Yard Sale

For those of you who enjoying skiing, a ski accident that involves gear spread all over the slopes is known (some affectionately) as a “yard sale”.

College football is closing in on a yard sale of its own.

For years we’ve been approaching the day when a non-BCS school might compete for a BCS championship. Never mind the absurdity of that statement on its face (could a non-SEC school win an SEC championship?), that day looks to have “done approached”. If non-BCS signatories can play for the “title”, why stop there? James Madison? Anyone, anyone?

Normally fans of the BCS (of which I am not one) would root for Auburn and Oregon to merely win out, thus avoiding this deleterious fate. At least in the case of Oregon, that seems like a safe plan to follow.

As for Auburn, well, that seems to be another matter.

The Cam Newton “situation” is far from sorted out, but it appears at least plausible that Newton is an ineligible player.* Auburn also appears to have gone “all-in”, and will play Newton regardless (it’s reasonably to assume they have no chance of winning otherwise).

So we have the very real possibility that Auburn, should they win out, could be stripped of its wins at some later date. Newton, currently the Heisman favorite, may have to give up that award a-la Reggie Bush.**

So for those that want a clean and conclusive ending to this NCAA season, Auburn may not provide that. So root for Alabama, right?

Well, if ‘Bama wins, we are going to get TCU and/or Boise State against Oregon.

So this is where college football finds itself as of now –

- Oregon wins out all the way, and the BCS marches blithely on for another day, or,

- Auburn wins out, and the term “tainted title” takes on a whole new meaning, or,

- TCU/Boise State statute-of-liberty’s their way to a BCS title, despite not being a BCS team, and the whole BCS is forever changed.

For those of us who are non-BCS fans, grab your popcorn. This is going to be a doozy.

*Without getting exhaustive, it appears that someone soliciting benefits on behalf of a student-athlete is against NCAA rules, which Cecil Newton appears to have done. I’m not suggesting Auburn did anything wrong in the recruitment of Cam, just that Cam may be ineligible. (Think Reggie Bush, USC).

**The Bush incident stained the Heisman. Newton may befoul it totally.

Welcome to the End Times

Alabama loses at LSU, eliminating the Tide from BCS title contention.

Oklahoma loses big to Texas A&M, also ending their BCS Championship hopes.

TCU embarrasses previously unbeaten Utah.

I give you the End Times!

We will know more when the new BCS rankings come out, but I now suspect that TCU, and not Boise State, is well poised to play for the "national championship". TCU was 3rd in the computer polls prior to destroying Utah, and their hand will strengthen.

If Auburn and Oregon continue to win out, the BCS will remain unbusted. But with what's happened so far this year, don't be surprised to see the Horned Frogs playing for the title.

Oregon – Maybe Not the “Lock” You Think

While looking at the 4 remaining major conference unbeatens (Oregon, Missouri, Auburn and Michigan State) I wondered what chances Oregon has to run the table from here on out.

After glancing at their schedule, my thought was “pretty good”. After all, they have games –

At USC
Washington
At Cal
Arizona
At Oregon State

Only Arizona is ranked. A pretty good chance to win out, no?

My next thought – can we put odds on it? Well, I think we can. And it isn’t the lock you might think.

Internet research led me to an invaluable find – a Phil Steele article laying out the odds that different Vegas spreads actually won a game.

Vegas, being Vegas, does a pretty fine job of predicting wins based on point spreads. The data from Steele’s article is below –

Favorite of	# of GMS	Lost Outright	%
31+ pts	382	5	1.3%
24.5-31	617	24	3.9%
17.5-24	1013	71	7.0%
14.5-17	650	88	13.5%
10.5-14	1146	242	21.1%
7.5-10	1056	279	26.4%
3.5-7	1930	658	34.1%
3 or less	1269	621	48.9%

To apply this to Oregon’s chances, we would need Vegas’ lines on the Duck's remaining games. While we have the line for the game at USC (opened at Oregon by 6.5), we don’t have lines for future games.

We do, however, have something that claims to predict games between any teams – Jeff Sagarin’s Ratings, which are used (modified) in the BCS.

Using Sagarin, he predicts Oregon to be 7.8 points better than USC at a neutral site, which would give the Ducks a 4.8 point advantage at USC.

In our odds chart above, either 4.8 or 6.5 tells us that, historically, USC has a 34.1% chance of winning. This is based on a large sample size of 2588 games.

So if USC would win 34.1% of the time, the Ducks win 65.9%.

Since Sagarin’s spread was reasonably close to Vegas, here’s what he would have for the rest of Oregon’s games (as point spreads) –

Washington	24.3
Cal	2.2
Arizona	8.7
Oregon St	8.1

The Cal one surprises me too, but Sagarin has them as his 8th best team per his Predictor, even with a 4-3 record.

Using these point spreads, we can estimate the chances of Oregon winning out. Including USC, here are Oregon’s chances to win each remaining individual game –

USC		0.659
Washington		0.961
Cal		0.659
Arizona		0.736
Oregon St		0.736

Just like you would multiply .50 times .50 to see the chance of getting two consecutive heads in a coin flip (.25 or 25% chance), you do the same here.

The results? 0.2261, or an only 22.6% chance that Oregon runs the table.

Less than 1 in 4.

Which begs the question – what are the similarly calculated chances for the other unbeatens? We will explore that in our next post.

BCS Watch

I did a post last week about how unlikely it is Boise State will play for the BCS title based on their rankings – both currently and prospectively – in the computer polls of the BCS.

Well we have another week “in the books”, and a new BCS. Let’s take a look at what we have now.

Boise State – No movement. The Bronco’s BCS average last week was .8898 for 3rd place. This week it’s .8846, and still in 3rd place. Conventional wisdom holds that Boise needs the teams ahead of them to lose, and I don’t totally disagree. Yet, with Oklahoma’s loss not only did Boise not move, they lost ground between themselves and the number 4 slot (now TCU).

Their problem continues to be the computer polls, which have them 6th this week (up 1 slot), but with the exact same .780 percentile.

Oregon – The Ducks are still 2nd in the BCS yet remain very curious, to say the least. Why? The computer polls hate them, with an 8th ranking and .740 percentile. As noted in my Power Rankings post, they have one of the worst SOS’s in the nation. If not for their extremely strong showings in the human polls (.9975 and .9919), they would be ranked far lower.

There is a fundamental difference here between the machines and the humans. The Duck’s schedule will improve, so one might expect their BCS standings to strengthen if they keep on winning.

Missouri – The Tigers of Missouri are the Rodney Dangerfield of the BCS – no respect. The computers have them a solid 2 overall, but the human pollsters drag them down all the way 6th in the BCS with 8th place rankings in both polls.

This highlights the flaws in human polls. Imagine if Texas was 7-0, having just come off a solid win against Oklahoma (the previous BCS number 1). Moreover, imagine if Texas had the 8th Toughest Schedule per the NCAA. Would poll voters be ranking them 8th?

Auburn – 3rd in both the human polls, but number 1 overall, with the computers to thank for it. Moreover, I agree. These Tigers have the 10th Toughest Schedule, and just defeated an unbeaten team. They should be number 1 (wait, who does that sound like? Well Missouri, that’s who!)

This is going to be a fascinating year for the BCS, probably leaving almost no one satisfied. Since my Gators are out of it, I look forward to the train wreck.

Is Oregon’s Offense a “Game Changer”

The college football world is abuzz about Oregon’s prolific 2010 offensive results. Through 6 games the Ducks have scored more touchdowns than any other team with 43 (second places Nevada and TCU have 34). They have more total yardage (3402 to Nevada’s 3272), and more yards per game (567 to 545.33 for Nevada) than the rest of division FBS. Needless to say statistically, at this point, they stand out.

Gregg Easterbrook has an article on ESPN.com describing in detail what makes Oregon’s offense different (he coins the term “Blur Offense” for the Ducks). Apparently Oregon takes a mere 15 seconds from the spot of the ball to the next snap, where even experienced no-huddle teams are more on the average of 25 seconds.

So what can we see statistically about Oregon?

Surprisingly, they haven’t run the most plays in FBS football so far this season –

Total Number Offense Plays Through Six Games –

1 Tulsa 481
2 Oregon 470
3 Southern Miss. 470
4 North Carolina St. 467
5 Arizona St. 458

While Tulsa is known as a highly prolific offensive team, I wouldn’t necessarily put the other 3 in that category.

Oregon also isn’t nearly the top team by yards per play.

Yards per Play Through Six Games –

1 Nebraska 8.3
2 Michigan 7.81
3 Boise St. 7.72
4 Hawaii 7.58
5 Nevada 7.4
6 Michigan St. 7.34
7 Oregon 7.24
8 Auburn 7.23
9 Arkansas 7.23
10 Southern California 7.21


However when we look at another statistic – Time of Possession – the real story of the 2010 Oregon defense begins to take shape. Presently Oregon is 104th (of 120) among FBS teams in time of possession offensively, with an average of only 27:32 per game. For an offense that has held the ball far less than half the game, 36 touchdowns (on offense, 43 total) is quite impressive.

Looking back at the two categories above (Total Number of Plays, Yards per Play) and adjusting for Time of Possession we find Oregon the top in both categories (I’ve adjusted the first category to be Plays per Game) –

Plays per Game / Average Time of Possession -

1 Oregon 2.85
2 Notre Dame 2.76
3 Louisiana Tech 2.72
4 Arizona St. 2.67
5 Tulsa 2.57
6 Texas Tech 2.52
7 Arkansas St. 2.51
8 BYU 2.47
9 Rice 2.46
10 Baylor 2.43

Oregon runs nearly 3 plays for every minute they possess the ball. The FBS average is just over 2 at 2.07.

Yards per Play / Average Time of Possession

1 Oregon 20.59
2 Oklahoma St. 19.74
3 Michigan 18.97
4 Houston 18.84
5 Hawaii 17.49
6 Auburn 17.14
7 Nebraska 17.04
8 Nevada 16.78
9 San Diego St. 16.69
10 Boise St. 16.59

Oregon gets an incredible 20.59 yards per minute of possession. The FBS average is 12.84.

Notice the teams change in their entirety between the first and second statistics, except for Oregon.

Looking at the second category above, the standard deviation for YpP/AToP is 2.52. That means Oregon is the only team in FBS with more than 3 deviations from the mean, which should occur only 0.1% of the time. They clearly are doing something exceptional here.

How does that compare to great offenses of the past? With statistics available only back to 2000, many considered the Oklahoma team of 2008 (BCS title game not withstanding). The Sooners scored 99 touchdowns in 2008 on 7670 total yards.

In the PpG/AToP category the ’06 Sooners did an excellent 2.68, about what Arizona State is doing this year, and far less than this year’s Ducks. In the YpP/AToP the ’08 Oklahoma team rated 18.61, or nearly 2 yards per play per minute worse than Oregon so far.

Easterbrook comes to the conclusion that “The Blur” doesn’t revolutionize football. With the Duck’s easy schedule so far, I’m inclined to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. As of right now, it’s quite a show to watch.

Who is Number 1?

As I consider my BlogPoll for this week, I’ve rarely found the question more difficult to answer.

The traditional pollsters have Ohio State as their number 1, but this seems (to me at least) more of a default pick borne of typical poll voter laziness. OSU has played a schedule currently ranked 86th (of 120) by the NCAA. Looking ahead at their schedule it seems reasonably likely they may run the table. We may very well be looking at a 2006/2007 scenario again when it comes to the Buckeyes.

The computer polls, not subject to the static inflexibility of the human efforts (not to mention the obvious groupthink), finds Ohio State less than appealing. The Buckeyes range from a high of 4th ranked in the Massey Poll to 15th in Sagarin (though he has them 8th in his “Predictor”.) They would average 8.4 in the computer polls now (Wolfe doesn’t start his until 10/17). Were the BCS released today I’m guessing they would be about 3rd.


So who do the computer polls like? Well, they seem mostly to like the Mad Hatter. LSU is first ranked in A&H, Billingsley, and the Colley Matrix (5th and 8th in the other 2). That’s an average of 3.2, or nearly 6 slots ahead of where the human polls have them at 9th.

Gaudily scoring Oregon, ranked 2nd in both human polls, is all over the map by the computers, ranging from 1st (Sagarin) to 10th (A&H and Colley). I too have trouble with Oregon who, despite the unbelievable offensive numbers (their 43 TD’s are 9 more than the second best team) have played a very soft schedule (110th per the NCAA). I too don’t know what to believe about them.

Like the computers, I also don’t believe in Oklahoma. They are ranked as high as 12th (Sagarin), who actually ranks them 26th in his “Predictor”. According to Sagarin, 25 teams would beat them on a neutral site, including NC State and Texas A&M. In Oklahoma I see a team with the 38th best offense and 56th best defense in the nation. They really aren’t even top 10.

As of this writing I still don’t know who I consider number 1. But I’d bet this much – this season is going to look a lot like 2007 before it is over. Remember 2007? That’s the year 2 loss LSU won it all.

Are Oregon and Ohio State really that good?

As I turn my efforts to my BlogPoll ballot for week 3, one of the things I’ll be looking for is objective information on strength of schedule.

Yes it’s early, but some evidence is beginning to form. The tool I most value for Strength of Schedule is the NCAA’s own Toughest Schedule Grid .

What I like about the NCAA’s Toughest Schedule list is –

1. As a list of the records of team’s a program has played, it’s unbiased and transparent, unlike say Sagarin’s SOS which is neither.

2. It OMITS the records of FCS teams. This is very important to my thinking, as FCS teams essentially “don’t count” by this measure.

The NCAA also only counts the records of opponents without counting the game between them. Take Miami as an example, which has an opponent’s record of 2-0, or 100%. The record of Florida A&M is omitted as an FCS team, and the record of Ohio State (3-0) is reduced to 2-0 so that Miami’s own loss isn’t counted in favor of Miami.In this way it truly only counts your opponent’s record.

Here are the teams with the toughest opponent’s records thus far (all 100%) –

Arizona
Arizona St.
California
Cincinnati
Connecticut
FIU
Georgia
Maryland
Miami (FL)
Missouri
Notre Dame
Pittsburgh
San Jose St.
South Fla.
Southern Miss.
TCU
Tennessee
UCLA
Utah St.
Vanderbilt
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Western Ky.
Wyoming


I would suggest this helps explain the records of teams like Georgia, while making all the more impressive the records of TCU and Arizona.

Here are the teams with the easiest schedules (opponents with winless records, or 0%) –

Army
Ball St.
Boston College
Bowling Green
Buffalo
Fresno St.
Georgia Tech
Indiana
Kent St.
Kentucky
Middle Tenn.
Mississippi
Navy
New Mexico St.
Northern Ill.
Ohio St.
Oregon
Purdue
Rutgers
Syracuse
Texas A&M
Tulane
Utah
UTEP
Wisconsin

So we have Ohio State, Oregon and Wisconsin playing teams that have collectively yet to win another game against all their opponents (In the case of OSU remember – Miami’s win against Florida A&M doesn’t count).

Definite food for thought when it comes to ranking.