B1G vs. SEC

[Mavric]

Have we reached the part of the year where 1 bowl game overrides all else?

 

Appears we have

When that's the only decent OOC opponent you play, there's not a lot else to compare between conferences.

[tschu]

 

Have we reached the part of the year where 1 bowl game overrides all else?

 

Appears we have

When that's the only decent OOC opponent you play, there's not a lot else to compare between conferences.

 

 

Ole Miss beat Boise State by 22 points. Boise State is currently winning the Fiesta Bowl. If you want to play this silly game again.

[Mavric]

I realize you'd like to ignore on the field results but most of the world doesn't work that way.

 

Please feel free to ignore these silly games if you'd like.

[tschu]

I'm choosing to NOT ignore an entire season's worth of body of work in favor of pointing fingers at two bowl game results and going "SEEEE????" That's what I'm doing. Carry on doing whatever it is that you're doing.

 

All those losses do is knock those teams down a couple of ratings points and knock the SEC down a slim amount in their lead over the Pac-12. You can't ignore them - they count just as much as any other game. No more, no less. Any loss of rating by the SEC per LSU/Ole Miss is probably made up by the amount Georgia gained by beating down Louisville and Arkansas by destroying Texas. They're up to 2 in Sagarin Predictor and Arkansas is 11.

[In the Deed the Glory]

I'm choosing to NOT ignore an entire season's worth of body of work in favor of pointing fingers at two bowl game results and going "SEEEE????" That's what I'm doing. Carry on doing whatever it is that you're doing.

 

All those losses do is knock those teams down a couple of ratings points and knock the SEC down a slim amount in their lead over the Pac-12. You can't ignore them - they count just as much as any other game. No more, no less. Any loss of rating by the SEC per LSU/Ole Miss is probably made up by the amount Georgia gained by beating down Louisville and Arkansas by destroying Texas. They're up to 2 in Sagarin Predictor and Arkansas is 11.

 

How about now? Way to go SEC West. 2-3 so far with two ass kickings. Yep, should be an NFL division.

 

And anything that puts Georgia at #2 and Arkansas at #11 is a piece of trash.

[Mavric]

I'm choosing to NOT ignore an entire season's worth of body of work in favor of pointing fingers at two bowl game results and going "SEEEE????" That's what I'm doing. Carry on doing whatever it is that you're doing.

 

All those losses do is knock those teams down a couple of ratings points and knock the SEC down a slim amount in their lead over the Pac-12. You can't ignore them - they count just as much as any other game. No more, no less. Any loss of rating by the SEC per LSU/Ole Miss is probably made up by the amount Georgia gained by beating down Louisville and Arkansas by destroying Texas. They're up to 2 in Sagarin Predictor and Arkansas is 11.

 

No, that's not what I'm doing. You just automatically assume that's the only thing others do.

 

They get credit for winning games. But when trying to determine which conferences are better, it does no good to look at intra-conference games. You have to see how they did against outside competition to really know anything. But the SEC chooses to play precious few games OOC to protect themselves.

 

There is no measure of what has actually taken place on the field this year that says the SEC is better than the Pac-12. The Pac-12 was 8-3 against other Power 5 teams this year; the SEC was 5-6. The Pac-12 is currently 4-1 in bowl games; the SEC is 4-3. The computers are nice in that they give you a way to compare teams that largely haven't played each other. But once you have actual on-field performance to look at, the computers don't mean much.

 

How did the Sagarin predictor fare in telling us what would happen in the Peach Bowl or the Orange Bowl? Or do we not care what actually happened in the game because the computer said it shouldn't have happened that way?

[tschu]

 

I'm choosing to NOT ignore an entire season's worth of body of work in favor of pointing fingers at two bowl game results and going "SEEEE????" That's what I'm doing. Carry on doing whatever it is that you're doing.

 

All those losses do is knock those teams down a couple of ratings points and knock the SEC down a slim amount in their lead over the Pac-12. You can't ignore them - they count just as much as any other game. No more, no less. Any loss of rating by the SEC per LSU/Ole Miss is probably made up by the amount Georgia gained by beating down Louisville and Arkansas by destroying Texas. They're up to 2 in Sagarin Predictor and Arkansas is 11.

 

No, that's not what I'm doing. You just automatically assume that's the only thing others do.

 

They get credit for winning games. But when trying to determine which conferences are better, it does no good to look at intra-conference games. You have to see how they did against outside competition to really know anything. But the SEC chooses to play precious few games OOC to protect themselves.

 

There is no measure of what has actually taken place on the field this year that says the SEC is better than the Pac-12. The Pac-12 was 8-3 against other Power 5 teams this year; the SEC was 5-6. The Pac-12 is currently 4-1 in bowl games; the SEC is 4-3. The computers are nice in that they give you a way to compare teams that largely haven't played each other. But once you have actual on-field performance to look at, the computers don't mean much.

 

How did the Sagarin predictor fare in telling us what would happen in the Peach Bowl or the Orange Bowl? Or do we not care what actually happened in the game because the computer said it shouldn't have happened that way?

 

 

This is like beating my brain against the wall. You have, again, picked "Power 5 teams" as if that means something (ignores the fact that some P5 teams are horrible while some non-P5 teams are good) while also completely ignores the individual matchups themselves, and pointed to records in 5 games, with no margin of victory figures included in your analysis whatsoever, and attempted to draw a conclusion from it

 

Meanwhile, Sagarin draws the data from every matchup between every team, and as a part of its very analysis calculates what team ratings best fit the results on the field that have actually occurred, in every game, using the actual game score data - yes, margin of victory.

 

You also don't seem to understand variance - Ohio State outperformed their Sagarin/Vegas expectation in the B1GCCG by 63 points - something that you'd actually expect to occur once out of every 100 or so games anyway. That's why I rightfully put virtually no stock into any one individual game outcome - it could be meaningful or meaningless. The only way to know is to look at it as part of a larger data set. Like, a whole entire season for example.

 

"But once you have actual on-field performance to look at, computers don't mean much" is a total non sequitur. It does not make sense as a statement. The computers draw their inferences directly from the on-field performances.

 

Anything other obvious things that I need to point out for the thousandth time?

[In the Deed the Glory]

As a former college athlete and current head coach, I can tell you one thing tschu...no computer can measure desire, toughness, or heart and those factors are arguably the most important thing in sports.

 

It isn't about margin of victory and blah, blah, blah.

 

It is about how do you react when punched in the mouth against another good team in a game, on the field. Not in a computer program. If this computer program is so amazing and so accurate and definitely tells us who is the best, why do we even have a playoff. Just give it to the computer's team then.

[tschu]

We crown champions on the field because that's the way sports works. If we just eliminated all variance and used metrics to crown a champion, sports would be lame. The Patriots would be 2007 Super Bowl Champs.

 

But I'm not crowning a champion. I want to know which teams and conferences are best because that's what I'm interested in. Lots of people are interested in it, and not in an ESPN talking heads or message board nonsense way. Also, determining the place of teams in college football despite the asymmetrical schedule is a necessary evil because of how we determine which teams get into the playoffs in the first place. For example, if we truly want the four best teams, Florida State does not make the playoff. Florida State does not even make the 8-team playoff. But it's clear that either we're still antiquated in the ways we think about things, or we value coming up on the right side of variance and putting together a deserving resume. Personally, I like building a resume to get in since it keeps more of the qualification on the field, but FSU still does not make a 4-team playoff with their resume if we take margin of victory into account. They do make an 8-team playoff though, resume-speaking. Also, it's entirely possible within the realm of probability that the best team in the nation this year has 2 or 3 losses - not all that likely since the best team is one of either Oregon, Bama, or TCU, but still entirely possible.

 

I think it's incredibly valid to discuss which team is truly the best team simply from a fan standpoint and someone who is interested in understanding the CFB landscape, while also recognizing that the champion is crowned on the field. Real results have to matter otherwise sports is pointless. I could sit at home with a random number generator and simulate seasons but where's the fun in that? Besides, every metric ever is based on those real results. So, once again, I do not buy the "why play the games when you could just look at your computers" nonsense. The computers are based on the games.

 

Another thing people don't understand is how widely game results vary. Auburn is a 6-point favorite today. Does that mean that they should win the game by 6 points or by 5-7 points every time? No. They play that game 100 times, Auburn will win 49-10 sometimes, and Wisconsin will win 35-13 sometimes, and they'll tie and go to overtime sometimes. On average, Auburn is predicted to be 6 points better - and this late in the season, those lines are incredibly sharp. That's all it means.

 

If we care about how conferences stack up and one conference goes like 0-9 or 1-8 or something against the spread and against the computer predictions, that would certainly be meaningful information and would tilt the way that conference stacks up. But a conference going 3-6 or 4-5 against the spread or 5-4 or 6-3...those are all very likely outcomes and shouldn't change the way we think at all. My point is that, and I've already seen it in this thread, people cherry pick the results that fit their narrative and ignore the ones that don't. Personally, I hate all narratives - I don't care what the storyline is. If I flip my view on a team or computer rankings change for a team, that's not flip-flopping or waffling or even being wrong. That's called adjusting based on new information. I work in science. This is what I do.

[True2tRA]

A Big Ten Team is playing an almost equally ranked SEC team right now. They get to settle this one on the field. That's the whole purpose of the playoff system. It allows more highly competitive teams to determine who is better and do their talking with their play.

 

Ohio St. and Bama get to settle it later. I'm picking Ohio St.

[Mavric]

I would be very interested in how the on-field results this year compare to the Sagarin predictor. Have you looked at that?

[tschu]

Bowls?

[VA Husker Fan]

A Big Ten Team is playing an almost equally ranked SEC team right now. They get to settle this one on the field. That's the whole purpose of the playoff system. It allows more highly competitive teams to determine who is better and do their talking with their play.

 

 

Of note to this is that Auburn is tied for 4th in the SEC West and perhaps the #6 SEC team, while Wisconsin was the B1G West champion about probably #3 in the B1G. All I hear around here is the favorable SEC bowl matchups but not so match when a lower SEC team plays a higher team in another conference.

[huKSer]

As a former college athlete and current head coach, I can tell you one thing tschu...no computer can measure desire, toughness, or heart and those factors are arguably the most important thing in sports.

 

I can't find a clip of it, but this reminded me of a scene from "North Dallas Forty" - Nick Nolte"s character is called into the head coaches office, the coach has a brand new Apple Mac running. Clicks, clicks, clicks and then announces "There, Right there. You don"t play with heart" or some such

[tschu]

SEC East outperforming, SEC West underperforming in bowls so far.