tschu
Banned
Just a side note that I want to bring up -
Why is it that most college sports fans can have totally reasonable discussions about college basketball - you hear things like comparing records in a good conference like the Big Ten vs a bad conference like the SEC for example (trollolol), people look at computer metrics like RPI (which sucks a$$, but hey, it's a start - hint, use KenPom instead), and in general we seem to like to use all of the information available to say, well, Team X is 30-3 in a bad conference but Team Y is 28-6 in the best conference or whatever, so Team Y gets the 1 seed.
Meanwhile in college football people seem to just lose their god damn minds. I think most people are still caught up in the awful 'win and move up in the polls, lose and move down' logic. Well if you're ranked 20th and lose to the #1 ranked team by a point, you should move UP a bunch of spots in the polls, not down. Stuff like that. OLE MISS SUCKS THEY HAVE 3 LOSSES well no they don't suck. They'd be favored over all but like 6 or 7 teams in the nation. And we SEEM to know this in some areas. Most people agree that Marshall, when they were still undefeated, was not a top 20 or even top 25 team. But when it comes to applying it to the power-5 conferences, people get caught up in hate and bias and historical precedent and perhaps even information overload.
Let's look at Marshall's division - the CUSA East. The B1G West mean rating is ~74; CUSA East is 61. So the B1G West is 13 points better than CUSA East on average.
Now let's look at the SEC West. They're at 92. They are EIGHTEEN POINTS better on average than the B1G West. That's significantly larger than the gap between say the CUSA and the B1G divisions. (For comparison's sake, the SEC East is at 79 - same as the Pac-South). So why do we put such a distinction on "Power-5" ...I don't know. Because humans like to categorize things I guess. It's so much easier to say P5 = good, little conferences = bad...but I just showed how misguided that is and how little actual information you get out of that. Unless you're evaluating strength on a team by team power ranking basis, you're just blindly flailing around in the wind.
Why is it that most college sports fans can have totally reasonable discussions about college basketball - you hear things like comparing records in a good conference like the Big Ten vs a bad conference like the SEC for example (trollolol), people look at computer metrics like RPI (which sucks a$$, but hey, it's a start - hint, use KenPom instead), and in general we seem to like to use all of the information available to say, well, Team X is 30-3 in a bad conference but Team Y is 28-6 in the best conference or whatever, so Team Y gets the 1 seed.
Meanwhile in college football people seem to just lose their god damn minds. I think most people are still caught up in the awful 'win and move up in the polls, lose and move down' logic. Well if you're ranked 20th and lose to the #1 ranked team by a point, you should move UP a bunch of spots in the polls, not down. Stuff like that. OLE MISS SUCKS THEY HAVE 3 LOSSES well no they don't suck. They'd be favored over all but like 6 or 7 teams in the nation. And we SEEM to know this in some areas. Most people agree that Marshall, when they were still undefeated, was not a top 20 or even top 25 team. But when it comes to applying it to the power-5 conferences, people get caught up in hate and bias and historical precedent and perhaps even information overload.
Let's look at Marshall's division - the CUSA East. The B1G West mean rating is ~74; CUSA East is 61. So the B1G West is 13 points better than CUSA East on average.
Now let's look at the SEC West. They're at 92. They are EIGHTEEN POINTS better on average than the B1G West. That's significantly larger than the gap between say the CUSA and the B1G divisions. (For comparison's sake, the SEC East is at 79 - same as the Pac-South). So why do we put such a distinction on "Power-5" ...I don't know. Because humans like to categorize things I guess. It's so much easier to say P5 = good, little conferences = bad...but I just showed how misguided that is and how little actual information you get out of that. Unless you're evaluating strength on a team by team power ranking basis, you're just blindly flailing around in the wind.
