SRS: New Team in the Top 5! Who Is It? Also, Auburn Falls From #2!

TCU’s victories don’t nearly look as impressive these days. That could open things up for Boise State, particularly since they finish with two decent teams (Fresno State and Nevada) while TCU finishes with…New Mexico. Ouch! 

All of my locks are still in tact—were there any doubts?  Mississippi State did not keep it close against Alabama, though Nevada-Fresno State and USC-Arizona proved—at least temporarily—that I’m not insane.  Both of my upsets were close until they ran out of steam.  And lots of people are still questioning the “Quality Wins” feature of the column.

Keep in mind people that the Quality Wins feature is not how the SRS measures things.  It’s actually quite the opposite.  SRS measures results, then I can look at what victories mattered to the SRS. 

TCU, last week, had no quality victories, yet were still 12^th.  That means they must have a lot of good, solid, victories, just nothing that was a huge swing in points like Quality Wins are supposed to do.  Keep that in mind when looking through things. 

Lastly, the results from last week’s poll confirms what I had already thought, 10% of the top team’s score is plenty low enough to be considered a “Quality Win”.  I’d think about going higher, but that would weed out even more.

As of Nov. 14, 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 (13)

12. Big East (12)

11. MWC (11)

10. WAC (10)

9.   ACC Coastal (9)

8.   Pac-10 (5)

7.   ACC Atlantic (7)

6.   Big Ten (6)

5.   Independents (8)

4.   SEC East (4)

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.	Iowa	(7-3)	24	L @ Northwestern	@Michigan Michigan St	@Arizona Wisconsin @Northwestern
24.	Ohio St	(9-1)	--	W vs. Penn State	None	@Wisconsin
23.	Texas Tech	(5-5)	25	L @ Oklahoma	@Colorado @Missouri	Texas @Iowa St Oklahoma St @Texas A&M @Oklahoma
22.	Miami (FL)	(7-3)	18	W @ Georgia Tech	@Pittsburgh @Georgia Tech	@Ohio St Florida St @Virginia
21.	Hawaii	(7-3)	22	BYE	@Army	USC @Colorado @Boise St
20.	Baylor	(7-4)	17	L vs. Texas A&M	@Colorado @Texas	@Texas Tech @TCU @Oklahoma State Texas A&M
19.	Nevada	(9-1)	--	W @ Fresno State	None	@Hawaii
18.	Florida	(6-4)	16	L vs. South Carolina	None	@Alabama LSU Mississippi St South Carolina
17.	Texas A&M	(7-3)	--	W @ Baylor	@Baylor	@Oklahoma St Arkansas Missouri
16.	Stanford	(9-1)	13	W @ Arizona State	None	@Oregon
15.	Wisconsin	(9-1)	8	W vs. Indiana	@Iowa	@Michigan St
14.	Oklahoma	(6-2)	14	W vs. Texas Tech	(N) Texas	@Missouri @Texas A&M
13.	Mississippi State	(7-3)	9	L @ Alabama	@Florida	Auburn @LSU @Alabama
12.	TCU	(11-0)	12	W vs. San Diego St	@Utah	None
11.	Michigan St	(9-1)	19	BYE	Wisconsin @Michigan @Northwestern	@Iowa
10.	Boise St	(9-0)	10	W @ Idaho	@Virginia Tech	None
9.	Oregon	(10-0)	6	W @ Cal	@USC	None
8.	Alabama	(8-2)	11	W vs. Mississippi St	@Arkansas Florida	@South Carolina @LSU
7.	South Carolina	(7-3)	--	W @ Florida	Alabama @Florida	@Auburn @Kentucky Arkansas
6.	LSU	(9-1)	4	W vs. ULM	@Florida Alabama	@Auburn
5.	Oklahoma State	(9-1)	5	W @ Texas	Texas A&M @Kansas St @Texas	Nebraska
4.	Missouri	(8-2)	7	W @ Kansas State	@Texas A&M @Kansas St	@Nebraska @Texas Tech
3.	Auburn	(11-0)	2	W vs. Georgia	South Carolina @Kentucky LSU	None
2.	Arkansas	(8-2)	3	W @ South Carolina	@Georgia @Texas A&M @South Carolina	Alabama @Auburn
1.	Nebraska	(9-1)	1	W vs. Kansas	@Kansas St @Oklahoma State Missouri	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—Florida International 

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. Michigan St
3. Oregon
4. Nebraska
5. TCU
6. Boise St
7. Virginia Tech
8. Pittsburgh
9. UCF
10. Northern Illinois
11. Florida International
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 Michigan St	Wisconsin Oregon	Stanford Nebraska
LSU TCU	Florida International 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):

Pittsburgh Auburn

Virginia Tech Michigan St

Boise St Oregon

TCU Nebraska

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

Nebraska Auburn

Oregon Michigan St

With a Final of:

Nebraska Oregon

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

Predictions for Week 11

Locks (12-0)

Alabama over Georgia St

Nevada over New Mexico St

LSU over Mississippi

Great Games (Average Margin of Victory out of 10 games: 12.9)

Did a little better this week.  Mississippi State didn’t help with their 20 point embarrassment.  However, Fresno State and USC showed up to make it a little more respectable.

Oklahoma @ Baylor

Arkansas @ Mississippi St

Florida St. @ Maryland

Upsets (if any) (2-5)

Both upset picks were close until the end, but close does not cut it.  Every week, I think, “This is going to be the week that no upsets will be predicted,” but alas…

Iowa over Ohio St

Baylor over Oklahoma

Maryland over Florida St

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 teams played (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.