College Football SRS Rankings: Bowl Picks against the Spread

With Navy over Army, my ATS picks have moved to 12-8 (60%).  Now time for the bowl picks!  As one would expect, not a whole lot has changed over one game, so I’m only showing the rankings for reference. 

As of December 12th, 2010, the conference rankings are as follows, with last week’s ranking in parentheses and conferences/divisions in bold if they’ve changed from last week:

17. MAC East (17)

16. MAC West (15)

15. C-USA East (16)

14. Sun Belt (14)

13. C-USA West (13)

12. Big East (12)

11. WAC (11)

10. MWC (10)

9. ACC Atlantic (8)

8. ACC Coastal (9)

7. Pac-10 (7)

6. Big Ten (6)

5. Independents (4)

4. SEC East (5)

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.	Florida	(7-5)	25	BYE	@Tennessee	@Alabama LSU Mississippi St South Carolina @Florida St
24.	Virginia Tech	(11-2)	24	BYE	@North Carolina St @Miami (FL)	Boise St FCS
23.	Texas Tech	(7-5)	23	BYE	@Colorado	Texas @Iowa St Oklahoma St @Texas A&M @Oklahoma
22.	Florida St	(9-4)	22	BYE	@Miami (FL) @Maryland Florida	@Oklahoma @North Carolina St North Carolina (N)Virginia Tech
21.	Baylor	(7-5)	21	BYE	@Colorado @Texas	@Texas Tech @TCU @Oklahoma State Texas A&M Oklahoma
20.	Nevada	(12-1)	20	BYE	None	@Hawaii
19.	Utah	(10-2)	19	BYE	None	TCU @Notre Dame
18.	Mississippi State	(8-4)	18	BYE	@Florida	Auburn @LSU @Alabama Arkansas
17.	Boise St	(11-1)	17	BYE	@Virginia Tech	@Nevada
16.	Wisconsin	(11-1)	16	BYE	@Iowa	@Michigan St
15.	Ohio St	(11-1)	15	BYE	@Illinois @Iowa	@Wisconsin
14.	South Carolina	(9-4)	14	BYE	Alabama @Florida @Clemson	@Auburn @Kentucky Arkansas (N)Auburn
13.	Alabama	(9-3)	13	BYE	@Arkansas Florida @Tennessee	@South Carolina @LSU Auburn
12.	TCU	(12-0)	12	BYE	@Utah	None
11.	Michigan St	(11-1)	11	BYE	@Penn St	@Iowa
10.	LSU	(10-2)	10	BYE	@Florida	@Auburn @Arkansas
9.	Texas A&M	(9-3)	9	BYE	Oklahoma @Baylor Nebraska	@Oklahoma St Arkansas Missouri
8.	Stanford	(11-1)	8	BYE	@Notre Dame @Washington	@Oregon
7.	Oregon	(12-0)	7	BYE	@Tennessee @USC	None
6.	Missouri	(10-2)	6	BYE	@Texas A&M Oklahoma	@Nebraska @Texas Tech
5.	Nebraska	(10-3)	5	BYE	@Washington @Kansas St @Oklahoma State	Texas @Texas A&M @Oklahoma
4.	Oklahoma State	(10-2)	4	BYE	Texas A&M @Texas Tech @Kansas St @Texas	Nebraska Oklahoma
3.	Oklahoma	(11-2)	3	BYE	@Baylor @Oklahoma St Nebraska	@Missouri @Texas A&M
2.	Arkansas	(10-2)	2	BYE	@Georgia @Texas A&M @South Carolina	Alabama @Auburn
1.	Auburn	(13-0)	1	BYE	South Carolina @Kentucky @Alabama (N)South Carolina	None

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 and only hold a few of the games at a neutral site.

Make it like the NIT tournament. Each of the higher seeded teams gets home games until the final four.  Also, in order to give everyone a chance, invite only conference champions.  That would be 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—Oklahoma

Big East—Connecticut 

Big Ten—Wisconsin

C-USA—UCF 

MAC—Miami (OH)

MWC—TCU

Pac-10—Oregon

SEC—Auburn

Sun Belt—Florida International 

WAC—Nevada

Wild Card—Stanford

Wild Card—Ohio St

Wild Card—Arkansas 

Wild Card—Michigan St

Wild Card—LSU 

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

1. Auburn
2. Oklahoma
3. Wisconsin
4. Oregon
5. Nevada
6. TCU
7. Virginia Tech
8. Connecticut
9. UCF
10. Miami (OH)
11. Florida International
12. Stanford
13. Ohio State
14. Arkansas
15. Michigan St.
16. LSU

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

LSU Auburn	Michigan St Oklahoma	Arkansas Wisconsin	Ohio St Oregon
Stanford Nevada	Florida International TCU	Miami (OH) Virginia Tech	UCF Connecticut

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

Arkansas Auburn

Stanford Oklahoma

Connecticut Oregon

Virginia Tech TCU

That would leave us with a Final Four of Saturday-Sunday Contests at a Neutral Site: 

TCU Auburn

Oregon Oklahoma

With a Final of:

Oklahoma Auburn

What if you take the eight best conference champions and put them into a playoff?  If any independent teams were ranked higher than the eighth, seventh or even sixth-best conference’s champion, we could put those teams in instead of the conference champions.  This would be more dynamic than what is currently being given to us (separating the Non-AQs from the AQs).  The problem right now is there is no assumption of change.  That’s what is making social security bankrupt—not indexing to the average age of death.  Anyway, under this scenario, you’d have:

1. Auburn
   
2. Oklahoma
3. Wisconsin
4. Oregon
5. Nevada
6. TCU
7. Virginia Tech
8. Navy (better than Connecticut)

Navy Auburn

Virginia Tech Oklahoma

TCU Wisconsin

Nevada Oregon

With the final four neutral site games and final being:

Oregon Auburn

Wisconsin Oklahoma

With the final being:

Oklahoma Auburn

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

Predictions for Army-Navy Game (1-0 last week, 12-8 ATS overall)

BYU -9 over UTEP

Fresno State +3 over Northern Illinois

Troy +2.5 over Ohio

Southern Miss -2.5 over Louisville

Utah +15 over Boise St

Navy +2.5 over San Diego St

Hawaii -8 over Tulsa

Toledo -5 over Florida International

Air Force -2.5 over Georgia Tech

North Carolina St +4 over West Virginia

Missouri -3 over Iowa

Maryland -8 over East Carolina

Baylor -2 over Illinois

Oklahoma St -7 over Arizona

SMU -7.5 over Army

Kansas St (PK) over Syracuse

North Carolina (PK) over Tennessee

Nebraska -14 over Washington

South Florida +4.5 over Clemson

Miami (FL) (PK) over Notre Dame

Georgia -6 over Central Florida

South Carolina -2.5 over Florida St

Texas Tech -11.5 over Northwestern

Michigan St +7 over Alabama

Florida -5 over Penn St

Mississippi St -5 over Michigan

TCU (PK) over Wisconsin

Oklahoma -17 over Connecticut

Stanford -3 over Virginia Tech

Arkansas +2.5 over Ohio St

Miami (OH) -3 over Middle Tennessee St

Texas A&M (PK) over LSU

Kentucky +3 over Pittsburgh

Nevada -9 over Boston College

Auburn -2.5 over Oregon

How the SRS Rankings Are 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 you 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 inverse 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 ( inverse = 7 multiplied by inverse 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 lose 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 is where I think they will be if they continue to do what they did last year.