More Analysis of Texas-Oklahoma

Some very good comments from the helpful folks at 2p2 have led to a further examination of the Texas-Oklahoma situation.
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responding to:
If two teams have the same schedule, except they play each other for one game, and have the same record, the team that is "better" will be ranked below the worse team, simply because they don't play themselves. Seems kinda silly IMO, although I guess they did have a more "impressive" schedule.

answer:
The power rankings I used for Texas and Oklahoma in creating spreads is less than half a point separate.
Let's actually look at that game.
A #5 team would be +4 on a neutral field against Texas and should win 41.18% of the time.
A #5 team would be +4.5 on a neutral field against Oklahoma and should win 39.59% of the time.

So, your complaint would be about a .0159 difference in the BAW5 ranking. That is pretty big, but does not make up the whole .054 difference.

However, I should state that the difference between the two teams is very, very small. If this were a poll, it would be within the margin of error. For instance, the brute method of rounding projected spreads to every half point and using a smoothed spread to win-pct conversion introduces plenty of small errors.
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responding to:
I'm assuming the biggest difference is Missouri for Texas. What is the difference between Missouri and the next best non-common team Oklahoma played?

answer:
nah... the biggest difference is Texas Tech at home versus Texas Tech on the road

The HFA for these three teams is very large, so it plays a bigger difference than your casual fan would ever expect.
A #5 team with Oklahoma's HFA against Texas Tech would be -5.5 and expected to win 66.86% of the time.
A #5 team playing at Texas Tech would be +5 and only expected to win 35.59% of the time.
The difference is 0.3127, which towers over the 0.054 difference between Texas and Oklahoma.

FWIW, TCU is considered a tougher game than Mizzou at home. Mizzou is about .02 tougher than Cincinnati.
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responding to:
Correct me if I've wrong, but margin of victory is not factored into your output, but it is factored into your input. Thus, isn't Team A punished for pummeling teams because now their opponents have relatively lower Massey Comparison ratings (since most systems use MOV)? When you analyze how a top 5 team would perform against Team A's schedule it will now have a higher expected win total than if Team A had won all its games by a small margin?

Maybe I'm interpreting your system incorrectly. Even if that's not the case, I still think that MOV should play a role in the evaluation of teams. IMO Oklahoma's superior MOV in games against tougher opponents makes up for Texas having a relatively small advantage in BAM5.

answer:
yep, MOV has some role in the input.
I'm taking the massey combined rankings. Massey combined works by taking every poll out there with a legitimate method and weighing them together. For the most part, those polls are just wins and losses. However, a significant portion do incorporate MOV. Some even do drive efficiency or adjusted yards per play. Massey takes all of that and turns it into one combined ranking based on a consensus. A team would be 'punished' in a sense for destroying its opponents. The question is how much is that punishment and how much is it just reflecting that the opponent is weaker.

Oklahoma's case is MOV and my BAW rankings do back that up.
I went through and looked at what the expected point differential would be based on my methodology. Oklahoma would be expected to be up 199 points right now. Texas would be expected to be up 201 points right now. In actuality, I think it's 342 versus 304. Oklahoma is doing a FG better per game than Texas is versus expectations.
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Ball State

BAW5 rating for Ball State is +0.500
A #5 team would be expected to be 11.5 wins and 0.5 losses versus the Ball State schedule. There is only one team on the Ball State schedule that a #5 team would not be favored to win the game against over 90% of the time. Seven opponents are a 99% to win event. This brings up one flaw in the ranking system that shows up from time-to-time: How do we weight having multiple losable games in a row versus being able to intersperse the few challenges on a schedule? I'm sure I could come up with some math to do it, but it would be some ad hoc hand-waving more than anything else. Just note that Ball State's schedule was even easier than it appears, and the schedule appears to be so freaking easy that it makes me want to vomit.

Conference Strength Ranking Post Week 14

BigXII remains the toughest at the top. The big story is the depth of the ACC, which has the strongest BAW50 rating. The Pac10 is barely holding serve over the Mountain West.

	BAW5			BAW25			BAW50
	W	L	pct	W	L	pct	W	L	pct
SEC	9.63	2.37	0.802	7.16	4.84	0.597	5.09	6.91	0.424
BigTen	9.01	1.99	0.820	6.94	4.06	0.631	5.11	5.89	0.465
BigXII	9.06	2.94	0.755	6.77	5.23	0.564	4.94	7.06	0.412
ACC	9.68	2.32	0.806	6.94	5.06	0.578	4.72	7.28	0.394
Pac10	8.41	1.59	0.841	6.76	3.24	0.676	5.23	4.77	0.523
BigEast	6.79	1.21	0.848	5.18	2.82	0.648	3.85	4.15	0.481
MountW	7.58	1.42	0.842	6.19	2.81	0.688	4.89	4.11	0.543

1. BigXII
2. ACC
3. SEC
4. Big Ten
5. Big East
6. Pac 10
7. Mountain West

What about...?

Ball State... yep, I should do them as well. That will take me a little work. Since Ball State did not have season over/under win bets on offshore/Vegas books, I did not put their full schedule into my spreadsheets. I'd have to go through and enter it. It would probably make sense if I did that. It would be interesting to see how the group from Muncie compare to that from Boise.

Who's the Best Headed in to Conference Title Weekend?

Yeah, I haven't done this forever. Who cares? It's only the end that counts, right? Not really. I've just been busy with other stuff. Regardless, here are the current BAW5 rankings. Yes, this ranking does favor Texas over Oklahoma if you want to get into that debate. This is not too surprising given Oklahoma's big selling point is the Sooners' margin of victory in some of its big wins. Since the BAW does not include too much MOV, the Longhorns reign supreme due to a tougher schedule.

	EW	EL	BAW5
Bama	10.535	1.465	1.465
Texas	9.748	2.252	1.252
T Tech	9.784	2.216	1.216
Oklahoma	9.802	2.198	1.198
Utah	10.997	1.003	1.003
Boise St.	11.123	0.877	0.877
Florida	10.353	1.647	0.647
Penn St	10.363	1.637	0.637
USC	9.441	1.559	0.559

Note that the Sooners will pass the Longhorns with a win over Mizzou. Thus, the Sooners can become a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts for BCS voters. More troublesome is that Florida will likely not pass a few teams even with a win over Bama. Oh well... it's clearly not a perfect world in college football.

Unsurprising is that Boise St has had an easy schedule. Somewhat surprising is that the Broncos have a better BAW5 than Florida, Penn St, and USC at this point.

Team	Epct
Texas	0.812
T Tech	0.815
Oklahoma	0.817
USC	0.858
Florida	0.863
Penn St	0.864
Bama	0.878
Utah	0.916
Boise St.	0.927

No Rankings This Past Week

I was on vacation and sick... my bad.

A Minor Point on Conference Strength

I was thinking about the BAW conference rankings and realized something needs to be highlighted. The BAW rankings point out how strong a conference is. The rankings do not point out how tough it is for an individual team in that conference. Other than the Pac10, BigEast, and Mountain West, teams do not play a full round-robin. Even with a full round-robin, teams do not play themselves. For example, think of USC. In the last post, it was noted how easy it is for USC to trollop through the Pac10 this year since they do not have to play themselves. The rest of the conference is a considerably weaker slew of teams. I think it is important to note that the BAW conference ratings only reflect how strong the conferences are. The BAW conference rankings should not be used to compare individual teams. Stick to the individual teams BAW rankings to compare teams.