4
Oct
2

Week 5: Lazy & Blind Rankings

by Griffin

A Simple Look

After writing my previous post about Oklahoma being ranked despite a very weak schedule, I got to thinking about what the other 1-A teams would look like if you ranked their schedules & results. Since I’m a huge fan of Ed over at The National Championship Issue, I thought I’d take a stab as some of my own team / conference rankings. ( BTW, you can find his Week 5 rankings here ). Thus the first version of the Blind Schedule Rankings were born.

These rankings are going to skew towards BCS teams. I’m trying to get a feel for what criteria AP voters would use. Since they usually skew towards BCS teams, this should be spot on.

Simple, Comprehensible and Full Of Holes

The rules are simple:

  1. I picked the simplest scale I could think of: 1-9
  2. Teams are given a point value for every game on their schedule thus far. The point system looks like this:
    Opp Team & Result Win Pts Loss Pts
    BCS – Road 9 -1
    BCS – Neutral 8 -2
    BCS – Home 7 -3
    Non-BCS – Road 6 -4
    Non-BCS – Neutral 5 -5
    Non-BCS – Home 4 -6
    1-AA – Road 3 -7
    1-AA – Neutral 2 -8
    1-AA – Home 1 -9

    So beating a BCS team on the road is worth 9 points, but losing to a 1-AA team at home docks you 9 points.

  3. To get a teams culmative score, you assign the correct value for the game and sum up all of the resulting values. So, for example, beating a BCS team on the road, but losing to a Non-BCS team at home would give you a total of 3 points.
  4. These are non-weighted scores, which is where the ‘Blind’ part comes in. This means the actual opponent doesn’t matter. So beating Duke on the road is the same as beating Florida on the road.

Now, I know that last one will cause a lot of people to complain. I am fully aware of how big of a hole this is. These are only meant to get a rough idea of the teams and who they’re playing. Sagarin adds weights in his rankings early on in the season, so all I’m doing is ignoring any artificial bias I could throw in for now. Later in the year, I may make a slightly more complex version of these rankings that include weights and connections, but I think this is good for now. I’ve always favored simplicity & comprehension over complex and opaque anyway.

Teams

Some interesting things below.

  1. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the SEC holds the top 3 slots. All 3 teams have at least 3 wins over BCS teams (LSU has 4), including quality road and neutral site wins.
  2. Cincinnati & Iowa should both be ranked higher than they are, given the teams they beaten and where they’ve beaten them.
  3. Despite tripping up with Washington, USC is in good position to make a run at the the BCS NCG.
  4. 2 teams in the top 10 are unranked in most, if not all, polls. Notre Dame & Stanford both have 3 wins over BCS teams, including a road win.
  5. TCU & Boise St. are both in the top 15, though TCU is just barely in. However, if at least two BCS teams win out, they’re be on the outside looking in.
Rank Conference Team Score
1 SEC LSU 38
2 SEC Alabama 32
3 SEC Auburn 31
4 Big 10 Iowa 30
5 Big East Cincinnati 29
6 Pac-10 USC 28
7 Big East South Florida 26
8 Pac-10 Stanford 26
9 Ind Notre Dame 26
10 ACC Virginia Tech 25
11 Big 10 Wisconsin 25
12 WAC Boise State 24
13 ACC Georgia Tech 23
14 Big 10 Ohio State 23
15 MWC TCU 23
16 ACC Miami 22
17 Big 12 Texas 21
18 Big East West Virginia 21
19 Big 10 Michigan 21
20 Big 10 Penn State 21
21 SEC Florida 21
22 SEC South Carolina 20
23 Big 12 Missouri 19
24 Big East Pittsburgh 19
25 Pac-10 Ore 19
26 Pac-10 UCLA 19
27 SEC Georgia 19
28 MAC Central Michigan 19
29 MWC BYU 19
30 WAC Idaho 19
31 ACC Boston College 18
32 Big 12 Kansas 18
33 CUSA Tulsa 18
34 Sun Belt Middle Tennessee 18
35 Big 10 Minnesota 16
36 MWC Utah 16
37 SEC Mississippi 15
38 MAC Toledo 15
39 Pac-10 Arizona 13
40 Pac-10 California 13
41 CUSA Houston 13
42 ACC Wake Forrest 11
43 Big 12 Nebraska 11
44 Big 12 Baylor 11
45 Big East UConn 11
46 Big East Rutgers 11
47 ACC North Carolina 10
48 Big 12 Texas A&M 10
49 Big 10 Northwestern 10
50 Pac-10 Oregon St 10
51 Ind Navy 10
52 CUSA East Carolina 9
53 Sun Belt La-Monroe 9
54 Big 10 Indiana 7
55 CUSA Southern Mississippi 7
56 MAC Ohio 7
57 MAC Northern IL 7
58 MWC Wyoming 7
59 Big 12 Kansas State 6
60 Big 12 Oklahoma State 6
61 Pac-10 Washington 6
62 MWC Air Force 6
63 MWC Colorado St 6
64 Sun Belt La-Laff 6
65 ACC North Carolina State 5
66 Big 12 Iowa State 5
67 SEC Kentucky 5
68 SEC Arkansas 5
69 CUSA SMU 5
70 Sun Belt Troy 5
71 Big 12 Texas Tech 4
72 CUSA Marshall 4
73 ACC Clemson 3
74 SEC Miss St 3
75 Big 10 Michigan State 2
76 CUSA Texas El-Paso 2
77 WAC Hawaii 2
78 Big East Syracuse 1
79 Pac-10 Arizona St 1
80 SEC Tennessee 1
81 CUSA UCF 1
82 ACC Florida State 0
83 SEC Vanderbilt 0
84 Ind Army 0
85 MAC Kent St 0
86 MAC Temple 0
87 WAC La Tech 0
88 Big 12 Oklahoma -1
89 MAC W. Michigan -1
90 ACC Maryland -2
91 CUSA UAB -3
92 MWC San Diego St. -4
93 WAC Nevada -4
94 Big 10 Illinois -5
95 CUSA Tulane -5
96 ACC Duke -6
97 MWC UNLV -6
98 Big 12 Colorado -7
99 Big East Louisville -7
100 MAC Akron -7
101 Sun Belt Arkansas St -7
102 Sun Belt North Texas -7
103 WAC Fresno State -7
104 WAC San Jose St -7
105 WAC Utah St. -8
106 Big 10 Purdue -9
107 WAC New Mexico St. -9
108 ACC Virginia -10
109 Pac-10 Wash St -10
110 CUSA Rice -11
111 MAC Buffalo -11
112 Sun Belt Florida International -12
113 MAC Bowling Green -13
114 MAC Eastern Michigan -14
115 Sun Belt FAU -14
116 CUSA Memphis -16
117 Sun Belt W. Kentucky -17
118 MAC Miami (OH) -18
119 MWC New Mexico -20
120 MAC Ball State -26

Conferences

Some surprises for me here:

  1. The Big 10 2nd and the Big 12 5th seemed reversed to me. I would have thought the opposite.
  2. Not surprisingly, the MWC top the non-BCS conferences, but surprisingly Conference USA comes in 2nd. Equally shocking is the MAC occupying the bottom rung, normally the spot for the Sun Belt. The MAC has 4 teams with a combined record of 1-18.
  3. The ACC looks to be just awful, but only slightly worse than the Big 12.
Rank Conference Score
1 SEC 190
2 Big 10 141
3 Pac-10 125
4 Big East 111
5 Big 12 103
6 ACC 99
7 MWC 47
8 CUSA 24
9 WAC 10
10 Sun Belt -19
11 MAC -42

Proceed to Throw Your Tomatoes

I know the above rankings are completely full of holes in several ways. However, it was easy to throw together and gave me a rough idea about the first quarter of the season. I will probably keep it up to date throughout the year, with some modifications. If I’ve made an error or you have some input, please let me know. I welcome any feedback.

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2 Comments:
  1. Ed 5 Oct, 2009

    Hey there Griffin, like the updates to the site – nice.

    I’ve found that one of the easiest ways to even things out when it comes to rankings is to divide by the number of games. Even now some teams are at 4, some at 5, some at 2 + 2 I-AA cupcakes… It’s especially helpful when you’re dealing with the conferences, since there’s a wide disparity between how many non-conference games each have. The SEC and Big12 have 48, but the Pac10 only has 30, etc.

    Keep up the good work -

  2. Griffin 6 Oct, 2009

    Thanks for the comments Ed. I thought about normalizing the teams in terms of games played. However, I wanted to get a snapshot of who has done what this year as a whole. I was getting a little tired of all of the Texas and Florida supporters out there defending their ranking with the conclusion that they have done nothing to lose it.

    The non-conference vs. conference disparity shouldn’t matter much, since there’s no dimension that factors that in. Only BCS, Non-BCS & I-AA. So if you are the Pac-10 and you’ve played a lot of conference BCS teams, you’ll still get the same points as the SEC playing non-conference BCS teams.

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