolerated while "little upsets" drive us crazy.

#3 In the above case, if we favor the winner of the head-to-head, then while we arguably have two teams whose "average" performance is identical, we're basically favoring the MORE INCONSISTENT of the two teams -- the team whose highs are higher but whose lows are lower.
But don't worry, it gets worse...

Let's assume that we somehow omniciently know that both teams are, on average, identical. Therefore, they played equally difficult schedules (since the only difference in their schedules is their head-to-head matchup) and they finished with identical records against those schedules. If we don't ask exactly which games were wins and which were losses, we would tend to say that they are equally good. Now, let's assume that, instead, we omniciently know that Portstown is the better team. Therefore, Cartersville played the tougher schedule since the only schedule difference is the head-to-head matchup and Cartersville's opponent (Portstown) is tougher than Portstown's opponent (Cartersville). Therefore, Cartersville had the same record against a tougher schedule. But a better record against a tougher schedule would imply that Cartersville is the better team. But we have this conclusion as a direct result of our assumption that Portstown is the better team...

Bottom line: There's no such thing as SIMPLE head-to-head.