Week 12 Ranking

Hey football fans! We’re getting down to crunch time. Only two weeks remaining to sort out the national championship picture. Last weekend was about as uneventful as a college football Saturday can be in November. Luckily, that won’t be the case this weekend. I don’t know about you but I plan on enjoying some Turkey on Thursday and camping out in front of the TV on Friday.

I’m going to break from my normal routine and focus on the remaining schedules for the four teams that still have a shot at playing for the national title: Oregon, Auburn, TCU and Boise State. Presented are their remaining schedule, predicted line for each game (from my rankings), probability of winning each game and probability of winning all remaining games.

TCU, P(WARG) = ~1.0

Opponent	Line	P(victory)
@ New Mexico	49.73	~1.0

It doesn’t get much easier than that. TCU is a 50 point favorite against New Mexico. A New Mexico victory would be one of the biggest upsets in college football history.

Boise State, P(WARG) = 0.888

Opponent	Line	P(victory)
@ Nevada	17.95	0.892
vs. Utah St.	46.81	0.999

Boise State has more work to do than TCU but not by much. A lot of people think Nevada will give them a game but Boise State is still favored by almost 20. What I wrote about New Mexico beating TCU also applies to a potential Utah State upset over Boise State.

Oregon, P(WARG) = 0.787

Opponent	Line	P(victory)
vs. Arizona	20.38	0.920
@ Oregon St. (Civil War)	15.61	0.859

Oregon finishes the season with two solid opponents but are solid favorites in both games. You’re probably a little surprised to see Oregon favored by 20 over Arizona but only 16 over Oregon State. This is mostly due to home field advantage (Arizona is ranked one spot ahead of Oregon State) but it’s also worth noting that Oregon State is much better than their record suggests. Oregon State has the most difficult schedule in the country that includes four of the top six teams in the country (Oregon, Boise State, TCU and Stanford) and several of their losses have been close. Oregon State is not a top ten team but the Civil War will be a test for Oregon.

Auburn, P(WARG) = 0.145

Opponent	Line	P(victory)
@ Alabama (Iron Bowl)	-9.66	0.253
vs. South Carolina (SEC Championship)	2.20	0.560

 

The last two weeks are going to be tough sledding for the Auburn Tigers. They are a ten point underdog against Alabama and are only favored by two against South Carolina. The only advantage Auburn has is that they might still play for the national title even if they lose to Alabama on Friday. Of course, there’s also a 33% chance that they lose both games, which would drop them out of the BCS entirely.

Full week 12 rankings can be found at my personal website:

www.biostat.umn.edu/~josephk/wk12_ranking_report.pdf

Week 11 Rankings

Hey football fans. Miss a couple of weeks and I start getting threatening emails! At least I know people are reading!

A lot has changed since I left you. What? Nothing changed? Oh. Good to know. Okay, that’s not totally true but the top of my rankings, as well as the BCS rankings, are the same as three weeks ago. My top five, Oregon, Boise State, TCU, Alabama and Ohio State, are the same as three weeks ago. Stanford moves up to #6 from #14 three weeks ago. The Tree are 9-1 with only The Big Game (against Cal) and Oregon State remaining on their schedule. Unfortunately, there’s a good chance Stanford will get left out of a BCS bowl even if they finish 11-1. Stanford can blame their fans if they get snubbed. There were 7000 empty seats (in a 50000 seat stadium) two weeks ago when Stanford played Arizona. You can do better, Stanford. Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Auburn and Arkansas round out my top 10. Utah had the biggest drop from three weeks ago (from #6 to #23) thanks to consecutive blowout losses to TCU and Notre Dame.

Here are the top 14 teams in the BCS rankings and the probability that they win all of their remaining games:

BCS Rank	Rank	Team	P(WARG)*
1	1	Oregon	0.827
2	9	Auburn	0.152
3	3	TCU	~1.0
4	2	Boise State	0.855
5	11	LSU	0.324
6	6	Stanford	0.537
7	8	Wisconsin	0.707
8	15	Nebraska	0.252
9	5	Ohio State	0.586
10	20	Oklahoma State	0.196
11	4	Alabama	0.739
12	29	Michigan State	0.510
13	10	Arkansas	0.394
14	7	Oklahoma	0.365

*P(WARG) = Probability of Winning All Remaining Games.

The only remaining question is whether or not a one-loss Auburn or Oregon would play in the BCS national title game over an undefeated Boise State or TCU and, if you believe the rankings, there’s a good chance we’ll find out. Oregon has an 83% chance of winning their remaining games but Auburn has only a 15% chance of finishing the season undefeated. This is mostly due to Auburn’s day-after-Thanksgiving matchup with Alabama in the Iron Bowl. The rankings haven’t been kind to Auburn and have Alabama as a 10 point favorite in Tuscaloosa. If that’s not bad enough, the rankings have Auburn as only a 3 point favorite against South Carolina in the SEC championship game. There’s no doubt that Auburn will have earned it if they finish the season undefeated. TCU and Boise State are virtual locks to finish the season undefeated. TCU has one game remaining and it would be a historical upset if they were to lose. Boise State has three game remaining, including a tough game against Nevada, but still have an 86% chance of finishing undefeated. I can’t envision a scenario where any other team ends up in the national title game. The best case scenario for LSU is a to finish as a one-loss division runner-up to Auburn and Stanford needs to win out and have Oregon lose twice in order to win the Pac 10. The only way I could see either of these teams entering the conversation is if Oregon and Auburn both lose twice and the voters are uncomfortable with a Boise State/TCU national title game.  That’s not going to happen.

Full week 11 rankings can be found at my personal website:

www.biostat.umn.edu/~josephk/wk11_ranking_report.pdf