Sagarin says

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Originally Posted by TateMosersneighbor

so you're saying there's a chance...

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There was a chance.



Got time on my hands waiting for the weather delay in Wyoming. Here is the FCS top-25 and the top 6 conferences. Sagarin still loves the MVFC.

Sagarin FCS Top-25

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1  46  North Dakota State
 2  76  South Dakota State
 3  83  Eastern Washington
 4  84  New Hampshire
 5  86  Northern Iowa
 6  96  Jacksonville State
 7  97  Villanova
 8  98  Youngstown State
 9  100  Chattanooga
10  103  Montana
11  106  SE Louisiana
12  109  Southern Illinois
13  115  Richmond
14  118  Eastern Illinois
15  122  Montana State
16  124  William & Mary
17  125  Sam Houston State
18  126  McNeese State
19  127  Illinois State
20  129  Cal Poly
21  131  Towson
22  134  Coastal Carolina
23  135  Tennessee State
24  136  Missouri State
25  137  Princeton

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Sagarin FCS Top-6 Conferences

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1. Missouri Valley*
2. Colonial
3. Big Sky
4. Ohio Valley
5. Southland
6. Southern

*ahead of C-USA & Sunbelt; barely behind MAC

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I don't remember what the point spread was anymore (about 3?), so does today's result mean that we will shoot up the rankings, or ISU falls like a rock?? I'm assuming it's a combination of both, but am interested to see the results. No matter what now we need ISU to miraculously turn into a good team.

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Originally Posted by stevdock

I don't remember what the point spread was anymore (about 3?), so does today's result mean that we will shoot up the rankings, or ISU falls like a rock?? I'm assuming it's a combination of both, but am interested to see the results. No matter what now we need ISU to miraculously turn into a good team.

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Go back like 3 posts; it was 1.8 in favor of NDSU. There should be some movement for both tomorrow, but it shouldn't be a massive amount. The bulk of the rating will still be based on the preseason number(however Sagarin calculates that).

So, I keep checking, but no update to the numbers. Anyone know why they're taking the freakin' day off? Just because of LABOR DAY?!? Doesn't anybody work around this place anymore?

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Originally Posted by SoCalBison

So, I keep checking, but no update to the numbers. Anyone know why they're taking the freakin' day off? Just because of LABOR DAY?!? Doesn't anybody work around this place anymore?

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Miami and Louisville play tonight, so no updates until tomorrow.

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Originally Posted by NDSUstudent

Miami and Louisville play tonight, so no updates until tomorrow.

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In my best Emily Littella voice: "Never mind then."

Louisville is about to win...you have this updated yet? :D

#40

Ten char

Interestingly, Iowa State is still ranked ahead of UNI. I suspect that will change as the season progresses. I do think UNI is going to be tough this year.

The top 3 in FCS are all MVFC: NDSU, SDSU, & UNI. Six of the top 12 are MVFC.

Still early in the season, so Sagarin's formulas don't have a lot of reliability yet, but fun to see the MVFC well represented after their strong showing last weekend.

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Originally Posted by thebootfitter

Interestingly, Iowa State is still ranked ahead of UNI. I suspect that will change as the season progresses. I do think UNI is going to be tough this year.

The top 3 in FCS are all MVFC: NDSU, SDSU, & UNI. Six of the top 12 are MVFC.

Still early in the season, so Sagarin's formulas don't have a lot of reliability yet, but fun to see the MVFC well represented after their strong showing last weekend.

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Better not tell Clenz.....

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Originally Posted by thebootfitter

Interestingly, Iowa State is still ranked ahead of UNI. I suspect that will change as the season progresses. I do think UNI is going to be tough this year.

The top 3 in FCS are all MVFC: NDSU, SDSU, & UNI. Six of the top 12 are MVFC.

Still early in the season, so Sagarin's formulas don't have a lot of reliability yet, but fun to see the MVFC well represented after their strong showing last weekend.

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How much of that has to do with the fact that the top teams play each other thus helping their SOS?

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Originally Posted by missingnumber7

How much of that has to do with the fact that the top teams play each other thus helping their SOS?

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Next to nothing. The algorithm doesn't know who the top teams are it only looks at performance relative to your opponents. SOS is not a static input into the calculation, it's closer to an output. You don't get rewarded simply for playing good teams. You only get rewarded for playing well against good teams.

Looks like we should be 29 pt favorites according to the Sagarin ratings. 76.45 for #40 NDSU and 44.48 for #197 Weber State assuming they get 3 pts for home field

29?? That's it? Good thing for byu/Texas

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

Man, I'd be scared of the power team at 195. Just for fun, some power programs ranked higher than the community college:

Lafayette
Lehigh
South Dakota
Albany-NY
Indiana State
SE Missouri State

To audit and anyone else that cares to reply:

Any thoughts on which rating to use this year? I'm leaning toward just using the standard rating now that elo_chess is no longer part of it. Changing to the regular rating will help me a bit since I won't have to recalculate the conference scores, but that's not all that big a deal. Thoughts?

(I have everything but the top-25 finished this morning, but we've had meetings during my preps and I actually do have some real classwork to get done today for a change.)

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Originally Posted by Hammersmith

To audit and anyone else that cares to reply:

Any thoughts on which rating to use this year? I'm leaning toward just using the standard rating now that elo_chess is no longer part of it. Changing to the regular rating will help me a bit since I won't have to recalculate the conference scores, but that's not all that big a deal. Thoughts?

(I have everything but the top-25 finished this morning, but we've had meetings during my preps and I actually do have some real classwork to get done today for a change.)

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Audit is the man on this stuff but isn't predictor the most meaningful and best "predictor" of what would happen in a future matchup of two teams? Why wouldn't you use that?

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Originally Posted by Hammersmith

To audit and anyone else that cares to reply:

Any thoughts on which rating to use this year? I'm leaning toward just using the standard rating now that elo_chess is no longer part of it. Changing to the regular rating will help me a bit since I won't have to recalculate the conference scores, but that's not all that big a deal. Thoughts?

(I have everything but the top-25 finished this morning, but we've had meetings during my preps and I actually do have some real classwork to get done today for a change.)

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I thought we mostly came to a general consensus after the changes were implemented last year that the standard rating makes the most sense. Though I'll have to go back and reread the thread, because I want to say that Sagarin ended up implementing one other change after we more or less agreed.

Gully - Sagarin now has two measures that are derived from different methodologies that are both supposed to be reasonable predictors of future outcomes. I'm pretty sure that the standard score no longer uses the measure that completely ignores scores of games.

I always thought rating was better early season then predictor takes over later in the year

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Originally Posted by westnodak93bison

I always thought rating was better early season then predictor takes over later in the year

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The rating used to be an average of the predictor and the ELO_Chess (previously labeled something else), which ignores game scores and uses only W/L to determine outcomes. It was the measure that the BCS system used, so he had to use it (against his better judgment, I believe).

The predictor score is now averaged with a new measure (forget the label off top of head), both of which are supposed to be fair predictors of future outcomes.

Am I missing anything, Hammer, BAudit, etc?

So we should be looking at predictor all the time? What is used for the 4 team playoff?

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Originally Posted by westnodak93bison

So we should be looking at predictor all the time? What is used for the 4 team playoff?

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The new "Rating" is an average of "predictor" and the other new measure. So the "Rating" is probably the best/easiest to use.

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Originally Posted by westnodak93bison

So we should be looking at predictor all the time? What is used for the 4 team playoff?

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What's used for the playoff is whatever the 13 chuckle-heads on the selection committee decide to use.

Top 10 Teams, Outside the P5 (based on Sagarin)

Cincinnati 29
BYU 32
Boise 35
NDSU 40
UCF 45
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Toledo 49
Fresno 55
Utah State 56
San Diego State 61
East Carolina 62

I blew through the sagarin ratings, looks like we are ranked above 29 p5 teams

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Originally Posted by westnodak93bison

I blew through the sagarin ratings, looks like we are ranked above 29 p5 teams

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Like everyone has been saying, coaches change, players change, and the scheduled changes. What does not change is Bison Football. NDSU is a special place and we have been and will have a better football program than many in the P5.

I'm at a computer now, so have the luxury to look this up and copy/paste from Sagarin:

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Originally Posted by Sagarin

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GOLDEN_MEAN is completely SCORE BASED but with a different algorithm than the PURE POINTS
and thus should be a good match for the PURE POINTS in terms of predictive accuracy for upcoming games.
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In ELO_SCORE, the score determines what fraction of a victory was attained but since the maximum
fraction is ONE(1.00), no matter how big the score is, it prevents running up the score to be that advantageous;
It is slightly less accurate in its predictions for upcoming games than is the PURE POINTS or GOLDEN_MEAN,
in which the score is the only thing that matters. PURE POINTS is also known as PREDICTOR,
BALLANTINE, RHEINGOLD, WHITE OWL and is a very good PREDICTOR of future games.
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The overall RATING is a synthesis of the three different methods, with more total weight
to the two completely SCORE-BASED methods and thus should be a good predictor in its own right.
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Around post 1027 in this thread, we discuss the new measures. In post 1038, I summarized what I perceived to be our consensus that the new "Rating" score would be preferable to use going forward. Feel free to take a look back or add any new insight if anyone has any to offer.

Crap, I thought I actually understood this and now I see that it changed. How the heck did I miss all this last year?

#oldguyprobs

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Originally Posted by Gully

Crap, I thought I actually understood this and now I see that it changed. How the heck did I miss all this last year?

#oldguyprobs

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Funny thing is, Gully, if you look through the posts where we were discussing it, I think you actually were in the mix at the time.

#oldguyprobs, indeed!

Ha, I don't doubt it. I'm probably a couple of years from the "old folks home" at this point.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gully

Crap, I thought I actually understood this and now I see that it changed. How the heck did I miss all this last year?

#oldguyprobs

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If I remember right, he changed things several weeks into last season.

Since the regular rating is now an average of two score-based systems, I'm just going to go with that(like we agreed toward the end of last season). It should cause a lot less confusion.

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Originally Posted by Hammersmith

If I remember right, he changed things several weeks into last season.

Since the regular rating is now an average of two score-based systems, I'm just going to go with that(like we agreed toward the end of last season). It should cause a lot less confusion.

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Not sure if this will sway your judgment, but per the definitions that I copied from Sagarin, the Rating metric is actually a weighted average of all three metrics. More weight is placed on the two models that are better predictors.

I still think for simplicity, the Rating is probably best to use, unless we wanted to come up with our own metric that uses an average of just the two measures deemed to be better predictors. That just seems like a lot of unnecessary complication though.

I'm confused. Look at Oregon. Their RATING is higher than any of the other three methods? How does that work?

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Originally Posted by bisonaudit

I'm confused. Look at Oregon. Their RATING is higher than any of the other three methods? How does that work?

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Could be a mistake. Remember when he published some erroneous figures last year and then republished with corrected figures?

I didn't look closely enough to catch that, but I'll take a look too.

And here we go. Four touchdown favorite going into Weber State. Closest game prediction is UNI by a TD. MVFC top three, four of top six, and six of top twelve. MVFC also a TD favorite over the next best conference.


Sagarin's Week 2 Predictions

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                              Sagarin          Predict    Result        Diff 
 40        North Dakota State        76.45                       
 70        Iowa State                68.39          +4.90    +20.00        +15.10
197        Weber State                44.78          +28.51               
218        Incarnate Word                39.27          +40.34               
103        Montana                        62.13          +17.48               
177        Western Illinois        49.09          +24.20               
 90        Southern Illinois        64.87          +14.74               
188        Indiana State                46.54          +33.07               
156        South Dakota                53.27          +20.02               
 79        South Dakota State        67.08          +12.53               
 82        Northern Iowa                66.57          +6.72               
133        Missouri State                57.30          +15.99               
107        Youngstown State        62.25          +17.36               
                                       
108        Illinois State                62.23                       
                                                Total Diff:        +15.10
        Home Field                3.16

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Sagarin FCS Predictor Top-25

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1  40  North Dakota State
 2  79  South Dakota State
 3  82  Northern Iowa
 4  84  Eastern Washington
 5  89  New Hampshire
 6  90  Southern Illinois
 7  94  Villanova
 8  99  Jacksonville State
 9  103  SE Louisiana
10  106  McNeese State
11  107  Youngstown State
12  108  Illinois State
13  109  Chattanooga
14  110  Montana
15  116  Tennessee State
16  119  Princeton
17  121  Richmond
18  123  Eastern Illinois
19  127  William & Mary
20  128  Harvard
21  130  Montana State
22  132  Coastal Carolina
23  133  Missouri State
24  134  Sam Houston State
25  136  Central Arkansas

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Sagarin Predictor Top-5 FCS Conferences

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1.  MVFC        60.86
2.  Colonial        53.62
3.  Ohio Valley 53.22
4.  Big Sky        52.26
5.  Southland        50.29

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Originally Posted by Hammersmith

And here we go. Four touchdown favorite going into Weber State. Closest game prediction is UNI by a TD. MVFC top three, four of top six, and six of top twelve. MVFC also a TD favorite over the next best conference.

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That's pretty nuts.

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Originally Posted by Hammersmith

Sagarin Predictor Top-5 FCS Conferences

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1.  MVFC60.86
2.  Colonial53.62
3.  Ohio Valley 53.22
4.  Big Sky52.26
5.  Southland50.29

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Wow, that's quite a separation between MVFC and the rest.

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Originally Posted by bisonaudit

That's pretty nuts.

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Yeah. Never seen anything close to that. Normally a big gap is three or four points. I think the overall suckage of FCS vs. FBS in week 1 is part of it. Only the MVFC as a conference really stood up to their FBS foes.

Oh, and that puts the MVFC above C-USA, MAC and Sun Belt.

Based on Sagarin's RATING numbers (3.16 home field) and a 2.61 pt kicker for coming off a bye week, here's the outlook for the remainder of the regular season:

Weber State 98.2% (+0.1% from last week)
Incarnate Word 99.8% (+0.1%)
Montana 90.1% (+1.9%)
Western Illinois 97.5% (+0.7%)
Southern Illinois 86.2% (-3.5%)
Indiana State 99.2% (+0.1%)
South Dakota 93.0% (+0.6%)
South Dakota State 82.3% (+3.5%)
Northern Iowa 69.1% (+1.6%)
Missouri State 88.1% (+0.8%)
Youngstown State 90.0% (+2.2%)

12-0 30.9% (+15.4% from last week)
11-1 40.4% (+5.8%)
10-2 21.4% (-9.3%)
9-3 6.1% (-8.3%)
8-4 1.0% (-3.0%)
7-5 0.1% (-0.6%)
6-6 0.01% (-0.1%)
5-7 0.0003%
4-8 0.00001%
3-9 0.0000001%
2-10 0.0000000003%
1-11 0.0000000000003%

Assumes a normal distribution of outcomes w/ Sagarin's projected spread as the mean and a standard deviation of 13.86. In round numbers this means that if the spread is 14 the model predicts that roughly 2/3 of the outcomes will be between a tie and a 28 point victory. Half of the remaining outcomes or about 1/6 of all the outcomes would be a victory by more than 28 and there would be roughly a 1 in 6 chance that the team favored by 14 would lose.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bisonaudit

I'm confused. Look at Oregon. Their RATING is higher than any of the other three methods? How does that work?

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I just took a closer look. I was assuming that the RATING was a weighted average, but the description states that it is a synthesis of the three different methods. I'd sure be interested to see how that formula works. Probably not just a simple weighted average. Or maybe there really is an error in his figures.

I ran a quick regression analysis to see if I could identify any patterns or consistencies between the three independent measures and the RATING. I may have missed something, but I wasn't able to identify anything. So my guess is that there's some additional variable(s) in the synthesis of the measures.