Week 7 Rankings

Hi football fans. I’m sure you’re all thrilled for the first BCS rankings of the season! What? No? Look on the bright side. At least you only have to deal with the it for two more years.  

There were several big games over the weekend with national championship implications. LSU ended South Carolina’s run at finishing undefeated with a  23-21 victory, while Notre Dame kept the dream alive for another week thanks to an overtime goal line stand against Stanford. Elsewhere, Texas Tech likely ended any chance West Virginia had at playing for a national title with a 49-14 beat-down and Oklahoma reminded everyone that they’re still pretty good at football by beating Texas 63-21 in the Red River Rivalry. Here is my updated top 10:

Rank	Team	Rating	Record	E(FR)	P(WARG)
1	Alabama	31.57	6-0	11.46 – 0.54	0.424
2	Oklahoma	26.84	4-1	9.87 – 2.13	0.281
3	Oregon	25.74	6-0	10.87 – 1.13	0.199
4	Florida State	24.80	6-1	10.34 – 1.66	0.435
5	South Carolina	24.06	6-1	10.02 – 1.98	0.174
6	Notre Dame	21.30	6-0	10.54 – 1.46	0.106
7	Texas A&M	20.66	5-1	9.24 – 2.76	0.038
8	Florida	20.03	6-0	10.09 – 1.91	0.012
9	Kansas State	19.75	6-0	9.91 – 2.09	0.070
10	Georgia	19.67	5-1	10.03 – 1.97	0.164

Alabama continues to look very impressive and has opened up a five point gap between themselves and the second best team in the country. To put their performance in perspective, Alabama would be favored by at least eight points at home against every team in the country. Oklahoma fell off the map thanks to an early loss to Kansas State but have looked the part of an elite team with four blow out victories. The rest of the top ten looks pretty similar to last week. The SEC is heavily represented with four teams in the top 10 (Alabama, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia), while the Big 12 is the only other conference with more than one team in the top 10 (Oklahoma and Kansas State).

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	0.424
2	8	Florida	0.012
3	3	Oregon	0.199
4	9	Kansas State	0.070
5	6	Notre Dame	0.106
6	12	LSU	0.031
7	5	South Carolina	0.174
8	29	Oregon State	0.001
9	2	Oklahoma	0.281
10	13	USC	0.034
11	10	Georgia	0.164
12	32	Mississippi State	0.000
13	24	West Virginia	0.008
14	4	Florida State	0.435

Alabama is in great shape with a 42% chance of winning out. Florida is being bill as having the inside track but it will be very difficult for them to reach the title game. They still have regular season games against South Carolina, Georgia and Florida State and an undefeated regular season would mean a date with Alabama (most likely) in the SEC title game. Obviously, Alabama made the title game with a loss last season but it is extremely unlikely that the SEC runner-up would make the title game after losing the SEC championship. Looking down the rankings a bit, Oklahoma and Florida State are two interesting dark-horses. My rankings like their chances of winning out and four SEC teams in front of Oklahoma and six in front of Florida State, they both have potential to move up the rankings if they continue to win.

There are several top match-ups on the schedule for this weekend highlighted by South Carolina at Florida. Two other good match-ups are Kansas State at West Virginia and LSU at Texas A&M. I actually have the Aggies favored over LSU and it will be interesting to see if they’re as good as the rankings seem to think they are.

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

Week 6 Rankings

Hi football fans. I dropped off the face of the earth for a couple of weeks but I’ll hopefully be back consistently for the remainder of the season.  

It’s been too long for me to summarize all of the major results since my last post. Therefore, I’ll just get right to it with the updated top 10:

Rank	Team	Rating	Record	E(FR)	P(WARG)
1	Alabama	29.39	5-0	11.19 – 0.81	0.270
2	Oregon	26.10	6-0	11.01 – 0.99	0.247
3	South Carolina	25.34	6-0	10.76 – 1.24	0.087
4	Florida State	23.68	5-1	10.30 – 1.70	0.412
5	Texas A&M	22.06	4-1	9.26 – 2.74	0.046
6	Texas	21.81	4-1	9.28 – 2.72	0.115
7	Notre Dame	21.75	5-0	10.45 – 1.55	0.128
8	Oklahoma	21.06	3-1	8.49 – 3.51	0.038
9	Georgia	20.48	5-1	10.08 – 1.92	0.008
10	Florida	20.30	5-0	9.85 – 2.15	0.013

The top three mirror the major media polls but the rest of the top ten diverges from what is found in the polls. The major difference being that the top eight teams in the media polls are undefeated, whereas my rankings take margin of victory into account and aren’t afraid to rank a one loss team in front of a major conference unbeaten. In fact, Oregon State, who is undefeated at 4-0 and ranked in the top 15 in the two major polls, is ranked #48 in my rankings! On the flip side, my rankings have Texas A&M at number 5, compared to #22 and #21 in the AP and coaches poll, respectively. My rankings are probably giving A&M too much credit for blowing out a couple of bad teams and it will be interesting to see how the rest of their season shapes up.

Here are the top 15 with the best chance of finishing undefeated

P(WARG) Rank	Rank	Team	P(WARG)
1	1	Alabama	0.270
2	14	Ohio State	0.266
3	2	Oregon	0.247
4	65	Ohio	0.161
5	7	Notre Dame	0.128
6	32	Louisville	0.090
7	3	South Carolina	0.087
8	33	Cincinnati	0.073
9	42	Rutgers	0.054
10	51	Louisiana Tech	0.048
11	16	West Virginia	0.038
12	13	Kansas State	0.031
13	10	Florida	0.013
14	104	UTSA	0.002
15	35	Mississippi State	~ 0.000

It has to be tough being a Buckeye fan this year. They have as good of a chance of finishing undefeated as anyone but are not eligible for the postseason. Although, I should point out that their probability of finishing undefeated is artificially inflated because they can’t play in the Big 10 title game. Otherwise, Alabama and Oregon lead the pack with the best chance of finishing undefeated. Among major college unbeatens, Notre Dame and South Carolina appear to have the next best chances of finishing undefeated, while the rankings are not very optimistic about West Virginia, Kansas State or Florida.

We’re into the heart of the season at this point, which means that there are big games every weekend. Two that stand out to me are South Carolina putting their undefeated record on the line at LSU on Saturday night and Notre Dame facing a difficult game against Stanford.

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