LAMoneyGuy's College Football Computer Ranking Week 14

Championship Saturday.  As far as the BCS goes, Ohio State, as you know, is in.  USC played itself into a position to go to Glendale with a win over cross town rival, UCLA.  13.5 points favorite.  Seven straight wins.  Most of them of the blow out variety.  No problem, right?  Think again.  The Trojans go down, and the only debate that remains is, Michigan or Florida.  For what it's worth, I think Florida deserves to go.  It's not even close.  Two reasons:

1.  Quality wins.  Top wins for Michigan are 11-1 Wisconsin, 10-2 Notre Dame and 8-4 Penn State.  Top wins for Florida are 10-2 LSU, 10-3 Arkansas, and 9-3 Tennessee.  But don't be fooled by Wisconsin.  They avoided the best team in their conference, Ohio State, and played Bowling Green, San Diego State and Buffalo out of conference.
2.  Conference championship.  Yes, wildcard teams in the NFL or MLB sometimes win the Super Bowl or World Series.  But this isn't the pros.  There is not a playoff system in college football.  If there was an eight team playoff, I would welcome Michigan or LSU.  If we are trying to pick only two teams based on 12 game schedules among 119 teams, conference runners up cannot be taken seriously.

I haven't done picks for the last couple of weeks, so here is the most updated, end of regular season rankings:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Rank	Week 14		W	L
1	Ohio State	2.4163	12	0
2	Louisville	2.3123	11	1
3	Florida	2.3084	12	1
4	Michigan	2.2436	11	1
5	Boise St	2.2425	12	0
6	Southern Cal	2.2302	10	2
7	LSU	2.0942	10	2
8	Oklahoma	2.0830	11	2
9	Auburn	2.0107	10	2
10	Virginia Tech	1.9552	10	2
11	Notre Dame	1.9002	10	2
12	West Virginia	1.8845	10	2
13	Brigham Young	1.8683	10	2
14	Texas	1.8647	9	3
15	Rutgers	1.8640	10	2
16	Wisconsin	1.8500	11	1
17	Tennessee	1.8345	9	3
18	Arkansas	1.8187	10	3
19	Boston College	1.8147	9	3
20	Texas A&M	1.7887	9	3
21	TCU	1.7564	10	2
22	Wake Forest	1.7304	11	2
23	California	1.6617	9	3
24	Nebraska	1.6498	9	4
25	Missouri	1.6211	8	4
26	Clemson	1.6191	8	4
27	Houston	1.5934	10	3
28	Hawai`i	1.5886	10	3
29	Oregon St	1.5874	9	4
30	South Carolina	1.5644	7	5
31	Georgia	1.5280	8	4
32	UCLA	1.4795	7	5
33	Tulsa	1.4727	8	4
34	Penn State	1.4639	8	4
35	Georgia Tech	1.4310	8	4
36	Navy	1.4276	9	3
37	Maryland	1.4205	8	4
38	South Florida	1.4141	8	4
39	Nevada	1.4083	8	4
40	Texas Tech	1.4063	7	5
41	Oregon	1.3951	7	5
42	Ohio U.	1.3671	9	3
43	Kentucky	1.3598	7	5
44	Cincinnati	1.3531	7	5
45	Arizona St	1.3485	7	5
46	Kansas St	1.3157	7	5
47	Oklahoma St	1.3131	6	6
48	Florida St	1.3095	6	6
49	Washington St	1.3056	6	6
50	Arizona	1.2986	6	6
51	East Carolina	1.2972	7	5
52	Central Michigan	1.2881	8	4
53	Alabama	1.2804	6	6
54	Utah	1.2572	7	5
55	San José St	1.2542	8	4
56	Southern Miss	1.2526	8	5
57	Rice	1.2353	7	5
58	Purdue	1.2319	8	5
59	Northern Illinois	1.2203	7	4
60	Middle Tennessee St	1.2109	7	5
61	Washington	1.2040	5	7
62	Pittsburgh	1.1945	6	6
63	Western Michigan	1.1905	8	4
64	Miami FL	1.1836	6	6
65	Minnesota	1.1788	6	6
66	Iowa	1.1594	6	6
67	Kansas	1.1137	6	6
68	Wyoming	1.0895	6	6
69	New Mexico	1.0842	6	6
70	Virginia	1.0472	5	6
71	Fresno St	1.0376	4	8
72	Indiana	1.0356	5	7
73	Troy	1.0061	7	5
74	SMU	0.9876	5	6
75	Syracuse	0.9332	4	8
76	Kent St	0.9296	6	6
77	Vanderbilt	0.9274	4	8
78	Arkansas St	0.9246	6	6
79	Connecticut	0.9077	4	8
80	Louisiana-Lafayette	0.8989	5	6
81	Baylor	0.8949	4	8
82	Mississippi	0.8890	4	8
83	Northwestern	0.8851	4	8
84	Michigan St	0.8769	4	8
85	Air Force	0.8737	3	8
86	UTEP	0.8655	5	7
87	Akron	0.8598	5	7
88	Tulane	0.8482	4	8
89	Colorado St	0.8377	4	7
90	Marshall	0.8344	5	7
91	Florida Atlantic	0.8280	5	6
92	Iowa St	0.8240	4	8
93	Bowling Green	0.8179	4	7
94	Mississippi St	0.8103	3	9
95	North Carolina	0.8071	3	9
96	Ball St	0.8068	4	7
97	North Carolina St	0.8035	3	9
98	Alabama-Birmingham	0.7766	3	8
99	Central Florida	0.7700	4	8
100	Idaho	0.7409	4	8
101	Louisiana-Monroe	0.7395	4	8
102	Colorado	0.7219	2	10
103	Army	0.7171	3	9
104	San Diego St	0.7109	3	9
105	New Mexico St	0.7041	4	8
106	Stanford	0.6901	1	11
107	Illinois	0.6874	2	10
108	Toledo	0.6810	3	6
109	Buffalo	0.6704	2	10
110	Louisiana Tech	0.6598	3	10
111	North Texas	0.6321	3	9
112	Utah St	0.6184	1	11
113	UNLV	0.6104	2	10
114	Temple	0.5824	1	11
115	Memphis	0.5694	2	10
116	Miami OH	0.5095	1	11
117	Duke	0.5056	0	12
118	Eastern Michigan	0.4890	1	11
119	Florida Int'l	0.4013	0	12

Comments

[Robert Cote]

Louisville? Some obscure nickname for the Gators?

Seriously, you do at least as well as the BCS. I'd backtest to find out why your model ranks Florida lower and things like why BCs 9-3 record against their schedule so low as well.

College is tough. ND, BC, Rutgers actually make their players attend classes. Doesn't make them better teams but maybe deserve a seperate ranking?

[lamoneyguy]

Robert, interesting comments. I can conceptually answer some of your questions.

Florida vs. Louisville. My system gives higher credit for road games. Home games: Florida 8, Louisville 6. It also penalized you for playing D1AA teams. D1AA opponents: UF 1, UL 0. UF has a slight advantage by playing an extra game. I break win/loss down to percentages. 12/13=92.3%, 11/12=91.7%.

As for BC? Well, they're in front of a few two loss teams, including Wake Forest, whom they lost to. So, the schedule helps them into the top 20, but 19 is pretty high for a three loss team whose best win was over Va Tech.

And the academic thing? Well, it's not so black and white. I think it's a spectrum from intense academics to virtually zero. Unfortunately it's hard to measure and somewhat subjective. So, I'll stick to the athletics.

[S/100/30]

I think when it comes to the voters, it's a case of coming up with reasons to justify your gut. This year they claim that not winning one's conference is a big deal. Next year, if there's a favored team that didn't win its conference they want in over one that did, they'll be blathering on about how conference championships are secondary to strenth of schedule, etc.