Phil Steele's Strength of Wins/Pain of Losses chart

knapplc

knapplc

International Man of Mystery
I find this chart to be very interesting every year. How it’s devised is if you beat an FBS opponent you get credit for all their wins over their FBS opponents.

In this first chart below you can see Strength of Wins. Here you can see Michigan holds the lone #1 spot on this list. Michigan has faced Hawaii, UCF, Colorado, Penn St and Wisconsin and those teams have a total of 16 wins. At the bottom you will see your winless teams Georgia St, Rice, Arkansas St and Miami Oh. While there are only 4 winless teams, my chart grades 15 teams as having credit with a win but their foes have not won a single game vs a FBS foe.

Here is the Complete list of Strength of Wins with rank: Games Played Thru 10/1/16
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SU Combined
Wins Foe Wins Rank
Michigan 5 16 1
Clemson 5 14 2
Tennessee 5 14 2
Texas A&M 5 12 4
Alabama 5 11 5
Nebraska 5 9 6
Washington 5 9 6
Houston 5 9 6
Wisconsin 4 9 6
Wake Forest 4 8 10
Ohio St 4 8 10


LINK

At the link, Steele analyzes a foe's pain of losses, meaning they absorb every loss to every FBS foe they lose to. Nebraska, being undefeated, is tied for "last" in that category.

Check out Steele's site if you're not familiar with his work. He gives a ton of great information.

 
That's an interesting way to look at it.

Not sure it means as much early in the season but would be interesting as the season goes along.

 
1995 Redux said:
I'm actually surprised to see our 5 victories tally up 9 wins.
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I was too. Fresno isn't very good. Wyoming still growing. Oregon is sucking. Northwestern is Northwestern. And Illinois hasn't done anything. I'm more surprised that the 9 wins of our foes actually gets us into 6th. That shows how poor early schedules have been. Also, some teams have had byes and we are just now having ours. So I would expect us to drop some after this week unless our foes win this weekend, and I do think they all have fair chances of winning except for Oregon.

 
The one thing that it wouldn't take into account is who the other teams have played. Take Illinois for instance...

They are 1-3, but their three losses those opponents have a 14-1 record. Might look good for them but wouldn't give us as much credit for a one loss team.

I like all the info his magazine gives out each year

 
Interesting, but wildly variable. A field goal can move a team up 40 spots. Like Appalachian State. If they had won their OT game against Tenn they'd be tied with us at the #5 spot. (Tenn would fall below us and Appalachia in that case, moving us up a spot.).

 
It takes into account that the teams the "foes" have played are in the FBS. If you're talking about P5 schools, though, it'd make more sense to just consider those...but then there would be even less information for such a chart. Considering the FBS is practically half P5 teams, it makes too much sense to jettison the non-P5 ones.

 
I think OP missed the point, which is the last chart of overall wins - losses.

Basically, for each of your wins, you get credit for your opponents wins. Each of your losses, you get credit for your opponents losses.

Long story short, if you lose to a team with no losses, and you've beaten teams with a considerable amount of wins, ie Wisconsin 4-1 with only loss to undefeated Michigan, you're look pretty good.

This is more or less just a way to put numbers to SoS.

For instance, you have Tulsa, a 4-1 team, Their only loss comes to tOSU, so they have no losses, but they've also played trashcan teams with only 2 wins.

As has been pointed out, you almost have to go a level deeper. Because if we play a bunch of schools whose early-on schedule consist of the bottom of the FBS, we'd look really good with no losses. Yeah, our opponents are all undefeated, but that's because they've played us and the Kent States.

 
This is like a dumbed-down version of an RPI, no? I think in RPI you take win/loss record, opponent win/loss record, and opponent-opponent-win/loss record.

Something like this.

 
Phil has updated his list through Week 7. The Huskers, despite a weak schedule through six games, are at #13 looking at either the Wins Only or the Wins/Losses Combined charts.

Wins Only

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Wins/Losses Combined

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LINK

 
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This appears to rank schedules, not teams. If one gives Alabama our schedule and they remained undefeated same as now, they are the same team but would rank below a lot of other teams.

One can only beat the teams on their schedule.

 
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Bowfin said:
This appears to rank schedules, not teams. If one gives Alabama our schedule and they remained undefeated same as now, they are the same team but would rank below a lot of other teams.

One can only beat the teams on their schedule.
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It's both. What you're saying is true for undefeated teams, but teams that lose don't get credit for the second order wins from the team they lost to. It's an attempt to only rank teams based on W/L performance. Alabama doesn't get credit for how they played last year, style points, margin of victory, etc. Only credits for their wins and their defeated opponents' wins and penalized for their losses and their opponents' losses who defeated them.
Losing to a bad team hurts more than losing to a good team and vice versa.

 
Stumbled across this looking for something else.

Finished the year T-32 in "Foe Wins" (47)

T-22 in "Foe Losses (14)

#25 in Winning Percentage

 
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