FEI ranks Bama #1

by NJBammer on Nov 11, 2009 12:17 PM CST

.... and has for a week or two. We've been in the top 5 pretty much all season, since the Va Tech game. Last season they were ranked in the 5-10 range all year.

Although I'm not 100% sold on FEI's methodology, at least they do a few things differently:

1) They account for Strength of Schedule and constantly adjust that through the season

2) They take into account all drives (though not all plays), which helps clarify cases when fluke plays might make the final score seem different than the reality.

3) They admit when their system seems to be biased, which I admire.

Anyway, here's the top 10:

Rank	Team	FEI	Last
Rank	Team	FEI	Wk
1	Alabama	0.272	1
2	TCU	0.257	4
3	Florida	0.257	2
4	Cincinnati	0.242	7
5	Texas	0.234	5
6	Georgia Tech	0.233	8
7	Virginia Tech	0.23	10
8	Miami	0.228	11
9	Clemson	0.227	15
10	Oregon	0.226	3

There's also this gem, indicating that based on the point spread alone, Bama has about a 88% chance of winning Saturday:

Vegas betting lines aren’t precisely designed to predict game outcomes. But since they are designed to balance wagers on either side of the line, they do represent the fair estimate of the betting public’s consensus prediction for the game. And they’re fairly accurate, too. Since 2003, teams favored to win by Vegas have a .746 overall winning percentage. Double-digit favorites over the same span have a .874 winning percentage.

FanPosts are just that; posts created by the fans. They are in no way indicative of the opinions of SBN and the authors of Roll Bama Roll.

Tweet Comment 6 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

Hmmm

I don’t really buy that Top 10.

I am a Clemson Fan, but Clemson in not Top 10 in the nation and Clemson played TCU who is a Top 10 maybe Top 10 team but not better than of Florida or Texas.

At least Iowa is nowhere to be found.

Between The Hash Marks - Statistical Analysis Into Sports

by HashMarks on Nov 11, 2009 1:08 PM CST reply actions

The ACC has 4 teams in the top 10 WTF?

Clemson? I don’t know about this.

Your temper brings dishonor to my happy mooshu palace.

by mulletover on Nov 11, 2009 1:26 PM CST reply actions

Yeah,

that’s one of the biases they discuss. They talk about why this may be, and qualify that they don’t entirely buy it, either.

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." - Bear Bryant

by NJBammer on Nov 11, 2009 1:29 PM CST up reply actions

I think it's due largely to the parity of the ACC.

They do have a decent OOC performance this season and half the conference is currently 6-3 or better. When you combine the fact that FEI punishes small upsets less than large upsets with the fact that the ACC plays a lot of close games, it begins to make sense. For example, comparing Nebraska and Virginia Tech shows that VT really has two upset losses by a combined eight points and one HUGE upset win over Miami (24 points). Nebraska, on the other hand, had no upset wins until this week’s 7-point win over OU and they had a monster 21-point loss to Texas Tech earlier, not to mention their loss to Iowa State. If there were more blowouts in the ACC in general, there wouldn’t be as many ACC teams that highly ranked.

by rugman11 on Nov 11, 2009 2:42 PM CST up reply actions