SWC75
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We often hear teams being evaluated at the end of the season by how they did “against ranked teams”. A couple of years ago I came up with a simple system for evaluating this, one with an acknowledged flaw but which nonetheless produced interesting results so I’ll do it again this year.
The system is very simple. First I hand out points to teams based on the ranking of their opponent. If you play the #1 ranked team, you get 25 points for playing such a powerful team. You get 24 points for playing the #2 team, 23 for playing the #3 team, etc. I’ll call them schedule points. Here’s a chart to make it easy:
1-25, 2-24, 3-23, 4-22, 5-21, 6-20, 7-19, 8-18, 9-17, 10-16, 11-15, 12-14, 13-13, 14-12, 15-11, 16-10, 17-9, 18-8, 19-7, 20-6, 21-5, 22-4, 23-3, 24-2, 25-1.
That’s step one. Now we play the games and see how these teams actually do on the field. What cued me into this is that most games will be won or lost by 25 points or less, so the points involved are comparable. You just compare the point differential to the points teams have gotten for playing a ranked opponent. If they beat the ranked opponent, their points will grow by the margin of victory. If they lose, you subtract the margin of victory from the schedule points. If that reduces them to zero or less, they get zero points. I’m not going to deal with minus points, just add up the positive points earned, or else my rankings would be cluttered up with a lot of inferior teams who were below the Mendoza line because they’d gotten blown out by their ranked opponents. If you play the #1 team and lose by 21 points, you’ll get 4 points: 25 schedule points minus the 21 points you lost by. If you play the #10 team and lose by 13 points, you’ll get three points. If you play the #15 team and lose by 14 points, you’ll get nothing, (11-14 = 0 in this system).
I’ll record the points earned each week and how the teams got them and add them up over the course of the season. That will show us how each team did “against ranked teams”. Like all cumulative standings, they will sort themselves out as the season goes on and come more and more into focus. Later listings will be more meaningful than early ones as more and more teams get through the meat of their schedules. The cumulative listing should I think be less a ranking of teams than a statistic you look at in determining where to rank the teams.
WEEK #4 (9/22-24/2016)
Mississippi beat #12 Georgia 45-14 45 points
Wisconsin beat #8 Michigan State 30-6 42 points
Texas A&M beat #17 Arkansas 45-24 30 points
Tennessee beat #19 Florida 38-28 17 points
Auburn beat #18 Louisiana State 18-13 13 points
Arizona lost to #9 Washington 28-35 10 points
UCLA lost to #7 Stanford 13-22 10 points
Florida lost to #14 Tennessee 28-38 2 points
Georgia Tech lost to #5 Clemson 7-26 2 points
Comment: Mississippi has played more ranked teams than anybody and collected a lot of points because of it. They finally continued their dominance of an opponent and vaulted all the way to #1 on the season. Imagine if they'd held onto their leads against Floridia State and Alabama. It's interesting to compare their 31 point win over Georgia to Wisconsin's 24 point win over Michigan State. Ole Miss out-gained the Bulldogs 510-396 despite running 14 fewer plays and possessing the ball 11:36 less time. Most of Georgia's plays and yards came after the Rebels had built up a 45-0 third quarter lead. They were +1 in turnovers, one of which was a pick 6. Michigan State was down only 6-13 at halftime before the badgers had a 17 point third quarter. The Spartans out-gained them but were -2 in turnovers, including a fumble returned for a touchdown. The ran more plays 70-67 but Wisconsin had the ball 5:36 more. There are a lot of ways big scores can happen in college football.
SEASON STANDINGS
Mississippi 76 points
Louisville 67 points
Wisconsin 65 points
Alabama 63 points
Texas A&M 47 points
Houston 33 points
Ohio State 33 points
Auburn 31 points
Florida State 26 points
California 22 points
Texas 19 points
Troy 18 points
Tennessee 17 points
Michigan State 15 points
Nicholls State 15 points
North Dakota State 15 points
Arkansas 14 points
Georgia 13 points
Georgia State 11 points
Appalachian State 10 points
Arizona 10 points
UCLA 10 points
Missouri 9 points
Central Michigan 7 points
Nebraska 7 points
Notre Dame 6 points
Kansas State 5 points
Colorado 4 points
Mississippi State 3 points
Oklahoma 3 points
Florida 2 points
Georgia Tech 2 points
Ohio University 2 points
Southern California 2 points
The system is very simple. First I hand out points to teams based on the ranking of their opponent. If you play the #1 ranked team, you get 25 points for playing such a powerful team. You get 24 points for playing the #2 team, 23 for playing the #3 team, etc. I’ll call them schedule points. Here’s a chart to make it easy:
1-25, 2-24, 3-23, 4-22, 5-21, 6-20, 7-19, 8-18, 9-17, 10-16, 11-15, 12-14, 13-13, 14-12, 15-11, 16-10, 17-9, 18-8, 19-7, 20-6, 21-5, 22-4, 23-3, 24-2, 25-1.
That’s step one. Now we play the games and see how these teams actually do on the field. What cued me into this is that most games will be won or lost by 25 points or less, so the points involved are comparable. You just compare the point differential to the points teams have gotten for playing a ranked opponent. If they beat the ranked opponent, their points will grow by the margin of victory. If they lose, you subtract the margin of victory from the schedule points. If that reduces them to zero or less, they get zero points. I’m not going to deal with minus points, just add up the positive points earned, or else my rankings would be cluttered up with a lot of inferior teams who were below the Mendoza line because they’d gotten blown out by their ranked opponents. If you play the #1 team and lose by 21 points, you’ll get 4 points: 25 schedule points minus the 21 points you lost by. If you play the #10 team and lose by 13 points, you’ll get three points. If you play the #15 team and lose by 14 points, you’ll get nothing, (11-14 = 0 in this system).
I’ll record the points earned each week and how the teams got them and add them up over the course of the season. That will show us how each team did “against ranked teams”. Like all cumulative standings, they will sort themselves out as the season goes on and come more and more into focus. Later listings will be more meaningful than early ones as more and more teams get through the meat of their schedules. The cumulative listing should I think be less a ranking of teams than a statistic you look at in determining where to rank the teams.
WEEK #4 (9/22-24/2016)
Mississippi beat #12 Georgia 45-14 45 points
Wisconsin beat #8 Michigan State 30-6 42 points
Texas A&M beat #17 Arkansas 45-24 30 points
Tennessee beat #19 Florida 38-28 17 points
Auburn beat #18 Louisiana State 18-13 13 points
Arizona lost to #9 Washington 28-35 10 points
UCLA lost to #7 Stanford 13-22 10 points
Florida lost to #14 Tennessee 28-38 2 points
Georgia Tech lost to #5 Clemson 7-26 2 points
Comment: Mississippi has played more ranked teams than anybody and collected a lot of points because of it. They finally continued their dominance of an opponent and vaulted all the way to #1 on the season. Imagine if they'd held onto their leads against Floridia State and Alabama. It's interesting to compare their 31 point win over Georgia to Wisconsin's 24 point win over Michigan State. Ole Miss out-gained the Bulldogs 510-396 despite running 14 fewer plays and possessing the ball 11:36 less time. Most of Georgia's plays and yards came after the Rebels had built up a 45-0 third quarter lead. They were +1 in turnovers, one of which was a pick 6. Michigan State was down only 6-13 at halftime before the badgers had a 17 point third quarter. The Spartans out-gained them but were -2 in turnovers, including a fumble returned for a touchdown. The ran more plays 70-67 but Wisconsin had the ball 5:36 more. There are a lot of ways big scores can happen in college football.
SEASON STANDINGS
Mississippi 76 points
Louisville 67 points
Wisconsin 65 points
Alabama 63 points
Texas A&M 47 points
Houston 33 points
Ohio State 33 points
Auburn 31 points
Florida State 26 points
California 22 points
Texas 19 points
Troy 18 points
Tennessee 17 points
Michigan State 15 points
Nicholls State 15 points
North Dakota State 15 points
Arkansas 14 points
Georgia 13 points
Georgia State 11 points
Appalachian State 10 points
Arizona 10 points
UCLA 10 points
Missouri 9 points
Central Michigan 7 points
Nebraska 7 points
Notre Dame 6 points
Kansas State 5 points
Colorado 4 points
Mississippi State 3 points
Oklahoma 3 points
Florida 2 points
Georgia Tech 2 points
Ohio University 2 points
Southern California 2 points
