Rankings and Systematic Error

The ranking system in football. It is the most bizarre system in modern sports, and the most prone to inaccuracy. However, before I simply lambaste the system and try to figure out a way to exploit it, I need to consider many of the relationships that the ranking system is intertwined with.

Rankings influence the point spread. The point spread is influenced by oddsmakers and crowd perception. Team rankings are also based on past history and performance. Some of that history is so far past that a current team benefits from games played years in the past between none of the players currently involved in the most recent game.

So todays games affect the spread of games in the future between those same "teams" even though all the current players will have graduated.

Also, market size affects the spread and rankings. Bigger markets means more exposure, which means a good performance is duly rewarded.

Remember, a strong finish to the season, which some big names returning, means a high preseason ranking. A weak finish, or big names leaving, means a lower than true ranking. However, the value players in college football are typically offensive linemen, nose tackles, etc. The skill positions are less valuable, especially on offense.

Very similar situation to how points are valued in contracts in the NBA, but don't correlate perfectly with winning.

Week #4 Thoughts

LSU seems like a Jenga tower ready to tip over. And no one has done it yet. They almost lost to Washington State. Now they almost lost to Mississippi State. Who will finally knock them off?

Cal was demolished on the road, despite being called out for their road-woes. Terrible coaching.

Michigan has now won two games that could go either way, so I'm glad to see Rich Rodriguez getting a little bit of luck on his side.

#6 Cal and #9 Miami were beaten thoroughly. Shows the value of preseason rankings. And interesting thing to study is to figure out what goes into pre-season rankings and what determines them? Specifically, how does a coach from Purdue figure out if Cal should be ranked 9th or 19th? Or a coach from UCLA determining the relative merit of a Big 10 team versus an SEC team who played no common opponents the last five years?

Its a huge crap shoot. And unfortunately, pre-season rankings actually carry a lot of weight.

I'd also like to study how and why teams with high early season rankings lose, how they lose, and what factors (likely recurring) lead to some teams being over-hyped. As there is no repercussion for ranking a team high that loses, and I'm sure that coaches tend to over-value teams they know and under-value teams they aren't familiar with or that get little to no national media exposure.

Lastly, I'm sure there is a significant amount of "clumping" or simply coaches asking other coaches what they are ranking other teams, and simply doing the same thing. For example, a coach from Navy won't rank a team #5 in the country that someone else has unranked. Or vice versa. So there is less extremes and less desire to have independent views or to "stick ones neck out" and appear wrong and out of touch. Its better to be wrong with everyone else than be right alone. Because when the reverse happens, being wrong alone and everyone else is easily right, you look like an idiot.

This is a great post and a topic for further exploration. The concept of recurring, systematic errors in preseason rankings that are then found to be fallible later in the season, and that certain factors and consistently over-valued. And the basis for this recurring error is there is no punishment for being wrong AND a desire by each coach to have his rankings resemble those of everyone else's.

There are certain unwritten rules of how far a team drops after a close loss, a major loss, and upset, a loss to a higher ranked team, etc. Those rules are followed. I bet that those are pretty predictable, in fact. Another interesting topic. I wonder if I could make a formula to predict a teams rank the following week based on whether they won or lost, at home or on the road, and the margin of victory. Awesome topic.

And lastly, this of course would represent an investment opportunity if certain trends were discovered in the ranking system that were exploitable.

Why was Ohio State ranked #1?

The college football season is halfway over. Predictions have proven worthless. Upsets have occurred. We are gaining clarity about the relative strength of teams.

And the question is: why are we so bad at pre-season rankings? Why are we so bad at determining the strength of a team without seeing them at least a half dozen teams.

The first reason is the method of rankings. Lose one game and the team drops about eight spots. Lose badly and you drop about double the spots. Its an elaborate dance done by the coaches and voters determined to provide stability and a small measure of job stability.

But why was Ohio State the pre-season #1? They had just been blown out the second consecutive time by a physical SEC team. That has proven definitely that a top-tier Big-Ten team will not have the physicality to compete with a top-tier SEC team.

Nearly all their starters were returning. Which is not necessarily a good thing. A fourth-year junior will not suddenly leap as a fifth-year Senior into a dominant player. They are essentially a known quality by the time they are twenty-two.

So this Ohio State team we saw was a known quantity: well coached, disciplined, veteran, knowledgeable. Not overly physical. So it shouldn't have been a suprise when they lost to USC. USC was fast and slippery on offense, physical and well coached on offense. They only time Ohio State looked good was with Terrelle Pryor in the game because he was fast enough to stretch USC's defense.

And as we saw in the Rose Bowl (Texas) and against the Ducks last season, USC struggles against running quarterbacks. Meaning Pete Carroll struggles against running quarterbacks.

To conclude, Ohio State will get pounded the next time they play a really physical team. And it will happen all season. Might Penn State put a hurtin' on OSU?

Three cognitive biases are seen here:

1) Tendency to assume that players who return will be better than they were last season. They will be more knowledgeable about the schemes but likely won't make a jump in physicality. This helps returning starters for complex offenses (Urban Meyer 2005) or coaches with undisciplined teams with tons of physicality (Mark Richt this season).

2) Ranking system that works incrementally. To use a systems engineering term, college football needs to pump up the gain. Their system simply works to slow. It is accurate but must work faster. This can be exploited in sports betting, when a weak or strong team will take weeks to get the valuation it deserves.

3) Can't remember the third.