Sunday, September 29, 2013

Week 5 Rankings



Hey football fans!

Week 5 was a lot of fun, wasn’t it? Last week, I identified four big games to keep an eye on. All four games went about as I expected with Georgia and Ohio State winning competitive football games over LSU and Wisconsin, respectively, while Alabama and Washington won convincingly over Ole Miss and Arizona. Elsewhere, West Virginia pulled the biggest upset of the weekend by defeating Oklahoma State 30 – 21 in Morgantown. Oklahoma State was off to a fast start and was favored by about 20 over the Mountaineers.

Here are the updated top 10 after week 5:


Rank

Team

Rating

Record

SOS1

SOS2

E(FR)

P(WARG)
1
Oregon
35.0
4 – 0
4.8
0.12
11.4 – 0.6
0.48
2
Florida State
27.0
4 – 0
0.2
0.18
11.0 – 1.0
0.24
3
Alabama
27.0
4 – 0
2.3
0.14
11.2 – 0.8
0.29
4
Baylor
26.3
3 – 0
0.7
0.25
10.9 – 1.1
0.30
5
Clemson
22.5
4 – 0
2.9
0.13
10.4 – 1.6
0.10
6
Louisville
22.0
4 – 0
-8.4
0.76
11.7 – 0.3
0.70
7
LSU
21.3
4 – 1
6.4
0.04
8.8 – 3.2
0.02
8
Georgia
21.2
3 – 1
8.0
0.07
9.3 – 2.7
0.05
9
Washington
21.2
4 – 0
7.0
0.04
9.3 – 2.7
0.01
10
Stanford
21.04
4 – 0
8.01
0.06
9.5 – 2.5
0.02

Oklahoma State dropped from #6 to #18 after the big upset and Ohio State dropped a spot from #10 to #11, meanwhile, Clemson (#11 to #5) and Stanford (#18 to #10) jumped into the top 10 after big victories over Wake Forest and Washington State, respectively. Otherwise, the rankings look pretty much the same with Oregon holding steady at the top.

Here are the top 10 teams with the best chance of finishing undefeated:


P(WARG) Rank

Rank

Team

P(WARG)
1
6
Louisville
0.700
2
1
Oregon
0.475
3
4
Baylor
0.300
4
3
Alabama
0.292
5
2
Florida State
0.236
6
11
Ohio State
0.208
7
64
Northern Illinois
0.142
8
5
Clemson
0.097
9
51
Fresno State
0.097
10
13
Oklahoma
0.024

The top five remain the same from last week. Oregon, Baylor, Alabama and Florida State are the top contenders and Louisville has a chance to make things interesting if they finish undefeated. Of course, they play a far weaker schedule than the other four and will need to do something spectacular to make people take notice. Finally, Ohio State made a big move even though they dropped a spot in the rankings. Wisconsin was their toughest regular season opponent and they doubled their chances of finishing undefeated with a victory over the Badgers.

The game of the week for Week 6 is Washington at Stanford. These two teams are about as close as you can get and illustrates the value of home-field advantage. Their ratings are only .13 apart but Stanford is favored by 3.4 and has a 60% chance of winning. Week 6 also brings us two more top-25 matchups and one more which just missed. Here is a run-down:

  • #9 (in my rankings) Washington @ #10 Stanford, Stanford favored by 3.4, 60% chance of winning
  • #7 LSU @ #21 Mississippi State, LSU favored by 2.5, 57% chance of winning
  • #25 Georgia Tech @ #22 Miami, Miami favored by 5.7, 67% chance of winning
  • #26 TCU @ #13 Oklahoma, Oklahoma favored by 9.9, 77% chance of winning
As always, full rankings can be found at my faculty webpage:


Enjoy the week 6!

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Week 4 Rankings



Hey football fans!

Week 4 was a slow weekend that will prove to be the calm before the week 5 storm. Stanford posted the most impressive victory of the weekend with a 42-28 victory over Arizona State that wasn’t as close as the final score would indicate. Otherwise, there weren’t any other major results of note.

Here are the updated top 10 after week 4:


Rank

Team

Rating

Record

SOS1

SOS2

E(FR)

P(WARG)
1
Oregon
37.1
3-0
5.1
0.153
11.7 – 0.3
0.673
2
Florida State
29.8
3-0
-0.3
0.244
11.3 – 0.7
0.411
3
Baylor
26.6
3-0
0.1
0.218
11.0 – 1.0
0.283
4
Alabama
24.5
3-0
2.3
0.155
10.8 – 1.2
0.166
5
Louisville
22.3
4-0
-8.0
0.785
11.7 – 0.3
0.738
6
Oklahoma State
21.9
3-0
3.8
0.188
10.4 – 1.6
0.144
7
Georgia
20.7
2-1
8.6
0.072
8.6 – 3.4
0.019
8
LSU
20.6
4-0
6.1
0.042
9.0 – 3.0
0.006
9
Washington
19.9
3-0
6.8
0.044
9.1 – 2.9
0.005
10
Ohio State
19.1
4-0
0.1
0.372
10.3 – 1.7
0.106

The rankings look pretty similar to last week with the exception of Louisville and Ohio State, who both made big jumps after posting one-sided victories in week 4. Alabama continues to slip after a posting a solid but not dominating victory over Colorado State. Baylor is probably the largest discrepancy between my rankings and the major polls. The Bears have posted huge victories over very week competition and it will be interesting to see how they do once conference play starts. It’s tempting to assume that my rankings are giving too much weight to early-season blowouts but Texas A&M did the same thing last year and turned out to be as good as advertised.

Here are the top 10 teams with the best chance of finishing undefeated:


P(WARG) Rank

Rank

Team

P(WARG)
1
5
Louisville
0.738
2
1
Oregon
0.673
3
2
Florida State
0.411
4
3
Baylor
0.283
5
4
Alabama
0.166
6
6
Oklahoma State
0.144
7
10
Ohio State
0.106
8
50
Fresno State
0.088
9
11
Clemson
0.023
10
74
Northern Illinois
0.016

Four weeks into the season and we’re starting to identify the contenders. It will be interesting to see what the voters would do with Louisville if they finish undefeated. They’ve looked impressive and Teddy Bridgewater is a legitimate Heisman candidate but they play an incredibly week schedule that should hurt them, in the end. Oregon looks like the favorite but Florida State and Baylor are in good shape. Alabama’s chances don’t look quite as good as they did last week after a lackluster effort against Colorado State. Finally, LSU and Washington are notably absent from this ranking. They’re both ranked in the top 9 in my rankings but play very difficult schedules and have less than a 1% chance of finishing undefeated.

Week 5 is going to be a huge weekend with four matchups between teams currently ranked in my top 25 and that doesn’t even include potentially interesting matchups Arizona State vs. USC, Oklahoma vs. Notre Dame and Georgia Tech vs. Virginia Tech. here is a quick run-down:
  •  #14 (in my rankings) Mississippi @ #4 Alabama, Alabama favored by 9.5, 78% chance of winning
  •  #8 LSU @ #7 Georgia, Georgia favored by 3.8, 62% chance of winning
  •  #25 Arizona @ #9 Washington, Washington favored by 10.1, 79% chance of winning
  •  #13 Wisconsin @ #10 Ohio State, Ohio State favored by 4.0, 63% chance of winning
As always, full rankings can be found at my faculty webpage:


Enjoy the week 5!