Wednesday, May 16, 2012


I've been working on this for some time now. I'm planning to writing this up and submitting it to the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. I'll publish a more thorough explanation of my methodology within the next couple of weeks. For now, he's the quicky version.

The inputs to the model are:

Strength of Schedule (shamelessly lifted from Sagarin)
Conference Average Margin of Victory
Team Margin of Victory
Scoring Defense (points per game)
Scoring Offense (points per game)
TO Margin per game

All data other than strength of schedule is directly downloaded from the NCAA stats repository. The raw statistics are normalized by subtracting each team's statistic from the average of all 120 teams and dividing that by the standard deviation of the 120 teams.

Using data from 709 played in 2011, a multiple regression model was performed with the 6 inputs as the independent variables and a teams actual margin of victory in a game as the independent variable. Each game was entered in the model twice...each team is evaluated independently. This provided a regression model with 1417 df.

The base model has an r-squared of .636.

With the computed regression equation I can run a simulated season in which every team (i) plays every other team (j). A positive predicted y-value means that a team is predicted win, a negative predicted y-value means that a team is predicted to lose. There are 14280 (i,j) combinations. After the model is run, all that is left to do is total up the number of predicted wins to establish a 1-n ranking of all 120 teams. Using the data from 2011, the following is how my model ranked all 120 BCS teams. I'm pretty comfortable with the results.

My plan is to publish a weekly ranking this Fall.
TeamRated higher than X teams
Alabama119
LSU118
Oklahoma State117
Oklahoma116
Wisconsin115
Stanford114
Oregon113
Arkansas111
Texas A&M111
Boise State109
Michigan109
South Carolina108
Georgia107
USC104
Florida State102
Houston102
Michigan State102
Florida101
Notre Dame101
Texas101
Baylor99
Missouri96
TCU96
Vanderbilt96
West Virginia95
Kansas State94
Mississippi State92
Cincinnati89
Ohio State88
Nebraska85
Southern Mississippi85
Temple84
Arizona State83
Tulsa82
Auburn80
Virginia Tech80
Clemson79
Rutgers79
BYU78
Iowa78
Toledo78
Utah78
Georgia Tech77
California76
Penn State76
Tennessee76
South Florida73
Louisiana Tech72
Nevada71
Miami (Florida)69
Northwestern69
Northern Illinois67
Washington67
Illinois66
Iowa State66
Arkansas State65
Louisville64
Ohio63
Pittsburgh62
Western Michigan61
North Carolina60
Texas Tech59
UCF56
Navy55
Purdue54
Air Force52
San Diego State51
Washington State51
North Carolina State49
Utah State49
Connecticut48
Florida International48
Miami (Ohio)48
Kentucky47
Wake Forest47
UCLA46
Arizona45
SMU45
Syracuse44
Virginia44
Louisiana-Lafayette41
Oregon State41
Boston College39
Duke34
Hawai'i34
Bowling Green33
Western Kentucky33
Minnesota32
Mississippi31
UTEP30
Ball State29
Marshall28
Army27
East Carolina26
Eastern Michigan26
Wyoming26
Kent State25
Louisiana-Monroe24
San Jose State24
Kansas23
Fresno State22
Colorado21
Maryland20
North Texas20
Buffalo19
Indiana18
Central Michigan15
Rice14
Colorado State11
New Mexico State11
Troy11
Idaho7
UAB7
Middle Tennessee6
Tulane4
Akron3
Florida Atlantic3
UNLV3
Memphis2
New Mexico1