College Football - Early Season Fun

[Drake Tungsten]

Just to show how completely out of touch with reality Sloww actually is, here are the Sagarin conference rankings after week six...

Central Mean

1. Pac 10
2. SEC
3. ACC
4. Big East
5. Big 12
6. Big Ten

Simple Average

1. SEC
2. Pac 10
3. ACC
4. Big 12
5. Big East
6. Big Ten

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbc09.htm

[Ming]

What I find interesting is that the Big 12 conference teams are 0 - 10 so far this year against top 30 ranked teams. Not a single win against a good opponent

[Drake Tungsten]

To be fair, there's three one-point losses in that 0-10 record (one for Nebraska, two for Oklahoma) and Texas hasn't played a top-30 team, so they're no help. Still, the Big 12 does seem to be in a down year.

[Ming]

A loss is a loss. The idea is to WIN games, not get close. And yes, it seems like it could be a down year for what is normally a very strong conference. Plus, that may well create problems next year for them, since early rankings are based on the previous year.

[Drake Tungsten]

A loss is a loss.

No. A one-point loss on the road is actually a win.

[Lord Avalon]

Only if you were getting at least 1.5 pts.

[Drake Tungsten]

No. I'm talking about correcting for home field advantage.

[Ming]

In most realities, when you lose, you lose. Moral victories are for losers

Home field advantage might mean something when it comes to setting the odds/spread... but at the end of the day, it shows as a loss on your record

[Drake Tungsten]

It figures that you would try your hand at trying to determine the "true" quality of different conferences without understanding in the slightest how to actually go about doing that.

[Ming]

There are many ways of doing it... And looking at how a conference does against quality teams is one way to do so. While you can go count wins when a team actually losses, I like to see how a conference has done against the top ranked teams. Granted, once significant in conference games occur, it can scew the results, but as far as the early part of the year, the Big 12 has not done well in "real" games. This is a good sign that things are down this year for them.

[snoopy369]

I think it's okay to count a loss by less than 3 on the road as something less than a loss by more than 3 and/or at home, but at the end of the day, a loss is a loss. If Oklahoma loses every single road game they play by 1 point, are you going to count them as undefeated? Feel free to do so, but I and 99.9% of the rest of the world will feel free to mock you mercilessly. You can use that angle to predict their likelihood of winning a future game, but I don't consider the rankings to be a specific prediction of likelihood of victory - rather, I consider them to be a reflection of how the season went for (X) team, so far, combined with their apparent strength; but the former counts more than the latter. And for the former, a loss is a loss.

Stat folks tend to forget that, I think - they get so into what stat predicts what, that they forget that wins/losses are all that actually matter at the end of it... not stats. Otherwise we'd play the games as simulations and avoid all of the injuries and training and such

[MRT144]

I think it's okay to count a loss by less than 3 on the road as something less than a loss by more than 3 and/or at home, but at the end of the day, a loss is a loss. If Oklahoma loses every single road game they play by 1 point, are you going to count them as undefeated? Feel free to do so, but I and 99.9% of the rest of the world will feel free to mock you mercilessly. You can use that angle to predict their likelihood of winning a future game, but I don't consider the rankings to be a specific prediction of likelihood of victory - rather, I consider them to be a reflection of how the season went for (X) team, so far, combined with their apparent strength; but the former counts more than the latter. And for the former, a loss is a loss.

Stat folks tend to forget that, I think - they get so into what stat predicts what, that they forget that wins/losses are all that actually matter at the end of it... not stats. Otherwise we'd play the games as simulations and avoid all of the injuries and training and such

Or, we'd put 3 points on the home teams scoreboard automatically at the beginning of every game. Or to increase the intrigue, they can elect to put the points on the board at any point in time or deduct 3 from their opponent at any time.

[Drake Tungsten]

If Oklahoma loses every single road game they play by 1 point, are you going to count them as undefeated?

If I'm trying to make an objective determination of whether Oklahoma is better than those teams it lost to on the road, then yes. You can't make a defensible judgment on team quality without correcting for confounding factors like home field advantage.

Otherwise we'd play the games as simulations and avoid all of the injuries and training and such

How exactly would you build an accurate simulation without any real-world data (ie. game results) to input? You're not making the least bit of sense.

[snoopy369]

I think that makes my point quite accurately.

[MRT144]

If Oklahoma loses every single road game they play by 1 point, are you going to count them as undefeated?

If I'm trying to make an objective determination of whether Oklahoma is better than those teams it lost to on the road, then yes. You can't make a defensible judgment on team quality without correcting for confounding factors like home field advantage.

Otherwise we'd play the games as simulations and avoid all of the injuries and training and such

How exactly would you build an accurate simulation without any real-world data (ie. game results) to input? You're not making the least bit of sense.

So if this is a genuine factor in determining results, should we compensate by giving the away team 3 points to start out on the official score?