Florida State's Improvement Probably Worth Noting

The regular season is over and now comes the critique of Florida State. How much did the Seminoles improve over last year?

To answer this question, I utilized a probability function based on margin of victory. The Probability of Victory, or POV, function assumes that if two teams play and the game is very close, there is a 50/50 chance either team will win if they were to play again. And if two teams play and the game is a blowout, chances are that if the they were to play again, the winning team would win again.

This system basically looks at how well Florida State has done this year based on margin of victory. It does not matter if Florida State wins by 100-93 or 7-0 because the margin of victory is the same.

These numbers do not take into account strength of schedule, either. The equation does not care whom you play, but cares about the margin of victory only.

All numbers are between 0-1 with 0.5 representing 50 percent. A number above 0.5 represents a win and a number below 0.5 represents a loss. Obviously some people are statistically handicapped, so all you really need to look at is whether or not the number is going up or down.

For all teams that FSU played up to the Florida game, the POV was:

We can see that Florida State's team on the whole has been improving in its games since the 2006 season. There was a minor increase between 2006 and 2007 but then a very large increase for the 2008 season. This is good. This means that Florida State is winning games in more dramatic fashion than in the previous two seasons.

The first two games of the season could skew the numbers since they were not division I football teams. In order to correct for this, I removed all teams that are not Division I teams. This leads to POV's of:

Again, we see that Florida State's football team has been improving for the last three seasons, just not as much between the 2007 and 2008 seasons.

ACC Play

Another very important component is not just how FSU plays in its schedule, but also how FSU plays against ACC teams. I, as a fan, do not want FSU to just play better against out-of-conference opponents, who tend to be weaker teams, but want to see better play against ACC teams, as well.

Yes, the 2006 season was very bad for Florida State in the ACC. A .500 essentially means that FSU's chances of winning an ACC game was 50 percent. Last year saw improvement in ACC play and 2008 continued that trend.

In the parity that exists in the ACC for the season, Florida State's POV is the highest for any of the ACC teams for POV within the ACC. That means Florida State played better than any other team in the ACC based on probability of victory.

Ironically, Virginia Tech and Boston College both finished fourth and fifth, respectively, for their POVs in ACC play. 

Florida State's football team is getting better. The 2008 season has shown a lot of improvement.