Review of the Computer Rankings

[DCHusker]

As you may or may not know, I love the computer rankings because they remove the subjectivity of coaches and journalists whose attention is usually limited to a single conference or team. It's only about who you've beat and lost to, and who they've beat and lost to.

 

There was another thread about whether Nebraska would be ranked if we defeat CU. We're actually right on the cusp of the computer rankings, it's the human polls that are keeping us out of the top 25. Though they only rate the top 25, we're 39th in the coaches poll and 40th in the Harris, in the sense that we only got 2 and 3 votes, respectively, for the top 25.

 

This is one of the problems with the human rankings, it's much easier for teams to barely remain in the top 25 than it is for an outside team to jump in, because most voters start with last week's top 25 and adjust accordingly, rather than starting fresh each week and going through all the conference standings. This makes the rankings a lot "stickier" than they should be.

 

In any case, here are Nebraska's computer rankings:

 

Sagarin: 26th

Anderson and Hester: 22nd

Billingsley: 30th

Colley: 24th

Massey: 25th

Wolfe: 27th

 

We do better in the computer models that penalize heavily for losses to bad teams, which we haven't done, than those that favor wins over highly rated teams, which we don't have.