Power Rank

Mavric

Mavric

Yoda
Staff member
There is a brief explaination of his rankings at the bottom of the link but not enough to really tell what he's doing. But it's kind of interesting to look at. Claims to have a pretty good success rate at predicting games.

My preseason rankings come from a regression model that uses The Power Rank’s team rankings from the past 4 years, turnovers and returning starters. For more details, see the bottom of this post.

The college football preseason model is simple. It doesn’t break down a team into offense and defense or distinguish a starting quarterback from a linebacker. These are areas for potential improvements.

However, the model performs very well in predicting the winners of games. The model assigns each team a rating, and the difference in the rating of two teams gives a predicted margin of victory on a neutral field. The home team gets an extra 3 points.

For example, Ohio States opens the season at Virginia Tech. The Buckeyes have a 19.7 rating, which gives a predicted margin of victory against an average team. The Hokies have a 11.0 rating.

On a neutral field, Ohio State would beat Virginia Tech by 8.7 points. The home advantage for Virginia Tech brings this advantage down to 5.7 points. The model still predicts an Ohio State victory.

In 2014, this model predicted the winners in 70.4% of games. With a large sample of 678 games, the model performed very close to the 70.5% win rate from the 2005 through 2013 seasons.
Click to expand...
1. Alabama, 20.91.

2. Ohio State, 19.70.
3. Oregon, 19.65.
4. Baylor, 18.02.
5. TCU, 17.22.
14. Wisconsin, 12.72.
16. Michigan State, 11.97.
32. Nebraska, 7.94.
34. Michigan, 7.60.
38. Penn State, 5.79.
42. Brigham Young, 5.08.
43. Miami (FL), 4.84.
47. Minnesota, 3.38.
49. Iowa, 3.19.
55. Northwestern, 0.99.
70. Rutgers, -1.80.
71. Purdue, -1.99.
75. Illinois, -2.65.
109. Southern Miss, -12.92.
Click to expand...
Link

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I found it in an article from Hail Varsity:

How about the Huskers? The Power Rank has Nebraska at No. 32 with a predicted margin of victory over the average team of 7.94 points. And, because we have that projected spread for every team, we can come up with a line for every game this season (minus South Alabama, which isn’t in the rankings).


The much-discussed opener against BYU (No. 42)? Using this method, the Huskers have a 5.86-point advantage at home. The trip to Miami (No. 43)? It’s just about dead even, with Nebraska holding a 0.1-point edge on the road. In the two biggest Big Ten games of the season — presumably — Wisconsin has a 1.78-point edge in Lincoln and Michigan State is expected to be 1.03 points better.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
What I find interesting is this is based on the last four years. So we're a decent favorite over BYU, as even as it gets against Miami, and a small-as-possible dog against Wisconsin and Michigan State.

So if the new staff is an improvement at all, we should be favored in every game, right?

 
Georgia at #6. Sorry, but I never understand how they start Georgia so high every year just to watch them go down in a couple games. Last year proved that the SEC best is not any better then any other power five conference's top teams. There is no reason that the SEC desirves to have 5 teams in the top 10. Georgia & aTm do should not be in the top 10. Hell I think Arkansas could beat both of them.

Here is my top 10 for 2015. It will be fun to see who does better.

1 - Ohio St

2 - Baylor

3 - Alabama

4 - TCU

5 - Oregon

6 - LSU

7 - Michigan St

8 - UCLA

9 - Arkansas

10 - Mississippi

 
Mavric said:
What I find interesting is this is based on the last four years. So we're a decent favorite over BYU, as even as it gets against Miami, and a small-as-possible dog against Wisconsin and Michigan State.

So if the new staff is an improvement at all, we should be favored in every game, right?
Click to expand...
My bookie has all the NU lines out as of right now...his Lines do not have Nebraska favorite and every game, they are underdogs by a touchdown against Michigan State and I think they were underdogs by 3 1/2 against Wisconsin. The rest they were favored or even against Miami.

 
Blackshirt96 said:
Georgia at #6. Sorry, but I never understand how they start Georgia so high every year just to watch them go down in a couple games. Last year proved that the SEC best is not any better then any other power five conference's top teams. There is no reason that the SEC desirves to have 5 teams in the top 10. Georgia & aTm do should not be in the top 10. Hell I think Arkansas could beat both of them.

Here is my top 10 for 2015. It will be fun to see who does better.

1 - Ohio St

2 - Baylor

3 - Alabama

4 - TCU

5 - Oregon

6 - LSU

7 - Michigan St

8 - UCLA

9 - Arkansas

10 - Mississippi
Click to expand...
I'd like to hear why you're so high on Arkansas. They play at 3 other teams that you have in your top 10. 7-6 last year warrants a top ten season for them this year? You can't understand why Georgia starts so high but you put a team like Arkansas in your top ten? I'm not seeing it.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
My top 10.

Ohio state.

tcu.

baylor.

alabama.

Oregon

USC

LSU

Florida State

Georgia Tech

Ole Miss/Tennessee/Arkansas/Auburn

I'm not saying those last four will be the 10-13 spots. I'm just saying one of them will be in that range. But I coukd see being top 10 by end of year.

 
teachercd said:
Mavric said:
What I find interesting is this is based on the last four years. So we're a decent favorite over BYU, as even as it gets against Miami, and a small-as-possible dog against Wisconsin and Michigan State.

So if the new staff is an improvement at all, we should be favored in every game, right?
Click to expand...
My bookie has all the NU lines out as of right now...his Lines do not have Nebraska favorite and every game, they are underdogs by a touchdown against Michigan State and I think they were underdogs by 3 1/2 against Wisconsin. The rest they were favored or even against Miami.
Click to expand...
I agree. I'm sure we won't *actually* be favored. But according to this formula - which he claims is pretty accurate - we're less than a two point dog in every game. Based on history.

 
Mavric said:
What I find interesting is this is based on the last four years. So we're a decent favorite over BYU, as even as it gets against Miami, and a small-as-possible dog against Wisconsin and Michigan State.

So if the new staff is an improvement at all, we should be favored in every game, right?
Click to expand...

I saw this article, and the bold is why I was unmoved by it. Anyone basing any 2015 prediction off what Bo used to do is spinning their tires. There was something missing/broken about those teams that should be gone under Riley.

 
So does Bama have a QB better than their QB they just lost? The one that wasn't great to begin with? Yet they're #1?

I don't know why I waste the time on this stuff. No knock on you guys that love this stuff, but I find it harder and harder, year after year, to call these guys experts and to say that this is "valuable" stuff.

The guy even wrote, "if I considered Ohio State's 3 returning starting QB's, they'd be #1, above Alabama" then proceeds to just keep Alabama at #1?

He kind of indicates, "this COULD be better..." but really needs to say, "this sh*t is flawed..."

I don't know why this stuff angers me so... I'm gonna go lay down...

 
I think every model that gets made in the preseason or during the season falls victim to underspecification. That is, these models all fail to include every possible measure of predicted success. For example, the Power Rank predicts present season's success based on the team's success the last 4 years in addition to turnover margin and returning starters. I'll go over my issue with each.

Past 4 year success--The problem with using this statistic is that it only probably works for teams who have a) not changed coaching staffs within the last 4 years (I assume this model punishes teams who had a cruddy 3 years before having a better year last season with a new staff), or b) weren't under any NCAA violations that limited recruiting in the last 4 seasons. USC and Penn State would probably have better rankings had their recruiting not been seriously (and rightly) limited the past couple seasons.

Turnover margin--It even says in the article that turnover margin is random, Y1 turnover has an almost zero correlation with Y2 turnover, in most cases. Nebraska for example, had a turnover margin of -0.2 turnovers per game last year, a vast improvement from -1 turnovers per game in 2013, which was slightly worse than -0.9 turnovers per game in 2012, which was much worse than 0.0 turnovers per game in 2011. In addition, turnover and turnover margin could definitely be a product of coaching. A new staff could come in and drastically improve turnovers or make things worse.

Returning Starters--I know not many recruits come into a program and make a game one impact, but some do, and this model completely ignores recruiting stats and just assumes that last season's starters will automatically be this season's starters. This model also excludes impact players in 2013 who are returning from a season-ending injury or suspension in 2014. What happens to those players? The quality of incoming classes or returning injured/suspended players may very well exceed the quality of the returning starters.

Yes, the model ends up producing very believable results; the Top 5, Alabama, Ohio State, Oregon, Baylor, and TCU, all make sense and all deserve to be ranked in that area based on their performance last season. So the model must work fairly well, right? Well...just remember that ice cream sales predicts crime.

Also, a little caveat to preseason rankings is that they probably only work for the first week of the season. I'm willing to believe that these factors get thrown out the door once the new season begins.

 
I agree that the biggest wild card is coaching change. There's really nothing that can take that into account. We can't even agree amongst ourselves about what to expect for the team we follow the closest, let alone all the other teams.
default_laugh.png
But that's also why I said we should do better than the model predicts because of that.

Turnovers are definitely somewhat random. Fumbles more-so than interceptions. We definitely improved last year but TA could have had a bunch more - hit defenders in the hands but they dropped it. To some extent even that happens to everyone but it seemed like it happened multiple times every 2-3 games. So it will be interesting to see if we get better or worse in that category.

I'm also curious how they do later-season games. If they're using those same numbers to predict games all season and getting that good of a percentage, that's pretty impressive. They didn't indicate they do anything differently.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top