SRS: Nebraska and Auburn Still in the Top 5, Who Joins Them?

TCU and Boise St. rocked their respective opponents, whereas LSU (my upset pick) beat a strong Alabama team, thus knocking them from contention. Also, several people accused me of being biased. 

I’m guessing they are referring to Nebraska being on top last week. I’m sure somewhere that it says I’m writing from Nebraska, so that could be the reasons for the supposed bias. However, I’ve lived here for less than two years, while I lived in Fresno for 25 years. C’mon people! I’m not some fair-weathered fan who decides to cheer on the local team! 

Several other people wanted to know how I determine the “Quality Wins”. This is determined by comparing the points earned from a victory to 10 percent of the total points of the top team. It seems that many people value particular wins more than others

Some other people question why Nebraska’s win @Washington was considered a quality win. Washington is the fifth best team in the Pac-10. Keep in mind, SEC fans, the Pac-10, at least last week, was considered better than the SEC East. If you beat the 5^th best team in the fourth best conference on the road, the system awards you quite a bit of points (in this case around 94 points). That’s above the 10% threshold. 

Meanwhile, Auburn has several solid victories, (Clemson, South Carolina, @Kentucky, LSU, and @Mississippi are all over 50 points), only one is over 86 points (the current margin for a “Quality Victory”) and that is @Mississippi State. Notice the solid victories also, two are at home against opponents that are in conferences or divisions (SRS doesn’t have a distinction between the two) that were or are considered worse than the Pac-10 (Clemson and South Carolina). 

Auburns victory over Mississippi at first look seems to be where the injustice happens.  Using last week’s rankings, Mississippi is the fifth best team in the second best conference/division, while Washington is also the fifth best team, but in the fourth best conference. Yet Washington is worth more. This is actually as it should be. With differing numbers of conference/division members, I’ve had to normalize the number of teams. Since there are more conferences/divisions with six than anything else (particularly next season), chose six. 

That means that Mississippi is the fifth best team in a six team division. Washington, however, is the third best team in a six team conference (5*6/10). This means they are worth more points because the conference difference (two vs. four) is not enough to overturn this. 

Ultimately, the “Quality Victory” stat is completely arbitrary. I do think it should be based on the top team’s total score. Right now, I have it at 10 percent, should it be five percent?  7.5?  I’ll put a poll on this to see what you think.  Meanwhile, I’ve moved the “how SRS is determined part to the bottom. 

As of Nov. 7, 2010, the conference rankings are as follows, with last week’s ranking in parenthesis and conferences/divisions in bold if they’ve changed from last week:

17. MAC East (17)

16. MAC West (16)

15. Sun Belt (15)

14. C-USA East (14)

13. C-USA West (12) 

12. Big East (13)  

11. MWC (11)

10. WAC (10)

9.   ACC Coastal (9)

8.   Independents (6)

7.   ACC Atlantic (8)

6.   Big Ten (5)

5.   Pac-10 (4)

4.   SEC East (7)

3.   Big 12 North (3)

2.   SEC West (2)

1.   Big 12 South (1)

	Team	W-L	Last Week	Last Game	Quality Wins	Losses
25.	Texas Tech	(5-4)	--	W vs. Missouri	None	Texas @Iowa St Oklahoma St @Texas A&M
24.	Iowa	(7-2)	--	W @ Indiana	None	@Arizona Wisconsin
23.	Arizona	(7-2)	19	L @ Stanford	None	Oregon St @Stanford
22.	Hawaii	(7-3)	14	L @ Boise St	@Army	USC @Colorado @Boise St
21.	Kansas St	(6-3)	--	W vs. Texas	@Kansas	Nebraska @Baylor Oklahoma St
20.	Utah	(8-1)	13	L vs. TCU	@Iowa St	TCU
19.	Michigan St	(9-1)	18	W vs. Minnesota	None	@Iowa
18.	Miami (FL)	(6-3)	--	W vs. Maryland	@Clemson	@Ohio St Florida St @Virginia
17.	Baylor	(7-3)	20	L @ Oklahoma St	@Texas	@Texas Tech @TCU @Oklahoma State
16.	Florida	(6-3)	--	W @ Vanderbilt	@Georgia	@Alabama LSU Mississippi St
15.	North Carolina	(6-3)	--	W @ Florida State	@Florida St	LSU Georgia Tech @Miami (FL)
14.	Oklahoma	(6-2)	15	W vs. Colorado	None	@Missouri @Texas A&M
13.	Stanford	(8-1)	16	W vs. Arizona	None	@Oregon
12.	TCU	(10-0)	11	W @ UNLV	None	None
11.	Alabama	(7-2)	9	BYE	@Arkansas @Georgia	@South Carolina @LSU
10.	Boise St	(8-0)	5	W vs. Hawaii	@Virginia Tech	None
9.	Mississippi State	(7-2)	12	BYE	@Florida	Auburn @LSU
8.	Wisconsin	(8-1)	8	W @ Purdue	@Iowa	@Michigan St
7.	Missouri	(7-2)	4	L @ Texas Tech	@Texas A&M Oklahoma	@Nebraska @Texas Tech
6.	Oregon	(9-0)	3	W vs. Washington	@USC	None
5.	Oklahoma State	(8-1)	7	W vs. Baylor	Texas A&M @Kansas St	Nebraska
4.	LSU	(8-1)	6	W vs. Alabama	@Florida	@Auburn
3.	Arkansas	(7-2)	17	W @ South Carolina	@Georgia @Texas A&M @South Carolina	Alabama @Auburn
2.	Auburn	(10-0)	2	W vs. FCS	@Mississippi State @Kentucky	None
1.	Nebraska	(8-1)	1	W @ Iowa St	@Kansas St @Oklahoma State @Iowa St	Texas

My college football playoff preference:

The detractors of a playoff indicate that the reasons they don’t like a playoff is that there would be too many games included in the season, and it would be hard to transport as many people as would be needed to each and every neutral site game.  So to solve this, the playoff needs to let a minimum number of teams in as possible, and only have a few of the games be at a neutral site game. My thoughts are: Make it like the NIT tournament, each of the higher seeded teams get home games until the final four.  Also, in order to give everyone a chance, have only conference champions invited.  That gives us 11 teams, and in order to make it an even number, I’m okay with one “wild card”.  I’ve been told that a lot of people want 16.  So given that, let’s take the Current Standings and choose our 16 schools.

ACC—Virginia Tech

Big XII—Nebraska

Big East—Pittsburgh

Big Ten—Michigan St

C-USA—UCF 

MAC—Northern Illinois

MWC—TCU

Pac-10—Oregon

SEC—Auburn

Sun Belt—Troy

WAC—Boise St

Wild Card—LSU

Wild Card—Stanford

Wild Card—Wisconsin

Wild Card—Ohio St

Wild Card—Oklahoma St

Taking these 16 schools, I’d then seed them by conference strength (Using ESPN’s Conference Rankings).

1. Auburn
2. Oregon
3. Michigan St
4. Nebraska
5. TCU
6. Boise St
7. Virginia Tech
8. Pittsburgh
9. UCF
10.  Northern Illinois
11.  Troy
12.  LSU
13.  Stanford
14.  Wisconsin
15.  Ohio St
16.  Oklahoma St

In this scenario, the first round of games would be (I have road teams winning in bold):

Oklahoma St Auburn	Ohio St Oregon	Wisconsin Michigan St	Stanford Nebraska
LSU TCU	Troy Boise St	Northern Illinois Virginia Tech	UCF Pittsburgh

I’d take the worst teams and send them the best teams like the NFL.  The next round (again winning road teams in bold):

Wisconsin Auburn

LSU Oregon

UCF Nebraska

Virginia Tech Boise St

That would leave us with a Final Four Saturday-Sunday Contests in a Neutral Site to be: 

Boise St Auburn

Nebraska Oregon

With a Final of:

Nebraska Auburn

Playoff Dreams are fun, too bad you have to wake up.

Predictions for Week 11

Locks (6-0)

Nebraska over Kansas

Wisconsin over Indiana

LSU over Louisiana-Monroe

Great Games (Average Margin of Victory out of 7 games: 14.9)

Okay, so the margin isn’t great, I got DESTROYED with TCU-Utah and Arkansas-South Carolina.  Hopefully this will improve as we go forward.

Mississippi St. @ Alabama

Nevada @ Fresno St

USC @ Arizona

Upsets (if any) (2-3)

I had one close Loss (Georgia Tech), one “couldn’t be more wrong” (Utah) and one right (LSU).  I’m pretty happy with the 2-3 record…upsets are tough to predict.  Every week, I think, “This is going to be the week that no upsets will be predicted, but alas…

North Carolina over Virginia Tech

Baylor over Texas A&M

So how are the SRS rankings created? 

First, the easy one: The whole point of me starting a ranking system 15 years ago was to remove any and all bias (that’s what they all say). The only teams I might have any sort of bias towards are the small Boise States of the world (no, I don’t have them No. 1) or my favorite team, Fresno State (not ranked). 

I’ve tried to come up with the rationale that every sports announcer I’ve ever heard brings up: Conference rankings (check), Road vs. Away (check), and who did you play (double-check).

As I said before, I’ve been doing this privately for over 15 years, and every year there have been slight changes to it. Usually by the end of the season, I see more improvements I can make, and I do that for the following season. By no stretch is it perfect, but I think it’s getting there.

So what are the specifics? It starts by generating a ranking for each conference. This is done by generating a win-loss record for each conference against the other conferences. For the purpose of this system, I consider each division a conference (for example, the SEC West is a conference—so are the independents).

This is modified by determining who those wins are against. For example, the Big Ten loses some of its power by scheduling lots of MAC teams. I take the total and divide it by how many teams are in the conference to normalize the value, and then take a ranking of that value.

After determining the conference rankings, I generate values that a team would receive for playing another team. Values are generated for a Home Win, a Home Loss, a Road Win, and a Road Loss.

Each of the values is derived from the Home Win, which is formed by taking the team's place in the conference (first, second, third, etc.), inverting it so more points are awarded for beating the team, and multiplying it by the inversed conference ranking. This is then normalized again for the number of teams in the conference.

For example, if the first place team in the first place conference is Alabama, and Arkansas beats Alabama, they will earn 102 points. This is because Alabama was in first place (inversed = 7 multiplied by inversed conference ranking = 17, 7 * 17 = 102). 

Losses are similar, though there is no inverting. Thus an Arkansas loss will only cause them to lose two points (Place in Conference = 1, Conference Rank = 1, 1 * 1 = 1). I added an additional modifier of two if you are lost at home, so 1 * 2 = 2. A Road Win is the same as a home win, except the value is multiplied by two, and a Road Loss takes the Home Loss and divides it by two. 

Did you follow all of that? If not, don’t worry about it; just know that it is under constant improvement, and again, this where I think they will be if they continue to do what they did last year.