Yet Another Sport That Gets it Wrong (Apparently)

On paper, it looks like there is reason to disagree over how the NCAA Basketball Tournament is seeded.

As a former wrestler, I have to admit, I do not “get” Hoopyjumpball (aka basketball in some social circles).  The less physical contact and combat in a sport, the less I understand it.  Therefore, I cannot and do not pretend to be a basketball expert.  ESPN pays people hundreds of thousands of dollars to blog about “Bracketology” all Basketball season, and for the most part, I’ll leave that to them.

However, as a God-fearing, red-blooded, all-American, male, I absolutely HAVE to pay my $5 and enter into one or more NCAA Basketball Tournament pool(s) every year.  Last year I started out trying to build my own predictive model similar to the models I have created for Baseball, and NCAA football.  Like all good modelers I first set out to understand who else and how else basketball performance was being forecast.  In that search, I stumbled upon this and so I stopped my own futile modeling quest.

When two professors from Georgia Tech come up with a predictive model that is apparently better than the NCAA’s for ranking teams, I know when it is time to quit.  The Linear Regression Markov Chain (or LRMC Model for short) apparently has had a ridiculous track record for picking games from the Sweet Sixteen forward.  As you can see in their report, from 2000-2006 they beat the pants off of RPI, Sagarin, Massey, AP, and ESPN.  Despite their best efforts, their tournament seeding system has not been adopted by the NCAA.  What a stubborn institution.  Between using the BCS and dismissing a methodology proven to be superior to others in existence it seems kinda silly.  On the other hand, if the tournament is seeded less scientifically, it at least adds more “fun” to the upset process.

Unfortunately, I tried to apply this model to my bracket last year and ended up being out another $5.  I’ve noticed that the site and its rankings have not been updated since 3/15/2009 either, suggesting that their bracket might have looked as bad as mine.

Last yer, the site provided rankings for every team in Division I.  Having made my picks simply on who was ranked “higher” didn’t pan out very well.  If Dr. Sokol and Dr. Nemhauser ever update the site again, The Game on Paper will do a Tournament break-down with the LRMC model.  If not, I’ll be forced to come up with some math to provide advice to my 5 readers during March Madness.  Happy New Year Mom!

Finally, a Sport That Gets it Right

On paper, Brent Metcalf and the Iowa Hawkeyes are #1 (again).

The week before Christmas through the week after New Year’s has to be the best three weeks of college sports during the year.  Of course, you have the the Football Bowl season beginning with the www.justsowecanhaveabowl.com Bowl and ending with the BS (I mean BCS) National Championship game.  Overlapping the Football season’s swan song is the end of the out-of-conference season for College Basketball and the start of the conference season.  Smack in the middle of this are also two of the biggest events in College Wrestling: The Midlands Tournament and the Cliff Keen/NWCA National Duals Championships.

The 2009 Midlands Tournament, which just ended last night, is one of Wrestling’s unofficial “Triple Crown” events.  Wrestlers who win their Conference Tournament, the Midlands Tournament, and the NCAA Tournament join the ranks of the truly elite in the sport.  In another week, the top College Wrestling teams in the country will be invited to compete in the Cliff Keen / NWCA National Duals Championships.  These two events are mid-season gut-checks for the wrestlers, but they also are a good litmus test for the institutions who rank the hundreds of student-athletes who compete in the world’s oldest sport.

What’s funny about wrestling is that there is not a lot of good data on the sport available to the public.  If you look at the NCAA’s “Statistics” page, you can find the goals and assists for every Women’s Field Hockey player in Division I – Division III, but you can’t find any wrestling statistics at all (and I thought Title IX was supposed to bring gender PARITY).  Despite this handicap, wrestling has one of the most intuitive (and more predictive) systems of pre-championship ranking available.

In College Wrestling there are 10 weight classes.  At the end of the season ~30 wrestlers from each weight class qualify for the NCAA tournament.  As wrestlers win matches they gain points for their team.  As you can imagine, wrestlers earn more team points by winning the championship and fewer team points the further away from 1st place that they end up.

Over the course of the season, most wrestlers compete in ~30-40 matches, and their records, who they beat, and how convincingly they won results in the NCAA tournament seeding.  Throughout the season, the ranking institutions (e.g. W.I.N. Magazine, USA Today, Intermat Wrestling, etc.) provide perspective on the rankings in each weight class based on past and future performance.  As a result, a wrestler’s total resume is taken into account for their individual ranking.

If we take the example of Brent Metcalf, the #1 ranked wrestler at 149-pounds, it is easy to understand why he is ranked #1.  Even if you have never seen Metcalf wrestle, the stats speak for themselves.  He has only lost 2 matches in college.  Both matches he lost were to Darrion Cladwell.  Caldwell is red-shirting this year.  Metcalf has faced and beaten the #2, #4, #6, and #13 ranked wrestlers at his weight class multiple times and in decisive fashion.  He was the National Champion in 2008 and the runner-up in 2009.  Wrestling is a fairly small world thanks to the elimination of numerous programs under Title IX, so this kind of breadth and depth of competition is fairly common in the sport.  This makes ranking the individual wrestlers easier over the course of 30+ matches where they are exposed to varying levels of competition and rated on their corresponding performance.

The team are then ranked on the sum of their parts using the very simple and intuitive TPI (Tournament Power Index) model sponsored by www.win-magazine.com.  As W.I.N. Magazine explains:

“The Tournament Power Index (TPI) is compiled by awarding points to each team for the ranked wrestlers listed in WIN’s current individual rankings. Teams are awarded points based on how many potential All-Americans they could have and get advancement points for wrestlers ranked No. 9-20. The order of teams in the TPI vary greatly from dual meet rankings, as some teams have a number of highly-ranked individuals but may have holes in their dual meet line-up.

Point totals associated with individual rankings are as followed: 1st – 20 (16 AA points + 4 advancement points); 2nd – 16 (12+4); 3rd – 13.5 (10+3.5); 4th – 12. 5 (9+3.5); 5th – 10 (7+3); 6th – 9 (6+3); 7th – 6.5 (4+2.5); 8th – 5.5 (3+2.5); 9th/12th – 2; 13th/16th – 1.5; 17th-20th – 1. TPI points do not match the final NCAA tournament points because it does not include bonus points for pins, technical falls, major decisions and forfeits/defaults.”

There is nothing nifty or fancy here, just doing the math behind the individual rankings.  If each of the rankings played out as predicted, that would be the score.  Basically it is a Condorcet ranking system that says the team with the best collection of wrestlers will win the tournament.

So, despite the lack of available data on wrestling, the team ranking system makes a lot of since.  And further, since its inception in the 2007-2008 season, it has correctly identified the University of Iowa to be the NCAA tournament champions.  Not surprisingly, the Hawks are #1 on paper again this year.

Alabama Spoils Florida’s Bid to Win the First-Ever TGOPoll National Championship. Bearcats Named Regular Season Champs

On paper, Tebow and the Gators Had Done It

In the last month, I had my own personal series of “Away Games” as a I hit Boston, Iowa City, Chicago, and New York City in a series of work and personal trips that kept me away from home and the computer for 2.5 of the last 4 weeks.

In that time, a lot happened in the world of NCAA football:  Ohio State won a coin-toss and will yet again represent the Big 10 in BCS Bowl, the Cincinnati Bearcats came back in baffling fashion to beat rival Pittsburgh, Greg McElroy continued his streak of undefeated games as a starting quarterback, the Texas Longhorns won again in-spite of Mack Brown,  and Notre Dame took my advice and showed Charlie Weiss the door, but then forgot to read my follow-up article and hired Brian Kelly.

In the mean time, The Game on Paper remained silent and watched as all these events unfolded.  The models kept crunching the numbers, but site remained silent.  This was unfortunate because it would have provided an opportuity to silence a lot of critics of the site. Over the course of the past three months, the poll has gotten a lot of flack for some of its rankings — notably Central Michigan.  However, the second biggest complaint I have received is that Florida was not ranked #1 despite ESPN, Bob Dole, and the American People all being convinced they were the best team in the country.

Well, in Week 13 of the season, the Florida Gators broke through, and it looked like all would be right with the world.  By the narrowest of margins, .001 points, Florida snuck past Cincinnati and based on the way things were shaping up for the games that weekend, it was conceivable that a blow-out win by Florida over Alabama and upset of Cincinnati by Pittsburgh would right the ship and set-up Texas and Florida to play in the National Title Game.

As we all know, that did not happen.  In fact, we almost saw Cincinnati in the National Championship game for real.

Alabama laid the spikes to Florida, and the Bearcats found 1 more point than the Panthers to take the Big East Title.  Now, the only thing that stood between a Cincinnati v. Alabama title game in both “on paper” and in reality was Texas v. Nebraska.

The Big XII Championship game turned out to be a barn-burner (thank God) instead of another 70-0 butt-kicking of some Big XII North Team.  In fact, Nebraska looked pretty damn good.  There is no question that Bo Pellini is a great coach, and I am still wondering what the hell the AD was thinking when he chose to hire Callahan after Nebraska canned Solich and won their Bowl Game under Pellini a few years back.  After the Nebraska v. Texas game, I was wondering why the hell the Texas AD sees fit to make Mack Brown the highest paid coach in the country.  The man benefits from coaching the flagship school in one of the largest, and MOST football-crazed states in the country.  Given those circumstances, honestly, I think I could coach Texas to a Bowl game.  Strangely enough ol’ Mack called a roll-out pass with :07 on the clock while in field goal range.  He had two time-outs.  He had great field position.  He had a quarterback who could not afford to get sacked (or injured) if they wanted to play in the National Title Game.  So he opted to throw the ball.  And the Nebraska fans went wild as it sailed out of bounds and time apparently expired.  Had McCoy put just a little more touch on the ball, they would have been right.  At least both Nebraska and Texas both found out what it felt like to both win and lose the Big XII Championship in the same day.

As a result, when the smoke cleared and the final numbers were crunched, Cincinnati and Texas

On paper, Cincinnati should be in the National Championship Game v. Texas

both vaulted over Florida to take the #1 and #2 spots for the season.  By the narrowest of margins, Florida remained the #3 ranked team despite a head-to-head loss v. Alabama.

This kind of “trick of the math” is among the thing most of my readers get most annoyed with.  However, as I have explained before, the objective of this poll is to assess all teams equally be the same measures.  Regardless of Head-to-Head games, what Conference they are from, or what the National Press says, the TGOPoll keeps to an objective standard of performance:

1.  Dominance of Competition
2.  Strength of Schedule
3.  VATI (Versus Average Team Index)
4.  Win/Loss Percentage

Further, although the TGOPoll rankings appear in a different order, they are not all that different from the final BCS rankings.  Of the final Top 25 teams in the BCS, 18/25 are ranked in the TGOPoll’s Top 25.  Of the remaining 7 team, Houston, East Carolina, Middle Tennessee State, and Central Michigan all appear in the Top 25 or “Others Receiving Votes” across ESPN, AP, Coaches, USA Today, and the Harris Polls.  Because the TGOPoll harbors no bias against Conferences like those polls do, it is not surprising those teams are given more love by the model than they are by subjective pollsters.

So as the regular season draws to a close, the TGOPoll is proud to announce that its selection for the Regular Season National Champion is the University of Cincinnati Bearcats.  I recognize this is little consolation in the wake of Kelly leaving and a double-overtime loss to rival Xavier in basketball, but at least someone out there respected the Bearcats this season.

Congratulations, and good luck against Florida.  On paper, you are better than the Gators.  Now, go prove it on the field.

Another Day at the Office: Yankees Win World Series

On paper, we've known this since last February

As you may recall, last week, The Game on Paper did something that sabermetricians everywhere should have done years ago.  By cross-referencing the combined output of several baseball forecasting models, we simulated a Fantasy game of the Yankees v. the Phillies and found that the Yankees won 7/10 categories, thereby making them our pick to win the World Series.  Now, this was a pretty crude way to pick the winner of the World Series, and there are far more elegant ways to predict the winners of major sports contests.  Nonetheless, the comparison of forecasted stats did well enough.

So, as we all start to stoke the fires of our “hot stoves” in preparation for next summer, you can bet that we will be closely monitoring the forecast for next year’s baseball season.  In the mean time, we must all hail Dictator Steinbrenner as the pin-striped curtain of the Evil Empire descends upon baseball yet again.

Would I Fire Charlie Weiss?

On paper, Charlie looks 20 pounds and 1 job lighter

As we continue “Coach Appreciation Week” here at The Game on Paper, we will be taking an in-depth look at the seedy world of Notre Dame coaching.  Because of their national fan-base and program steeped in prestige and tradition, the Fighting Irish are almost always under scrutiny.  Actually, I should re-phrase that.  The Coach and Quarterback of the Fighting Irish are almost always under scrutiny.  Therefore, it seems appropriate that for “Coach Appreciation Week” we pile-on with the rest of them and take a look at Charlie Weiss.

Charlie took over the helm of Notre Dame football amidst great controversy in 2005.  Notre Dame elected to release Tyrone Willingham after only three years of service despite his being named the National Coach of the Year by a number of organizations in 2002.  This fast of a switch was unheard of at Notre Dame, and would at best be considered “highly impatient” of an Athletic Director under any circumstances.  You could stop there and have enough material to question the decision, but many went further and threw the race card in on top of it.

Based on the Willingham decision, Notre Dame has now set a precedent that it is willing to place a referendum on its Head Coach every three years — at least, that’s how I interpret it.  So, to see if ol’ Charlie was a good decision for the program, we’ll break-up his tenure into three year increments and compare his performance against Willingham’s.  Using the same measures on which we compared Ron Zook and Kirk Ferentz, we will take a look to see whether Charlie is pulling his . . .erherm . . . weight.

On paper, Weiss definitely pulled in more stars in his first three years.

Based on the trend of Notre Dame recruiting that was occurring under Willingham, you have to give Charlie credit.  After a steady decline in the average quality of recruits between 2002-2004, Weiss immediately reversed the trend and by 2007 had exceeded even Willingham’s best class.  When you combine this with Weiss’ record in the first two years (9-3 ; 10-3), everything was looking rosy in South Bend.  Well, everything looked rosy until 2007 when Notre Dame went a miserable 3-9.  So we agree that Charlie was a better recruiter since his players on averaged a 109 index v. Willingham’s, but when we look at sheer wins and losses, Weiss was 22-15 in his first three years and Willingham was 21-16.

On paper, Weiss' record looks better than it really was.

So this makes me wonder why Notre Dame didn’t just can Charlie after three years like they did Willingham.  I suppose there were plenty of mitigating circumstances that could explain-away or forgive-away the 2007 season, but really, on paper, Weiss didn’t look that much better.  This is especially true considering that Weiss was recruiting personnel that was supposedly 9% better than Willingham’s average player, but for what that talent was worth, Weiss was only delivering a 105 index in the winning-percentage column.

Well, in 2007 the Notre Dame Athletic Director wasn’t asking, “what have you done for me lately,” but in 2009, maybe he should be.  If we compare Weiss’ performance over the last three years, we see an interesting shift.

On paper, things are not getting better for Our Lady.

Weiss is still bringing in the ringers like a mad man.  His average recruit is 3.75 “stars” according to Rivals.com.  This is a 107 index over his previous 3 years and a 115 index over Willingham’s.  At this point, Notre Dame is so oozing with talent that even the waterboy could walk on at WKU and fight for a starting spot.  The funny thing is . . . Charlie isn’t winning.  In fact, if we include the games up through 10/31/2009, Charlie’s W/L record is below 50%.  He’s well behind where he was in his first three years, and he is well behind Willingham’s three years.

So would I fire Charlie Weiss if I were Notre Dame?  Yes, based on previous precedent with Willingham, I don’t see how they keep him.

In closing, being Head Coach at a program like Notre Dame comes with a lot of scrutiny.  Weiss has had to handle much more in his professional and personal life than just convincing high school kids to wear a Golden Helmet for him, and make sure those kids visit “Touchdown Jesus” more often than their opponents.  Nonetheless, if you are a coach looking to keep the dogs off of your heels at Notre Dame, you need two things:  1.  Bring in the big names.  2.  Win.  It’s a pretty simple formula.  Right now, Charlie is on the wrong side of that equation.

A Tale of Two Cities: Iowa City, IA & Urbana, IL

On paper, it looks like Kirk has things figured out

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. The Iowa Hawkeyes are off to their best start in school history. The Illinois Fighting Illini are fighting to avoid their third 2-loss season in the last five years. Just two years ago in 2007, if you asked which of these two programs was likely to be the 9-0 leader of the Big Ten and ranked 4th in the BCS, the answer would clearly have been the Illini. Despite a disappointing showing at the Rose Bowl, Zook and the Illini finished the season with 9 wins. Illinois was stocking the pantry with top recruits, and all the rest of the Big Ten could do was sit and watch.

On the other side of the Mississippi, Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa Hawkeyes were suffering from an apparent implosion. Despite winning a share of the Big Ten Title in 2004-2005, Drew Tate and the Hawkeyes managed to go 13-12 over the next two seasons. The advent of the Zooker in C-U spelled further disaster as the Hawkeye recruiting classes sputtered after the shine of Holloway’s miraculous “catch” wore off.

Yet today, the Hawkeyes are off to their best start in school history, and the Illini are fighting to prevent a repeat of Ron Turner’s final years with the program. So based on the past five years, what has happened?

Since taking over the Illini, there is no question that Zook has given a boost to recruiting. In his five years he has amassed 120 players worth a combined 338 “stars” from Rivals.com. In that same amount of time, Ferentz has put together 110 players worth 305 “stars.” Therefore, the average freshman signing with the Illini beats out the average Hawkeye 2.82 “stars” to 2.77 “stars.” On paper, the recruiting prowess of these two programs doesn’t seem that much different. Based on this, you might question the accuracy of Zook’s reputation as a recruiter. However, when you consider that Zook’s staff has out-recruited Ferentz’s staff 23-17 for 4 and 5 “star” recruits, you definitely have to give the man style points.

Nontheless, this doesn’t seem to be translating to the field. If we graph out the performance of the two teams by putting total Rivals.com “stars” since 2004 on the Y-axis and total wins since 2005 on the X-Axis, the picture becomes pretty clear.

On paper, it looks like the Illini have lost the forest for the trees.

The Illini enjoy a roughly 110 index v. the Hawkeyes in recruiting. Still, for all that recruiting, the Hawkeyes enjoy a 185 index v. the Illini in total wins.

There has been a lot of speculation as to why this could be. Perhaps Rivals.com’s ranking system is a poor correlate to on-field performance. Perhaps Zook’s players have been overrated. Perhaps the Hawkeyes know something that the rest of us don’t. Perhaps Ferentz develops talent more successfully. Perhaps the Illini have some major “cancers” in the locker room. Whatever the case may be, on paper, it looks like the Hawks have turned the tables on 2007.

College Football: University of Cincinnati Remains #1 in TGOPoll

As we head in to week 10 of the college football season, Cincinnati enjoys its second straight week at the top of our TGOPoll. Based on our statistical model that takes into account Strength of Schedule (SOS), Dominance Index (DI), Wins/Loss Record, and VATI (Versus Average Team Index), the Bearcats remain the king of the hill.

As the only unbeaten team in what is pound-for-pound the nation’s best conference, this is not surprising. The TGOPoll has Brian Kelly and crew ranked safely ahead of Notre Dame’s other

On paper, it is your performance, not your conference that matters

perspective head coach, Urban Meyer, and the Florida Gators.

Other notable moves were Texas’ leap-frog over Alabama, and Central Michigan and USC’s swan-dives toward the bottom of the Top 25. The TGOPoll was much kinder to the Chippewas than the Trojans.

Several teams benefited from this Top 10 turmoil. Boise State, the Pennsylvania Schools, and the Heart-Attack Hawks all moved up as CMU fell to #10.

New entrants included the Ohio State Buckeyes, whose pummeling of #100 New Mexico State was enough to improve their DI and VATI to catapult them into the Top 25.

Poor TCU remains the worst unbeaten team in the country according to the TGOPoll, suffering from the weakest Strength of Schedule of the unbeatens. Like Iowa, TCU’s W/L record is the best thing it has going for it. If either team sustains an “L” on their schedule, you can bet that they are going the way of USC.

Another notable change in this weeks’ poll comes from the impact of some big games in the Big Ten this weekend. Penn State, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Illinois all laid the spikes to their opponents. At

On paper, the Big Ten is trying its best at "Movin' on up to the East Side."

Historic Kinnick Stadium, the Hoosiers seized defeat from the jaws of victory in a 42-24 loss to Iowa. The improbable bobble by the “Epic Tyler” Sash has to be the most entertaining and TRULY game changing performance in the Big Ten thus far. Pontiac, you have our vote. The combined efforts of the Big Ten teams helped to improve the collective conference ranking from 4th to 3rd, surpassing the Big XII and chasing the SEC and Big East. In fact, of the Top 5 conferences, the Big Ten was the only one to improve its position compared to last week. The conference will see some notable showdowns this next week that will have both Big 10 Conference and TGOPoll implications.

So, as we start to head into the final month of the NCAA regular season, there is still plenty of drama left. And in an organic poll that responds not only to whether teams when or lose, but how they lose, and who they lose to, there is always a lot of drama. We’ll see you next week to review the rock climbers, the cliff divers, and maybe even some of those pitiable teams who are always ice-skating uphill.

The MLB(CS)

On paper, this seems like it should be a lot more common

If you don’t live in either New York or Philadelphia, you might have forgotten that the “Boys of Summer” play well into the Fall.  Right now, the World Series is 2-1 in favor of the Yankees.  What astounds me about America’s favorite pass-time (yes, I do mean baseball) compared to America’s favorite passion (yes, I do mean college football) is the lack of importance behind pre-season rankings and performance predictions for the year.  It is almost mind-boggling to think that college football, which is one of the more unpredictable and data-poor sports we play here in America could be decided by computer simulation, when baseball, one of the most statistically-driven, sabremetrically studied, and data-rich of all sports has managed to steer clear  that same kind of hub-bub.

A large part of this is that the World Series championship is decided on the field through a very clear, tournament selection effort.  Still, at the same time, there are a preponderance of fairly good forecasting models even at the PLAYER level.  For those of you who play fantasy baseball, getting a good familiarity with the CHONE, Marcel the Monkey, Guru, and PECOTA forecasting models is an easy way to organize your draft.  In case you are interested, you can learn about these models here.

Now, If all of these statistical models can predict player performance from Home Runs to WHIP, couldn’t this data be used to simulate performance over a season?  If so, what would it tell us?  Next season, The Game on Paper will explore the potential of these models to be used on an aggregate level to predict the eventual World Series Champions.

In the mean time, let’s use some of these fantastic projections to play out a head-to head Fantasy Baseball series between the Yankees and Phillies and see who the models give more love to.  Based on an average of several player forecasting models, I took the average 2009 stats-projection of the Yankees and the average 2009 stats-projection of the Phillies and put them together.  In our simulated head-to-head game, the Yankees have the advantage in 7/10 key statistical categories.  Now, this was at the start of the regular season and doesn’t account for injuries, trades, or any of the other drama that happens off the field during the regular season.

On paper, the Yankees have it.

Nonetheless, the Yankees are ahead 2-1 in the series, and with Sabathia on the mound tonight against Blanton, the Yankees may very well look just as good as a real team as they did as a Fantasy team seven months ago.

This Guy Might Be On To Something . . .

On paper, this could be more important than the actual game itself

Like millions of Americans, every March my wife and I participate in some kind of NCAA baskteball pool. Whether it is based on school colors, team mascot, team name, or just sheer bias, my wife always has some kind of “irregular” method of picking the winning team. Strangely enough, she’s usually right.

This is a common phenomena witnessed by men all across the country. No matter how much research, stat crunching, or expertise you have in your sport, there is inevitably someone in your pool who made their picks based on “something shiny” and placed in the top three. Well, maybe that’s not so surprising after all . . .

Recently, the Wall Street Journal ran an article tracking the winning percentages of teams based on their mascot. As it turns out, there are some interesting trends. According to the article, “Inanimate Objects” have the highest winning percentage of all the various mascot groups. Based on that, Ohio State Buckeyes fans should be cautiously optimistic in the Big Game against Michigan this year. Although OSU dropped one game already to a fellow inanimate object team, the Purdue Boilermakers (whose mascot is a train engine), things may not be as vulnerable for Sweatervest and crew as they might appear. First of all, this happened yesterday, and secondly, Ohio State has the mascot edge with their inanimate Buckeye mascot.

So, as you contemplate your bowl picks, your picks against the spread, your surprising upsets, and your bracket in March, make sure you know who is on your teams’ side-lines. Ignore the quarterback, the coach, or the injuries. Forget the assistants, the coordinators, or the donors. Take a good hard look at the mascot, and play the odds.

The Big Least?

On paper, the Big East looks pretty good this year

In college football today, it seems that at the beginning of the season, the national title game is reserved for USC and whichever team wins the SEC. Thankfully, some upstart PAC-10 team always manages to catch Pete & Co. napping, which opens the door for some other team to get in on the National Title action. However, winning the SEC in the minds of the pollsters seems to be a guaranteed ticket to the BCS title game. This really makes no sense when you consider the preponderance of Big Ten alumni who vote as coaches and who are present in the mainstream sports media. If anything, you’d think that they would be Big Ten apologists. Instead, it seems like every year the Big Ten is “down again” and the comings and goings of Big East teams are nearly irrelevant.





Perhaps this is because of the SEC making LOLhio State their whipping post two years in a row, while the poor record in the Bowl Season hasn’t helped the qualitative reputation of the Big Ten either. Perhaps this is also because every time a Big East team cracks the top two spot (e.g. South Florida and West Virginia), they, like Icarus, fail to sustain their flight to the sun. Whatever the reason for this anti-Big East and anti-Big Ten bias, it is not shared here at the Game on Paper.

Using this week’s TGOPoll, I took the average of the team ratings for each conference and found some surprising results. First of all, despite being another “down year” for the Big Ten, it is ranked 4th among the 11 BCS conferences — ahead of the PAC-10 and ACC mind you.

Even more interesting than the upward trend for the Big Ten is that pound for pound, the Big East appears to be the best conference in the country. With Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, South Florida, Rutgers, and West Virginia all ranked in the Top 15 of the TGOPoll, this ranking seems a little less surprising. Even the BCS has three Big East teams in its Top 25 (although with WVU’s loss to USF this week, that may not continue). What this means is that basically half of the conference is ranked among the Top 25 teams in the country. That’s 3/8 at worst, which by percentage is a pretty good showing.

Now, one of the “tricks of math” that might be occurring here is that the Big East is also the smallest of the “Big” conferences. The rest have between 10-12 teams whereas the Big East only has 8. So in a year where 3-5 teams are in the Top 25, the conference looks good, whereas the SEC might also have 3-5 teams in the Top 25, but not benefit quite as much given the overall size of the conference. So, as an experiment, I narrowed each conference down to its Top 8 teams to see if that made a difference in the ratings. What I discovered was that the Big East was still, pound for

On paper, a rising tide DOES float all ships

pound, the strongest conference on paper. Among the top four conferences, there was no movement in position. The SEC caught up quite a bit and the Big XII widened its position ahead of the Big Ten, but there were no changes in the rankings. The surprising shift was the I-A Independents and the MAC leap-frogging the ACC and the PAC-10.

So this leaves us wondering, why the love for USC and the SEC Champion? If the PAC-10 is the weakest of the “Big” conferences, and the SEC is not the best conference in the country, then why do those teams get such automatically preferential treatment from the other pollsters? They must know something I don’t, but when I play the game on paper, I see no reason to build in a conference bias of any sort.