-The Greatest also departed for the squared circle in the sky, no doubt to set up the most amazing heavyweight bout that never happened: Marciano v Ali.
-The Cubs won the World Series. Trump got elected. I'll let you decide which event was more unlikely.
-We watched a LOT of movies (I generally don't do serious movies. "The escapism is strong in this one."):
- Over $11 BILLION raked in by Whollyweird
- Rogue One (best Star Wars movie since Empire Strikes Back)
- Suicide Squad (made a lot of money, but has to be considered a flop)
- Deadpool (not a kiddie superhero movie)
- Batman v Superman (almost but not quite dark enough)
- Captain America: Civil War (what Avengers 2 should have been)
-Stranger Things
-Ryan Lochte
And we had college football with some nice chaos thrown in! I don't know about you, but I love the weekends when top 10 teams lose to unranked or heavy underdogs.
I remember watching LSU v Wisky in Green Bay. Beginning of the end for Les Miles. To be honest, I thought he was not treated all that well.
Top 10 matchups (pulled from Wiki):
- Week 3
- #10 Louisville defeated #2 Florida State 63-20
- Week 5
- #10 Washington defeated #7 Stanford 44-6
- #5 Clemson defeated #3 Louisville 42-36
- #4 Michigan defeated #8 Wisconsin 14-7
- Week 6
- #8 Texas A&M defeated #9 Tennessee 45-38, 2OT
- Week 7
- #1 Alabama defeated #9 Tennessee 49-10
- #2 Ohio State defeated #8 Wisconsin 30-23, OT
- Week 8
- #1 Alabama defeated #6 Texas A&M 33-14
- Week 10
- #6/6 Ohio State defeated #10/9 Nebraska 62-3
- Week 12
- #9/8 Oklahoma defeated #14/10 West Virginia 56-28
- Week 13
- #2/2 Ohio State defeated #3/3 Michigan 30-27, 2OT
- Week 14
- #4/4 Washington defeated #8/9 Colorado 41-10
- #7/8 Penn State defeated #6/6 Wisconsin 38-31
Just a little bit of chaos. But week 12 is missing some stuff. For the first time since 1985, the numbers 2, 3, & 4 teams were all upset by unranked teams. And there was more!
- #2 UM lost to Iowa on a last second FG
- #3 Clemson lost to Pitt on a last second FG
- #4 UW lost to USC at home
- #8 Auburn lost to unranked UGA
- #10 Texas A&M lost to Ole Miss
- #15 North Carolina lost to Duke
- #18 VaTech lost to GaTech
What a glorious weekend!
Remember the blocked punt against #2 OSU that led directly to Penn State winning the B1G championship? And #15 Houston over #3 OU?
Here's a quick reminder of the rules:
- I stop all data at the conference championships. No bowl games are included, as the idea is to provide us with a top 25 that we would have selected playoff teams from.
- All calculations are exactly the same as the current Ray's Rankings calculations.
- I will introduce the top 25 in reverse order
- I will compare RR/CFP/AP rankings
- I will provide 3 different playoff scenarios
- 4 team seeded
- 8 team with conference champions and 2 at large, seeded
- 16 team seeded
- We can all have a good laugh at how different things would have been. Or we can all stare slack-jawed in amazement at how closely Ray's Rankings matches human polls.
Ready?
Already talked a little about Houston. This was the season that really propelled Tom Herman into the UT driver's seat. Boise losing to Wyoming and Air Force hurt their chances. Nebraska lost by 1 score to Wisky and then got pasted by OSU. A&M climbed all the way to #6 before losing 4 of their last 6. The 'Canes made themselves a loser sandwich, winning 4, losing 4, then winning 4.
Wisky's losses were not egregious, there were just too many. UM, OSU and PSU are very good teams to lose to, just not all in the same season. Hornibrook played well, no idea why he eventually left the school.
Alrighty, then! CFP vs RR!
Top 10 agree very closely, with only a 0.1 place difference for those spots. Heck, the Top 15 are pretty close, mostly. As we go down the line the gap gets bigger, but is that really surprising? Even if the CFP doesn't actively do it, the effect is the same: they say "Here are the top 4" and then they rank everyone else relative to that. This brings out the bias that goes like this: if Alabama is #1 and they didn't beat Auburn and Florida by 70 points, then Auburn and Florida must be pretty good teams!
That is not how our system works. Also, there is no known transitive property of college football.
Variances for conferences? Remember: positive numbers are the average of how many places higher than the computer each conference was ranked by voters, negative numbers are the average number of places lower.
Both the SEC and the Pac-12 are beneficiaries of CFP committee bias. The ACC is actually hurt by it. Let's examine the SEC here:
#1/1 Alabama is where they belong. You can check the numbers down below in the master list.
#14/19 Auburn. 5 places too high. Yes, you have to go down 13/18 places to find the next SEC team.
#17/27 Florida. 10 places too high. UF doesn't even make our Top 25!
#20/29 and #21/28 LSU and Tennessee. 9 and 7 places too high, Also out of the Top 25.
How do we feel about the SEC as a whole when they only have #1 and #19 in the Top 25?
And what about the Pac 12? 3.4 spots higher on average than they should be because of one team (Utah, if you're looking)!
Again, this is not an attack on the SEC or the Pac 12. It is an attack on the CFP committee, and on bias in general.
And what about the Pac 12? 3.4 spots higher on average than they should be because of one team (Utah, if you're looking)!
Again, this is not an attack on the SEC or the Pac 12. It is an attack on the CFP committee, and on bias in general.
AP vs RR
The Top 14 are very close. They do have Florida State and Louisville reversed. Kinda shows a brand bias, yes? Fix those two and we're very close down to 17! I'm excited because it shows that the AP can be mostly unbiased, sorta. But look at LSU and UF.
Again, because of LSU and UF we see a large pro-SEC bias here overall. Big 12 got a bit of a boost, too. But if we take out LSU and UF, the SEC falls right into line. I find that interesting.
Using our 100% objective ranking system we get a 4 team playoff that is pretty much exactly the same. The thing about these types of statistics or calculations, and this is illustrated beautifully in Moneyball, is that for any single event averages do not apply. That's a gross oversimplification, but we can treat it as a truth.
How about the 8 team seeded? Remember, all 5 P5 conference champs, top G5 team, 2 at large:
Yeah, the B1G is a little over represented, but that how the numbers come out. I'm curious to know if UM would have faired better against Clemson. And OU at Happy Valley in Dec? Yes please!
16 team seeded:
Here we go, some intriguing matchups! Wisky v USC at Camp Randall; Florida at OSU (makes me lol a bit); Colorado at PSU (classic B1G/Pac10 battle sorta). Maybe not as compelling as 2017, but still better than almost every bowl game played that season. And the rankings/seeds are made through a 100% objective and transparent process. Simple.
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