The Sports Economist points us to a paper on how the NCAA-ball polls work. It demonstrates:
Contrary to conventional wisdom, I find that (1) it is better to lose later in the season than earlier, (2) AP voters do not pay attention to the strength of a defeated opponent, and (3) the benefit of winning by a large margin is negligible. I conclude by noting how these results inform debates about a potential playoff in college football.
How does Glickoblog reflect this? As followers have seen, the value of MICH's opening-day loss to Appalachian - as measured in the gap between MICH, which did not lose points, and MICH2, which did - had been scaled back from 91 to 45 points, prior to yesterday's game. On the other hand, a defeat yesterday for MICH against a side on 900 points (to be exact, the (899, 103) ranking of MDTEN) would have cost the side 53 ranking points. Other things being equal, it is slightly better for a decent side to get an embarrassing defeat out of the way early.
Margin of victory does not materially affect the voting. Nor does it affect Glickoblog rankings; see arguments passim.
The strength of a defeated opponent does not affect voting for the AP. It does for Glickoblog, but only while the ratings adjust to major shifts. To pick a bad example, GEOTC's opening-day win against NOTDM earned them 58 rating points, which we may reasonably halve through the passage of time. A win this week would have been worth just 17 points. This is a bad example because no-one quite knew just how abysmally rubbish NOTDM was at the beginning of the season: while they may not have been the 14th best side as we assumed, the consensus was that they were far closer to 14th than 70th. For NOTDM to fall, other sides have had to rise, and those sides that played the side early in the season will have been slightly over-rewarded. Similarly, those sides that lost early-season games to fast-rising sides like ARZST will be a smidge lower than they might otherwise be. More relevantly, OREGN's win in week 2 over MICH earned them 50 points; before this week's matches, it would be worth 26, no significant change.
For Glickoblog to address this perceived inconsistency, it would be necessary to recompute all rankings each time from the initial set. This is possible, and is an area we may explore in a future year.
A win over a good side is a win over a good side, but it seems that this factor is ignored by the human voters. Glickoblog awards lots of points for knocking off the number 1 side, as we saw last week. Losing to a strong opponent does help a team, and perhaps we might re-factor MICH's +0-2 start to the season as losses to the best side in I-AA last year (embarrassing, however you cut it) and the best side in the PX this (entirely reasonable for a BX contender).
On the field
The week began on Wednesday with this nationally-networked game:
Akron 0 vs. Miami (Ohio) 7
Mmm, gripping. Let's get the regular items out of the way early.
Who Have Notre Dame Lost To This Week?
#113 Duke 7 vs. #68 Notre Dame 28
At the Top of Michigan's Beatpath
X- The Citadel 70 vs. VMI 28
The Citadel beat Elom beat Wofford beat App State beat Michigan beat Notre Dame beat Duke. So Citadel is six games better than Duke. Look at the rankings, this might be accurate.
Other lowly-ranked sides
#107 Kent St. 14 vs. #110 Temple 24 #117 Idaho 14 vs. #14 Boise St. 58 34- #118 Utah St. 35 vs. #109 New Mexico St. 17 #103 Louisiana-Lafayette 38 vs. #119 Fla. International 28
Last year, Kent was excluded from the bowls only by the choice of the sponsors: they believed that a pisspoor Miamiflorida team would be more attractive. Temple is already out of contention for this year's games, but can look forward to something better next season. By losing by a mere ten points, this may be FLINT's best result of the year.
The bottom ten
LY LW TW Conf R RD Idle ==================================================================== 111 108 110 UNLV MW 731 104.9 0 Nevada, The Meadows 106 107 111 KENTS MA 712 102.4 0 Kent State 79 112 112 SMU CU 707 99.1 0 Southern Methodist 116 113 113 DUKE AC 699 119.6 0 Duke 113 109 114 NMXST WA 693 108.3 0 New Mexico Territory 104 114 115 UAB CU 686 104.0 0 Alabama, Birmingham 110 116 116 NTEXS SB 663 106.6 0 North Texas 114 118 117 UTHST WA 637 111.5 0 Utah Territory 109 117 118 IDAHO WA 614 111.8 0 Idaho 119 119 119 FLINT SB 546 116.2 0 Florida International
We'll explain what happened to the other two escapers from the 110s later.
Last Week's Top Ten
#1 LSU 41 vs. Mississippi 24
#2 Ohio St. 14 vs. #9 Michigan 3
39- #3 Oklahoma 27 vs. #34 Texas Tech 34
#4 Southern California - no game
#5 West Virginia 28 vs. #27 Cincinnati 23
44- #6 Oregon 24 vs. Arizona 34
#7 Texas - no game
Miamiflorida 14 vs. #8 Virginia Tech 44
#2 Ohio St. 14 vs. #9 Michigan 3
Florida Atlantic 20 vs. #10 Florida 59
LSU gets a second straight victory against mediocre opposition, and it only adds three points to their total. The BX title game goes to OHIST, and it puts them right back into contention for the BCS title game, especially after defeats for OKLAH and OREGN. WVIRG won the first on its two games to decide the BE title, and suddenly enters into top-2 contention. Easy wins for VTECH and FLORD advance their claims by not hurting them.
Also in the top 40
#25 Kentucky 13 vs. #12 Georgia 24 Iowa St. 7 vs. #13 Kansas 45 #15 Missouri 49 vs. Kansas St. 32 #17 Boston College 20 vs. #20 Clemson 17 Vanderbilt 24 vs. #18 Tennessee 25 #24 Hawaii 28 vs. Nevada 26 #30 Maryland 16 vs. #37 Florida St. 24
No game for #11 ARZST this week. The mess in the SE-E continues: Florida's win is joined by a difficult victory for GRGIA, and a trivial win for TENSE. Wins for both KANSS and MISRI, the sides in contention for the BT-N title. The AC-A goes to BOSCL, the AC-C will be decided next week after VTECH and VIRGI both won. HAWII continues to be unbeaten: if the title game were decided purely on won-loss record, the side would meet KANSS in the grand final.
The Upset-o-meter
46- #115 E. Michigan 48 vs. Cent. Michigan 45 44- #6 Oregon 24 vs. Arizona 34 42- #100 Louisiana-Monroe 21 vs. Alabama 14 41- W. Michigan 28 vs. Iowa 19 36- #18 Penn St. 31 vs. Michigan St. 35 34- #118 Utah St. 35 vs. #109 New Mexico St. 17 34- #111 Tulane 45 vs. Rice 31 32- #39 Purdue 24 vs. Indiana 27 30- San Jose St. 23 vs. Louisiana Tech 27That's what happened to the sides in last week's bottom ten: they won games! EMICH's win is one of the biggest of the year, even larger an upset than OREGN's defeat. Defeat for near neighbours MICH ensures there will be much dancing in Depot Town this week.
Other inter-provincial matches
X- Harvard 37 vs. Yale 6 X- N. Carolina A&T 7 vs. S. Carolina St. 51 X- N. Dakota St. 24 vs. S. Dakota St. 29 X- Tenn.-Martin 43 vs. Tennessee St. 38 X- Montana 41 vs. Montana St. 20
The Top 30
LY LW TW Conf R RD Idle ==================================================================== 2 2 1 OHIST BX 1395 110.8 0 Ohio Province 4 1 2 LSU SE 1382 111.9 0 Louisiana Purchase 10 5 3 WVIRG BE 1335 112.3 0 W Virginia 1 4 4 SCALF PX 1329 110.8 1 Southern California 5 7 5 TEXAS BT 1297 106.8 1 Texas 11 8 6 VTECH AC 1294 105.4 0 Virginia Tech 9 3 7 OKLAH BT 1284 105.7 0 Oklahoma 18 12 8 GRGIA SE 1278 101.5 0 Georgia 3 10 9 FLORD SE 1273 105.1 0 Florida 38 15 10 MISRI BT 1272 99.4 0 Missouri 36 11 11 ARZST PX 1259 99.9 1 Arizona Province 19 17 12 BOSCL AC 1259 105.6 0 Boston College 12 9 13 MICH BX 1258 103.2 0 Michigan 53 13 14 KANSS BT 1256 99.5 0 Kansas 32 6 15 OREGN PX 1251 102.5 0 Oregon 7 16 16 WISCO BX 1249 105.6 0 Wisconsin 13 14 17 BSEST WA 1248 104.8 0 Boise State 12 -- -- MICH2 BX 1217 99.9 0 Michigan 2 30 19 18 TENSE SE 1209 98.1 0 Tennessee 21 21 19 BYU MW 1201 104.4 0 Brigham Young 39 24 20 HAWII WA 1192 116.2 0 Hawaii 15 23 21 CALIF PX 1186 100.5 0 California 8 22 22 AUBRN SE 1180 107.0 1 Auburn 34 20 23 CLEMS AC 1170 100.5 0 Clemson 27 28 24 ORGST PX 1168 98.0 0 Oregon Territory 17 18 25 PENST BX 1168 100.6 0 Penn Province 56 26 26 VIRGI AC 1162 96.8 1 Virginia 24 34 27 TXSTC BT 1155 100.3 0 Texas Tech 23 29 28 WAKEF AC 1153 97.2 0 Wake Forest 54 25 29 KNTCY SE 1143 104.1 0 Kentucky 44 27 30 CINCI BE 1142 102.5 0 Cincinnati
Right, let's crunch the numbers for the BCS entrants. OHIST has finished, complete, kaput, will not budge from 1395. LSU has one relatively trivial game next week, then the SE title game against TENSE or GRGIA. Winning both will take LSU above 1400 points, and surely a place in the final. WVIRG has shot into contention with defeats for OREGN and OKLAH, but would really need LSU to lose their title game; a win against CONNC puts them on 1350. If SCALF wins the PX title, their history could count enough to put them into second; a win against ARZST lifts the side above 1350, but they've then got to beat UCLA. TEXAS is unlikely to make the BT title game. A +13-0 KANSS will rank very highly amongst the human voters. Sod easy schedules, this side has yet to taste defeat, let's put them in the top bracket. The AC champion is assured a place in the top ten, and there's still the chance of BSEST or HAWII crashing the party.
Calling the BCS bowls
Our gut feeling is:
Title game LSU - KANSS
Reserves OHIST, GRGIA, TENSE, in that order, depending on who wins their conferences. Obviously, not all can. Ranking the others is an academic exercise, because we have two certain winners (BX and SE), but we reckon it goes ARZST, OKLAH, OREGN, WVIRG, VTECH, MISRI, SCALF.
Wild cards Almost certain that the SE runner-up will get an invite. We still think two from the PX is likely, with OREGN probably getting a place if it wins out - for both SCALF and ARZST, it's win or bust next week. OKLAH and MISRI have credible shouts for the top ten even if they lose. VTECH may squeeze in if it loses the AC title game, though not if it loses to VIRGI next week. A +12-0 HAWII would get the last place; things would be easier if it lost, as BX cannot hope to claim two spots, and we can only see BE taking two if WVIRG loses and there's a mess in both PX and AC.
Conferences in detail
AC BOSCL has won the Atlantic, even if it loses to Miamiflorida. The Coastal will be decided by the meeting of VIRGI and VTECH.
BE WVIRG and CONNC meet to decide the title.
BT KANSS and MISRI meet to decide the North division. OKLAH need only beat OKLST to win the South; a defeat would allow TEXAS to take the division with a win.
BX OHIST has won, beating ILLNS and MICH by a game. All sides have now finished their seasons.
CU In the East, UCF has a one-game lead over MEMPH and ECARL; a three-way tie would resolve in favour of UCF, but they would lose a straight tie to ECARL. HOUST has finished its conference programme, but will lose top spot if TULSA wins.
MA Miami for the bowls! MIOHO has the East division won, and will play CMICH for the title.
MW Even with two divisional games left to play, BYU has this one in the bag.
PX It's ARZST's to lose, but if they can't beat SCALF, they would tend to lose. In this situation, OREGN wins if it can win its final divisional match. Note that all three sides have a later game - ARZST finishes against ARIZN, SCALF has UCLA, and OREGN's games are against UCLA and ORGST.
SE LSU has wrapped up the West. We're taking out a contract on ESPN's oh-so-inaccurate journalism, as it appears FLORD has finished its divisional activity, meaning that TENSE has it to lose in the East; we can hear the cheers for KNTCY from here. Bloody Mickey Mouse organisations.
SB TROY is a game clear of FLATL; the sides meet in two weeks.
WA Still boiling down to HAWII-BSEST.
XX NAVY for the bowls, nothing for the others but derision.
Television coverage
Th 1700 SB: Middle Tennessee -v- Troy (tape) Fr 0100 PX: Southern California -v- Arizona Province Fr 1700 BT: Nebraska -v- Colorado Fr 2030 BT: Texas -v- Texas A and M Sa 0200 WA: Boise State -v- Hawaii Sa 1700 Match tbc Sa 2030 PX: Oregon -v- UCLA Su 0800 **: Florida Swamp -v- Florida (tape) Su 1100 SE: Alabama -v- Auburn (tape) Su 2230 CFL The Grey Cup Final
NCAA |
