Wall Street Journal's College Football Grid of Shame

knapplc

International Man of Mystery
I don't know about you guys, but I get ALL my sports news from the bastion of college football reporting - The Wall Street Journal.

Or... maybe I just stumbled across this on someone's twitter feed & felt it was light-hearted enough to throw out there.

Their methods are dubious, their results are debatable, but they have Florida State listed as one of their most embarrassing powerhouses - and you can't dislike that.

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Truly, the last desperate hours of the off season must be near, when we are looking at CFB infographics from the WSJ.

I do like how Colorado is sort of just there. Not admirable, not anything really, except a weakling growing weaker. Nothing of note in any particular manner.

 
I do not think that powerhouse is a great word to use for the scale... as they have Missouri, K-State, BYU, Washington and Iowa Close to Nebraska... maybe most recent success in their conference is a better scale title. I mean Duke is on the powerhouse side of this scale - you can't make this crap up.

 
Their methods are dubious, their results are debatable, but they have Florida State listed as one of their most embarrassing powerhouses - and you can't dislike that.
"Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable. You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman."

 
The Grid is a way of sorting out which fans can boast about their team—on and/or off the field—and who should think again before gloating. The horizontal axis assesses on-field strength for this upcoming season. We took the preseason ratings of all 128 major-college teams from several media outlets and predictive computer models, then averaged them together to smooth out the slight outliers. The better the team, the farther they are on the right.

The vertical axis measures shame. This is trickier to quantify, of course, but there is data to help the cause.

We decided the thin line between admirable and embarrassing with a weighted calculation of every team's academic performance, NCAA violation and probationary record, attendance figures, off-season arrests, total funding it takes from the university or state and amount that student fees subsidize the athletic department.

But that still doesn't cover everything. This is college football, after all. The juiciest scandals are too unbelievable to fall under one data point. How, for example, do you categorize Southern California suspending cornerback Josh Shaw on Wednesday for admitting he lied when he said he injured his ankles jumping out of a building to rescue a drowning relative in a pool? That is why we also account for an "ick" factor—that je ne sais quoi that makes academic eggheads, Division III purists and other tailgating holier-than-thous spit out their Chardonnay.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-college-football-grid-of-shame-1409185352?tesla=y&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203937904580118002691523946.html

 
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I do not think that powerhouse is a great word to use for the scale... as they have Missouri, K-State, BYU, Washington and Iowa Close to Nebraska... maybe most recent success in their conference is a better scale title. I mean Duke is on the powerhouse side of this scale - you can't make this crap up.
Agree with this. The most ridiculous one for me though is that Miss. St. is actually ahead of us on this. Baffling to say the least.

 
I've been trolling a buddy for years about how Iowa State is the least interesting team in college football. This only strengthens my argument.

 
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