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Topic: POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

Topic: POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

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The Situation
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POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

Posted: 1/5/2016 9:23:43 AM

POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

	Yes
	No

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Over the past decade (2006-2015), the highest Sagarin rated OHIO team was 2011.

Here's a snapshot of several teams from that season:

#: Rank by Sagarin Rating
(W-L)

#47 NIU (11-3)
#62 Sam Houston State (14-1)
#63 Montana (11-3)
#68 OHIO (10-4)

NIU defeated OHIO in the MAC Championship game 23-20.

Sam Houston State defeated Montana in the FCS semifinals 31-28. Sam Houston State lost FCS championship game to #37 (14-1) North Dakota State 6-17.

Also of note, Sam Houston State was (1-0) against FBS teams, defeating #175 (1-11) New Mexico 48-45 in OT.

Montana was (0-1) against FBS teams, losing to #50 (5-7) Tennessee 16-42.

I can provide a snapshot like this for every year in the decade if someone really needs to see them to make a vote.

My personal position is "No"; Sagarin ratings have not realistically rated MAC teams this past decade.

Last Edited: 1/5/2016 9:24:24 AM by The Situation

L.C.
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RE: POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

Posted: 1/5/2016 9:57:03 AM

I think you're making a lot out of one particular weak spot in his ratings. The problem with any rating system that claims to rate both FCS and FBS schools on the same scale is that there aren't enough games between them. Including G5 and P5 on the same scale is hard enough when each team plays at most 1-4 games with the other group. Not all FCS schools even play one FBS school, and most don't play more than 1. That's just not enough data to include both on the same scale.

�We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.� ― Epictetus

The Situation
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RE: POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

Posted: 1/5/2016 11:02:36 AM

L.C. wrote:

Sagarin's college football ratings are referenced by many national media outlets and common fans as the "gold standard". I argue that he is exceeding the capabilities of his model by ranking FBS and FCS teams.

You point out flaws that need no further explanation. There's no prize for doing too much (ranking FBS and FCS teams in the same system). Without an FBS only Sagarin rating we are left with only his overreaching model to judge. And I argue that it's modeled at the expense of the G5.

FCS teams ranked unrealistically high are merely an indicator that other P5 teams are also ranked unrealistically high in the Sagarin model, further compromising the realistic rank of G5 teams (like the MAC).

---------------

TANGENT:

I think Sagarin's Top 10 is realistic, maybe the Top 20. And to me the realism of Sagarin Ratings declines significantly thereafter the further the teams get from the top. This is what I mean by exceeding the capabilities of his model.

To draw a comparison to another popular math model (that was once but is no longer the "gold standard"), Newtonian Mechanics, I'll steal some language from the internet: (I'm not comparing Newton to Sagarin or Einstein to me. I'm making this comparison to say, "Hey, here's something that's popular. Something that the common man is aware of. Here's it's limitations. And here's a better way to go beyond the currently popular math model's limitations.)

"In Physics a "theory" is a mathematical model based on various assumptions and valid for a limited range of physical conditions. Newton's laws are a mathematical model that is limited to non-relativistic speeds and low gravitational fields, and within those limits it is exceedingly accurate. There is no sense in which Newton was proved wrong by Einstein. What relativity did is expand the range of physical conditions over which the theory applied. Special relativity extended the range to include high speeds, and general relativity extended it again to include high gravitational fields. Even GR is not applicable everywhere because it fails at singularities like the centre of black holes. We expect that some future theory (string theory?) will extend GR to describe places that are singular in GR." -- John Rennie

"There weren't really any hints that Newtonian gravity was limited until special relativity came along and raised problems. In the context of pre-SR mechanics Newtonian gravity was a complete theory. It would have been natural, but not justified, to assume then that Newtonian gravity was exactly correct. This is the sense in which GR "overthrew" Newton." -- Michael Brown

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/52165/newtonia...

The Situation
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RE: POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

Posted: 1/5/2016 1:29:55 PM

Consider:

{2006} #146 EMU (1-11)
{2007} #128 EMU (4-8)
{2008} #147 EMU (3-9)
{2009} #184 EMU (0-12)
{2010} #183 EMU (2-10)
{2011} #119 EMU (6-6)
{2012} #146 EMU (2-10)
{2013} #208 EMU (2-10)
{2014} #208 EMU (2-10)
{2015} #184 EMU (1-11)

Does anyone believe Sagarin's model is sensitive enough to reasonably explain the difference between the #146 EMU (2-10) team, the #183 EMU (2-10) team, and the #208 EMU (2-10) team?

At least some MAC teams have been invariably linked to these extreme variations of the lowest level FBS opponents in Sagarin's model year after year.

Cats-22
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RE: POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

Posted: 1/5/2016 2:37:46 PM

In addition to what LC says about data being sparse, which is a valid point, I think there are a couple other things going on when you compare FCS to FBS in Sagarin. One is that Sagarin's model is going to be optimized and tuned to predict games that actually happen. So, to some extent who cares if you don't order the FCS teams correctly with respect to the FBS teams in the second half of the season since those games basically never happen anyway.

The other thing is a little more subtle and interesting I think. Sagarin isn't just ranking the teams, he's trying to assign a score to each team such that the differences between two teams' scores is a good estimate of the point spread. This becomes hard to do at the extremes because football isn't really "transitive." For example, here are some reasonable point spreads:
Alabama favored by 15 over Tennessee,
Tennessee favored by 15 over BGSU,
BGSU favored by 15 over Ohio,
Ohio favored by 15 over Miami.

But would Alabama be favored by 15+15+15+15=60 over Miami? Probably not, because even though they could win by that much, they probably won't. More like 40 is likely. So if Sagarin is going to assign a score to all these teams he has to break somewhere. And if he's going to break, breaking where the games rarely happen (e.g. FCS vs. FBS) is the right way to go.

Last Edited: 1/5/2016 2:53:24 PM by Cats-22

Jeff McKinney
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RE: POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

Posted: 1/5/2016 11:21:08 PM

You're not factoring in home field advantages.

Where's JSF when you need him?

L.C.
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RE: POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

Posted: 1/6/2016 8:11:06 AM

The problem I mentioned earlier, not enough games connecting G5 to FCS teams making it impossible to accurately rate both on the same scale, is precisely why it is upsetting to me that there are so few P5 versus G5 bowls. I honestly don't care about comparing G5 to FCS, but I feel that more P5-G5 games are needed to accurately compare P5 to G5. I think every G5 fan of a good G5 team would like to know just how their team stands in the overall P5 pecking order.

Does this year's Houston belong in the top 25, or are they just stuck up there the same way the top FCS schools are stuck up higher than the worst G5 teams? How can you tell, when the only P5 team that Houston played during the regular season was Louisville? By playing a P5 team in a bowl, Florida State, they were able to show that they did belong, but in many years the bowls would have matched them up with some other top G5 team, such as a Toledo or Boise State, and then a win would have proven nothing.

This year we got 9 bowl games between the P5 and G5 bowls, which is the most I ever remember. Only Navy and Houston came away with wins, but most of the games were competitive:
Utah 35, BYU 28 (BYU is technically an independent, and not really G5)
Arizona 45, New Mexico 37
Virginia Tech 55, Tulsa 52
Washington 44, S. Miss 31
Minnesota 21, CMU 14
Navy 44, Pitt 28
California 55, Air Force 36
Auburn 31, Memphis 10
Houston 38, Florida State 24

�We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.� ― Epictetus

giacomo
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RE: POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

Posted: 1/6/2016 2:58:54 PM

Unless you're betting on the games the information is meaningless. That's why they play the games. Afterward you know who is the better team.

The Situation
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RE: POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

Posted: 1/6/2016 4:55:09 PM

giacomo wrote:

Unless you're betting on the games the information is meaningless. That's why they play the games. Afterward you know who is the better team.

Well I'm aware of someone who is in the black using OPPA each of the past two seasons for a modest four-figure sum (before taxes).

And the way that person got there was using OPPA to identify spread mismatches (set by the market presumably influenced by Sagarin). Of course a couple pick 3s last season and a pick 5 this season helped out.

But as time goes by the less coincidental it will seem to that person.

The Situation
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RE: POLL: Do You Believe Sagarin Realistically Rated MAC Teams (2006-2015)?

Posted: 1/6/2016 5:19:40 PM

Cats-22 wrote:

The other thing is a little more subtle and interesting I think. Sagarin isn't just ranking the teams, he's trying to assign a score to each team such that the differences between two teams' scores is a good estimate of the point spread. This becomes hard to do at the extremes because football isn't really "transitive." For example, here are some reasonable point spreads:
Alabama favored by 15 over Tennessee,
Tennessee favored by 15 over BGSU,
BGSU favored by 15 over Ohio,
Ohio favored by 15 over Miami.

But would Alabama be favored by 15+15+15+15=60 over Miami? Probably not, because even though they could win by that much, they probably won't. More like 40 is likely. So if Sagarin is going to assign a score to all these teams he has to break somewhere. And if he's going to break, breaking where the games rarely happen (e.g. FCS vs. FBS) is the right way to go.

Exactly.

But I don't know why he chooses to set up the spread predictor this way. I think it's another visible flaw. And I'll leave it at that.

For what it's worth:

On a neutral site Sagarin says:

Alabama vs Miami (OH) +52.81
Alabama vs OHIO +38
Alabama vs Clemson +5.12

OPPA says:

Alabama 50 vs Miami (OH) 5 (that safety would be hilarious)
Alabama 40 vs OHIO 12
Alabama 24 vs Clemson 27

Last Edited: 1/6/2016 5:45:37 PM by The Situation

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