It'sNotAFakeID
Well-known member
It's because they don't care, right? You think that these rankings get inflated/deflated based on the fact that apparently good teams play apparently good teams and apparently bad teams play apparently bad teams?
B1G vs. SEC
- Thread starter Creed
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tschu
Banned
I mean when an SECW team plays and SECW team, both teams rankings don't go up. One goes up and the others' goes down based on the outcome, proportional to the margin of victory and the difference in their rating. It's not like Bama plays LSU and suddenly both teams make a jump. The reason that the SECW was rated so highly at the beginning of the season was because they were something like 29-0 against all non-SECW teams.
As far as the "not caring" narrative...who knows. I hate narratives. For some reason people always try to read into the motivation of each team in a bowl game - maybe motivation is a factor, maybe it isn't; there's no way to know and guessing from the outside is purely conjecture.
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tschu
Banned
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.
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.
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It'sNotAFakeID
Well-known member
This is very up in the air, but when #5 Ole Miss loses to #3 Auburn, I'm willing to bet they don't fall as much as #18 Nebraska losing to #16 Wisconsin. And that those trams are handcuffed to those rankings because those teams are "apparently not as good".
It might be circular reasoning, but I'm curious.
tschu
Banned
Depends on what rankings you're talking about, the difference in the rating (not ranking) of the two teams, the HFA, and the margin of victory. If you're talking about human polls, then yeah those are stupid. But we got dominated by Wisconsin and IIRC we only dropped 3 spots in Sagarin.
In the Deed the Glory
Well-known member
Dude, you do science. I play/coach sports. These are people, not chess pieces, not chemical reactions. YOU CANNOT USE SCIENCE WHEN DEALING WITH PEOPLE. It is about narratives because of the fact we are human beings and are driven by our emotion. We don't do the same thing over and over when pressure is applied, this is why science doesn't work here man.
Success in sports is entirely about three things: individual player talent, player motivation, and ability of coaches. As already stated, you can't measure motivation. Your fancy little computer programs do not measure coaching prowess, you see Paul Johnson watched film and KNEW that Miss St couldn't stop the dive. Wisconsin watched film and KNEW that Auburn couldn't stop the run. Michigan State watched the film and KNEW that Baylor couldn't run the ball against them.
Those teams all out-coached the others. For all this talk about how great Dan Mullen, Hugh Frees (sp?), Gus Malzahn and Art Briles are they were out-coached this week.
What? There are entire branches of psychology that measure and predict motivation. Here is a list of motivational instruments:http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Motivation_Measures/Scales
Also, people are chemical reactions; that's why we respond to drugs.
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It'sNotAFakeID
Well-known member
Very true. A lot of psychological tests do a respectable job predicting behavioral constructs. Obviously there is room for individual differences
tschu
Banned
Marf
Banned
I don't know how relevant those numbers are. If we're talking science like In the Deed the Glory states, this is like Natural News stuff. Did you really expect Vegas to be off? Vegas has a weird habit of ignoring perception to make money. I'm willing to bet if you run the numbers for every conference and their performance vs the spread during the bowl season they are pretty close to that margin. I think the win/loss record is significantly more telling, and as of now the SEC has dropped their big games. Is performance vs. the spread more important than the win loss record when evaluating a conference? I would say that is a resounding no. Without other conference numbers to compare, that table just doesn't mean anything to me. Even with those numbers, I'm not sure it will mean anything to me. Win/Loss is going to trump all, and as of now the SEC hasn't really impressed.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.
tschu
Banned
So which is it then? You say that Vegas, which is the collection of all public knowledge about all of the football teams condensed into betting spreads, knows what it's doing, and it looks like they have the conference as a whole rated properly...yet we also have this idea that the SEC is overrated? So you need to make the distinction...the SEC is overrated by who?
It appears that they're properly rated, as I've been saying all along, as the #1 conference with the Pac-12 a close second. If we're talking about media bias, I've always agreed that the media gives the SEC more attention than necessary, although that's due to the feverish interest down there and contracts and whatnot. I'm not concerned with any of that.
It appears that they're properly rated, as I've been saying all along, as the #1 conference with the Pac-12 a close second. If we're talking about media bias, I've always agreed that the media gives the SEC more attention than necessary, although that's due to the feverish interest down there and contracts and whatnot. I'm not concerned with any of that.
