B1G vs. SEC

[tschu]

Alright, let's revisit. Bama-tOSU isn't over yet, but I think that with 5 data points from the top of the SECW underperforming their expectations in bowls, we can knock the SECW down one notch. We have a solid trend among those teams. Note that TAMU and Arkansas both did well though. Overall, that division is still really good, and basically the top came down, but the bottom rose up. There are still 6 top-20 power teams, at least, in that division, without a doubt. Bama, Ole Miss, MSU, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU in no particular order (LSU probably last out of that group).

 

The SEC East on the other hand has done well in its bowls. Tennessee still has to play Iowa which should be a completely terrible game...I'm not holding my breath for this result. There was this narrative this season that the SECE was terrible...sure, UK and Vandy are bad, but that division largely was underrated badly. Georgia can easily make a case for being the best or 2nd best team in the SEC.

 

In terms of ranking the conferences? Won't change much. The Pac will close the gap a little bit, but that's all. Oregon, Stanford, Utah beat their expected spreads, Arizona, ArizonaSt, and USC did not. I haven't done the math but I think that they as a whole will pick up some ratings points, and the SEC will lose a few. It won't be nearly enough though.

 

Narratives are fun for some people, and I know many who don't like the conference are glad that the 5 SECW teams lost, and that's fine. Hate away, I won't stop you.

 

 

 

One conference that can make a little jump in the metrics would be the B1G... now the thing about the B1G is that the top teams have all done well in bowls, but the bottom teams have been pretty terrible. That's good, perception-wise, for the B1G since most casual fans don't care that Illinois got romped, they just see that Sparty and Wisconsin won. But top to bottom conference rankings don't care - each team is equal. Still, it's been a good bowl season for the Big Ten who was favored in 0 bowl games and could be sitting at 5-4. (Note that despite being 0 for 10 in being favored, probability dictates that the Big Ten would still go 3-7 or so, on average). Still, a good showing for the Big Ten.

 

Things look good for the Big Ten. In the next couple of years, I'm thinking that the Big Ten will be right there with the Big 12 for the 3rd best conference due to the Urban Meyer and Jim Harbaugh hires, Penn State getting back to full strength, etc etc.

[nic]

The big bad SEC West is currently 2-4 in their bowl games. Yee Ha.

 

Correction 2-5

[tschu]

You can make the case that the Big Ten actually has two of the top 5 teams in the country, although with Michigan State it gets a little dicey and they might fall better at 6 or 7. With Sparty, their two losses, admittedly by sizeable margins, are to the two championship game contestants. However until today, their best win was at home by 5 against...Nebraska (though, they should have won by much more). Other than that almost nothing noteworthy on their whole schedule. A win against Baylor is big though.

 

Then there's a big drop-off to Wisconsin at that ~15thish area, and another drop-off to Nebraska at that ~25thish area, Minnesota somewhere around 30th, and pretty garbage after that

[B.B. Hemingway]

You can make the case that the Big Ten actually has two of the top 5 teams in the country, although with Michigan State it gets a little dicey and they might fall better at 6 or 7. With Sparty, their two losses, admittedly by sizeable margins, are to the two championship game contestants. However until today, their best win was at home by 5 against...Nebraska (though, they should have won by much more). Other than that almost nothing noteworthy on their whole schedule. A win against Baylor is big though.

 

Then there's a big drop-off to Wisconsin at that ~15thish area, and another drop-off to Nebraska at that ~25thish area, Minnesota somewhere around 30th, and pretty garbage after that

 

 

Yeah, the B1G is top heavy, but so is every other conference, despite what the SEC wants everyone to believe.... Michigan State's only two losses are to the two teams in the Championship..... They're a top 5 team, imo....

[tschu]

Meh. The SEC may only have one top-5 team in Bama (although man, Georgia might still be a legitmate top-4 team), but they still have 9 top-20 power teams. I don't know whether you call that top-heavy or what you call that.

[B.B. Hemingway]

Meh. The SEC may only have one top-5 team in Bama (although man, Georgia might still be a legitmate top-4 team), but they still have 9 top-20 power teams. I don't know whether you call that top-heavy or what you call that.

 

I'd have to look closer to argue, and I'm not going too, so I won't...

[In the Deed the Glory]

bullsh#t. I call it bullsh#t.

[Marf]

Meh. The SEC may only have one top-5 team in Bama (although man, Georgia might still be a legitmate top-4 team), but they still have 9 top-20 power teams. I don't know whether you call that top-heavy or what you call that.

 

What? How did you come up with that number? Even the media polls (which you have already admitted are grossly biased per contracts and whatever else) don't even manage that. Not even close. 9? You have Ole Miss in there, who exists in the rankings solely by beating an overanked Alabama, coming close against a laughable Auburn at #3, and an equally laughable Miss State at #4. 7-6 Arkansas is a top 20 team? 8-5 LSU? 8-5 Auburn? All top 20 huh? Are you using Sagarin rankings or what?

 

Here's what I think: I think you've created this narrative and held onto it for so long that you're too prideful to simply change your answer when faced with something that goes against it, such as the SEC's piss poor bowl performance. So now that it's all falling apart you make spreadsheets about Vegas spreads or whatever to try to convince people what you're saying still holds water, but it just doesn't pass the eyeball test.

[mrandyk]

No sh#t. Brining Vegas spreads in like they hold any weight? There is zero evidence that the SEC is the best conference. I do believe the two best wins that conference mustered all year were against Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the teams that won those games have embarrassing losses to Notre Dame and Indiana respectively.

 

Great day for the Big Ten. The conference needed this after some less than stellar bowl showings the last few years

[deedsker]

The SEC beat Wisconsin and then lost to them. They beat Minnesota, but TCU also destroyed them. Ohio State beats Alabama and Indiana beats Mizzou.

 

3-2 with no games in B1G country. Hmmm.

 

Where is my Sargain predictor again...

[mrandyk]

Just read the ESPN recap of the OSU game, and they referred to the Buckeyes as the SEC North. Shamelessly stoking their business partner even when they lose.

[Big Ten Fan]

Ok, so now that the Missouri game is over, I did a simple rudimentary exercise to see how well the SEC has performed compared to how the betting market expected them to perform prior to the bowls being played. Pretty cool the results that I found:

 

 

The SEC as a whole has underperformed by just 2 points per game. They're basically performing just like Vegas has expected them to perform. Almost exactly, really. (Note: Alabama and Tennessee have yet to play obviously). In fact, every team except the set of quadruplets from the SECW have actually outperformed their spread. Basically what this tells us is that any gloom and doom about the SEC is massively overstated. But, perception is a weird and fickle beast.

 

I'd like to do this for Sagarin's predictions as well, but I'll have to find an archive from early December, as his ratings update daily and will thus have some bowl outcomes already reflected in them, and I'd like to see the change that bowls may have had - can't use data that already has this factored in. I'll get around to that eventually.

 

This is not how you should be calculating the average point difference per game. You're letting negative and positives differentials offset each other. You should be using the absolute value of the differentials. For those ten games you get a sum of 144. So the average point difference was 14.4 points. This is only the average point differential and doesn't indicate who it was in favor of. But it does indicate the Vegas's spread was, on average, off by about 2 touchdowns. Which, in my opinion, seems pretty significant.

[Michiganball]

sec is as I always said, mediocre with a couple good teams on top. Companies spend millions on ads since they work, as did eSECpn on their sec investment. However due to the playoffs this perception can be challenged as a sec team no longer gets the free hype pass and an automatic 50% chance of claiming a championship. Looking at BIG teams, they did an outstanding job considering they played on the road and in home states of their opposition, that's hard as hell really as your odds of wining drop 50% in that situation(many forget that in college sports for some reason).

The conference is looking pretty good, hopefully Jim H will take UM back in the proper direction and Penn state can get back to their winning ways.

[tschu]

 

Ok, so now that the Missouri game is over, I did a simple rudimentary exercise to see how well the SEC has performed compared to how the betting market expected them to perform prior to the bowls being played. Pretty cool the results that I found:

 

 

The SEC as a whole has underperformed by just 2 points per game. They're basically performing just like Vegas has expected them to perform. Almost exactly, really. (Note: Alabama and Tennessee have yet to play obviously). In fact, every team except the set of quadruplets from the SECW have actually outperformed their spread. Basically what this tells us is that any gloom and doom about the SEC is massively overstated. But, perception is a weird and fickle beast.

 

I'd like to do this for Sagarin's predictions as well, but I'll have to find an archive from early December, as his ratings update daily and will thus have some bowl outcomes already reflected in them, and I'd like to see the change that bowls may have had - can't use data that already has this factored in. I'll get around to that eventually.

 

This is not how you should be calculating the average point difference per game. You're letting negative and positives differentials offset each other. You should be using the absolute value of the differentials. For those ten games you get a sum of 144. So the average point difference was 14.4 points. This is only the average point differential and doesn't indicate who it was in favor of. But it does indicate the Vegas's spread was, on average, off by about 2 touchdowns. Which, in my opinion, seems pretty significant.

 

 

If that was my goal, that's what I would have done. But it wasn't. It was to get an idea of how over or under-rated (or over- or under-performing in the bowl games, as a whole) the SEC was. Yes, Vegas spreads are always off because of variance, that's how it works. My goal was to see if they were consistently off by a meaningful margin in one particular direction.

[QMany]