Thursday, October 25, 2012

Week 8 Rankings



Hi football fans. I hope you enjoyed the weekend! I’m sure you did if you’re a fan of Florida or Kansas State. Both teams flexed their muscles with big victories over South Carolina and West Virginia, respectively. Elsewhere, Notre Dame kept their dream of a perfect season alive with a hard-fought 17-14 victory over BYU.

 Here is my updated top 10:


Rank

Team

Rating

Record

E(FR)

P(WARG)
1
Alabama
32.55
7-0
11.57 – 0.43
0.487
2
Oklahoma
27.95
5-1
10.13 – 1.87
0.386
3
Oregon
27.32
7-0
11.25 – 0.75
0.332
4
Florida State
24.38
7-1
10.38 – 1.62
0.451
5
Kansas State
23.72
7-0
10.84 – 1.16
0.264
6
Florida
23.25
7-0
10.95 – 1.05
0.065
7
South Carolina
20.83
6-2
9.32 – 2.68
0.425
8
Texas A&M
20.64
5-2
8.57 – 3.43
0.072
9
Notre Dame
20.32
7-0
10.55 – 1.45
0.086
10
LSU
19.96
7-1
9.75 – 2.25
0.094

The Top 10 remains SEC-centric with 5 of the top 10 coming from the SEC. At this point, Alabama appears to be far and away the best team in the country and is at least 4.5 points better than every other team in the country. South Carolina and Texas A&M are still ranked surprisingly high at 6 and 7, respectively. Texas A&M is the more understandable of the two as their only two losses were close games against Florida and LSU. It’s surprising that South Carolina was hurt more by their shellacking at the hands of the Gators but they still have a big victory against Georgia (#11) to hang their hat on.

Here are the top 14 in the initial BCS rankings along with the probability that they win all remaining games:


BCS Rank

Rank

Team

P(WARG)
1
1
Alabama
0.487
2
6
Florida
0.065
3
5
Kansas State
0.264
4
3
Oregon
0.332
5
9
Notre Dame
0.086
6
10
LSU
0.094
7
25
Oregon State
0.004
8
2
Oklahoma
0.386
9
11
USC
0.026
10
13
Georgia
0.104
11
26
Mississippi State
~0.000
12
4
Florida State
0.451
13
7
South Carolina
0.425
14
15
Texas Tech
0.044

Alabama continues to roll along and now have almost a 50% chance of finishing the season undefeated. Kansas State and Oregon are also in good shape with a 26% and 33% chance of finishing undefeated. Florida and Notre Dame have tougher roads ahead of them. Florida still has Georgia, Florida State and a potential SEC Championship game against Alabama on the schedule, while Notre Dame still has to play road games at Oklahoma and USC. I currently have Notre Dame as an eleven point underdog against Oklahoma. A win this weekend would substantially improve their probability of finishing undefeated.

Most people are looking ahead to next weekend when Alabama plays LSU and Oregon plays USC but this weekend could be epic. Four of the top five in the BCS face major tests with Alabama playing undefeated Mississippi State (#26 in my rankings), Florida playing Georgia (#10) in the game formerly known as the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, Kansas State plays Texas Tech (#15) and Notre Dame is actually an underdog on the road against Oklahoma (#2). It should be a fun weekend!

Full ranking can be found at my personal website: http://www.biostat.umn.edu/~josephk/index.php?page=sports

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