Music City Bowl vs Tennessee

Big red surfers said:
Lol

http://www.volnation.com/forum/tennessee-vols-football/269338-talent-evaluations-music-city-bowl.html

They are saying if we played there schedule we would have gone 7-5. If they played our schedule they would have gone 11-1.

What !! I don't see them beating wisky or Ohio st. Iowa and minn would have gave them a run for there money too.

And I don't see 5 losses in there schedule. Bama, A&M, would be losses. Florida and poss Georgia might be losses. I see 4 losses. Max.
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I'm not a stats person. I think I understand the stats he mentioned, but many other factors go into a game's outcome than just talent.

That being said, his reasoning as to why the Vols should be favored makes sense. This game being practically a home game for the Vols would probably be enough to have them favored alone. Hell, I'm a Nebraska fan and even I have a tendency to think the Vols will win.

I do however question his calling Iowa our "worst loss." Seems to me that losing by 59 to Ohio State would be the worst. Unless he's comparing talent rankings between teams.

Any stat geeks on here wanna comb through his methodology to see if it is legit or garbage in, garbage out?

 
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He's not talking about stats the way I think of them. He's talking about recruiting rankings and record predictions based on those. We've heard about the effect of coaching as well, when it comes to talent comparisons and game/season outcomes (W-L records to be plain). I think you'd look at the purple wizard and say his coaching gives you an extra win per season or whatever...

I think it's very difficult to assess conference strength when there are so few out-of-conference games between P5 teams. Considering how early in the season these are, too, means we can't draw too many conclusions from them...and it's the same thing with the bowl season (for different reasons that I'm sure anyone reading this has a good idea about already). Until we have the best teams from all conferences regularly playing each other, it's all BS to me. I'll play along, though, for the sake of this discussion...

My favorite strength of schedule (SOS) calculation comes from footballperspective.com but I sometimes do my own dumb calculation, too. You can find an explanation of how I average a number of z-scores across nine categories to determine team rankings in the posts I start on here. If I take the average of every composite z-score for every team on the two schedules in question (ours and Tennessee's), weighted for SOS using footballperspective.com's ratings, I come up with 0.0133 for NU and 0.226 for UT. That's surprising to me because fp.com has the SOS ratings for NU and UT rated as practically even. To put that in terms that are easier for all of us to understand, the average percentile rating of the (stats for the) teams on their regular season schedule comes out to be 59 while the calculation for Nebraska's average (fictional) opponent is 51.

I went and looked up recruiting rankings over multi-year periods and came up with this:

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football-recruiting/2015/2/6/7987571/recruiting-rankings-ratings-2015-college-football-teams

After looking at this, it appears he's actually being generous by saying the average ranking for the B1G falls between those for Mizzou and Vandy.

Now, if I take fp.com's stuff out of my calculation entirely, I come up with: -0.02 and the 49th percentile for the good guys; and 0.27 and the 61st percentile for their bowl opponent. The teams they've played have put up better numbers relative to national averages. Is that because they're more talented? If I look at how the average stats for the SEC and B1G compare to national averages, the numbers actually work out to be the same if I consider all categories (though B1G defensive stats compare more favorably and B1G offensive stats compare less favorably).

If I consider the average ranking I calculated, with the SOS adjustment, and figure a standard deviation above or below for the cutoff to determine what teams are bad or great...I find the B1G has three bad teams and three great teams. By the same rationale, the SEC has no bad team and three great teams this season. In terms of overall stats, though, the SEC has more teams with below average statistical rankings (relative to national averages) than the B1G: that's 8 to 5 in our favor. Fp.com gives the B1G a slight edge in terms of the average conference team's SOS as well.

TL; DR? I don't blame you but, seriously, there are real numbers behind what the dude's writing about. They just don't tell the whole story or college football would be rather dull.

 
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Making Chimichangas said:
Big red surfers said:
Lol

http://www.volnation.com/forum/tennessee-vols-football/269338-talent-evaluations-music-city-bowl.html

They are saying if we played there schedule we would have gone 7-5. If they played our schedule they would have gone 11-1.

What !! I don't see them beating wisky or Ohio st. Iowa and minn would have gave them a run for there money too.

And I don't see 5 losses in there schedule. Bama, A&M, would be losses. Florida and poss Georgia might be losses. I see 4 losses. Max.
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I'm not a stats person. I think I understand the stats he mentioned, but many other factors go into a game's outcome than just talent.
That being said, his reasoning as to why the Vols should be favored makes sense. This game being practically a home game for the Vols would probably be enough to have them favored alone. Hell, I'm a Nebraska fan and even I have a tendency to think the Vols will win.

I do however question his calling Iowa our "worst loss." Seems to me that losing by 59 to Ohio State would be the worst. Unless he's comparing talent rankings between teams.

Any stat geeks on here wanna comb through his methodology to see if it is legit or garbage in, garbage out?
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A couple things to think about with this:
The stat that they get the record correct 85% of the time isn't as impressive as it sounds and doesn't really relate directly to the game by game predictions. It's only the number of wins, and if you think about a team's schedule, usually at least half of the games are easy to predict the outcome in.

Moving onto the 70% stat. They're saying 70% of the time the team with more talent wins. But that doesn't mean Tenn has a 70% chance of beating Nebraska. Pre-season games for the top 40 teams vs bottom 40 teams in the nation probably have a 99% accuracy rate using this method. We're talking games like Nebraska vs Fresno State. The team with the most talent won so that counts as correct. But it was an easy prediction.

Most of the high accuracy in that 70% prediction rate comes from games any 10 year old could predict with high accuracy. These lopsided games might make up 1/4 of all games played.

When you get to games like Tenn. vs Nebraska where according to the chart in the other thread Tenn is 15th and Nebraska is 25th in talent, the accuracy might be more like 55%. Just throwing that number out. In games between teams within 10-20 ranks of each other, the team with more talent likely does not win 70% of the time.

My guess is 55-60% but it's just a guess. We know since the average accuracy for ALL games is 70% it must be lower than that.

Basically all the 70% number means is if you had 10 regular season games tomorrow (including some non-con) the most talented team would win 7 of them.

If we were talking conference championship or bowl games or playoff games, that number would be much closer to 50%.

 
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I expect a 21 point win here. I know Tennessee is talented, but they got issues. And the Iowa game for us was an anomoly. I think this group of seniors, have a month to kinda reset, rest a little, and get back after it, will be wanting to go out with a bang. That iowa game was in no way truely indicative of this team's ability. A lot of factors caugh up with them and it was just a bad day. I see them wanting to overturn that narrative with a bang.

 
Count 'Bility said:
I expect a 21 point win here. I know Tennessee is talented, but they got issues. And the Iowa game for us was an anomoly. I think this group of seniors, have a month to kinda reset, rest a little, and get back after it, will be wanting to go out with a bang. That iowa game was in no way truely indicative of this team's ability. A lot of factors caugh up with them and it was just a bad day. I see them wanting to overturn that narrative with a bang.
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While I'd love a 21 point win, I'm thinking this will be a bit closer than that...maybe a 6-8 point win for us. They are really a mirror image of us, though the Tennessee kids and staff sound less than enthusiastic about going to this bowl (which is more a field trip more than a bowl trip for them).

 
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shyndy said:
you know, it sucks having to play teams in bowl games with home field advantage all of the time. But I was also thinking, wouldn't it be kind of lame for the players? Husker players always get to go somewhere away from Lincoln and usually somewhere warm, and they usually get to do at least a little bit of sight seeing. But if you are a Vol player, is this exciting at all?
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Not only that but our most recent game was in Nashville when we lost to Vandy. One positive though is that a lot of our seniors are from the Middle Tennessee / Nashville area, so at least alot of their friends and family can go watch then in their final game.

 
How Nebraska beats you: Solid fourth quarter. No Husker players earned first-team All-B1G honors. Neither the offense nor defense is ranked within the top 25 in any of the major stat categories. But this team has shown time and time again that it turns everything up in the game’s final 15 minutes. Nebraska is third nationally when it comes to outscoring opponents in the final quarter; its 74-point margin stands behind only Penn State and Alabama. Against Illinois, the Huskers scored 21 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to clinch a 31-16 win. Against Wisconsin, they outscored their opponent 10-0 in the fourth quarter to push the game into overtime -- where they eventually lost, 23-17. And against both Oregon and Minnesota, Nebraska mounted comebacks in the final quarter. -- Josh Moyer
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How you beat Nebraska: It depends who’s playing under center. If Tommy Armstrong Jr. overcomes an injured hamstring, then the key will simply be to stop him. As he goes, so goes this offense. In Nebraska’s three losses, Armstrong completed just 36 percent of his passes with three interceptions to one touchdown. It’s also no coincidence that Armstrong threw for less than 200 yards on just four occasions this season -- and three of those games ended up as losses. (The exception was Fresno State, where the Huskers ran 51 times and passed 13 times.) If Ryker Fyfe starts? Just focus on stopping the run game -- or make sure Fyfe isn’t comfortable in the pocket. The only time Fyfe struggled against Maryland, where he led the Huskers to a 28-7 victory, was when he was under duress. On 10 such drop-backs, he completed just three passes and was sacked three times. – Josh Moyer
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ESPN

 
I got mine early! Had a thought it would fill up quick with it being in TN not to mention the stadium is just across the river from Broadway. There's a ton of cool things to do in Nashville!

 
Now with both Armstrong and Westerkamp out, honestly.....I'm not going to be upset with a loss here. No, that doesn't mean I've accepted lower expectations...bla bla bla....

Our future does not center on a win in this game with our two biggest weapons out. I am going to be really happy if we win. But, if we lose, life goes on and build for next year.

That said, I would absolutely love it if Fyfe and Morgan hooked up for a ton of yards, a few TDs and our RBs tagged on a few more.

Our defense needs to step up and not have an "Iowa" type game. I think they can and they will.

 
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