Case for South Florida and Virginia over USC, Oregon and Oklahoma?

[MyTurn2Raise]

here's the real question about polls: how does one evaluate the teams?

1) Who is the 'best' team?

2) Who has the best results on the field so far?

3) Who do we project to have the best results on the field at the end of the year?

These 3 things have some overlap, but are far from being the same.

Too often, it comes down to someone's opinion on who is the 'better' team.

I prefer to go with on-the-field results already achieved---thus, go USF among those teams

[CardSharpCook]

I'm sorry, I seem to have lost you. My point had nothing to do with "only looking at W/L". My point is public perception is flawed which is why computer polls can be better at spotting things like maybe USF isn't that bad.

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USC obviously has played like crap and doesn't deserve a high ranking, but they're also the most talented team in the country, and they play an extremely difficult schedule. If they run the table, they would, without question, have a serious argument as a NC contender.

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See, this helps me with my point. You have every reason to believe that there is no chance in hell that USC can "run the table" and yet you're talking about them as a NC contender. SC plays only plays a tough schedule if you consider the pac10 to be a particularily tough conference (which I happen to believe is true, but not the point). The opponents they have faced have been very weak and USC's 6-1 performance leaves much doubt as to their capabilities. Their 4 of their remaining games are Oregon, UCLA, ASU, and Cal. That is tough, but what they've played so far is not. Their OOC schedule is kind of a joke. Nebraska, Idaho, and ND? Of course, give them credit for scheduling tough opponents. 5 years ago, when they scheduled these games it looked like 2 very tough road games.

Also, MSU scored 2 defensive TDs to lose 24-17. That's not "scrapping by".

Again, though, this isn't about SC so much as the system which is designed to combat people not unlike yourself who have difficulty believing their eyes when their preconceived notions say otherwise.

I certainly agree that intellectually it does not make sense that USF could possibly be even the best team in Florida. In that state every floridian high school recruit will go to:
A) FSU
B) Fla
C) Miami
D) major out of state college
E) any one of many lesser colleges in Fl.

How could they possibly be the best team in Florida, much less in the top ten in the country. And yet, here they are putting up scores and notching wins that any team in the Big East would be proud of, and all but a select few programs would consider a very successful year so far.

[mmbt0ne]

Virginia did not crush GT. Tech gave away 14 points and would've won if Choice had been healthy for the game.

[Semtex]

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USC was supposed to be the unchallenged #1 in the country. They have played an unimpressive schedule and preformed unimpressively. USF is supposed to be a dumpy Big east school. They have impressive wins vs. accepted good schools, and won impressively against unaccepted "good" schools (like 5-2 elon).

USC might well be the worst 6-1 team in the country while USF might be the best. I have no way of explaining why. By all right USC SHOULD be better by far. Their recruiting pool, facilities, coaching, EVERYTHING is better than USFs. Their talent level is certainly better as well. But so far this year, all that talent has combined for a weak showing vs. nearly every sub-par opponent they've face. How do you beat Arizona by only a TD at home? How does ANY "good" team lose to Stanford at home? It is ludicrous to rank them ahead of USF.

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There is a simple explanation. Injuries. Thats it.

VS Idaho W 38-10}
VS Neb W 49-31} HEALTHY
VS WSU W 47-13}

VS UW W 27-24}
VS Stan L 24-23} INJURED
VS AZ W 20-13}

VS ND W 38-0} ALMOST-HEALTHY

[iggymcfly]

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Not that anyone looks at it, nor does it really matter, but Virginia pretty dominated most of the Duke, UNC, and GT games, only to let them make runs in the 2nd half (GT actually took the lead).

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This is a huge LOL. Yes, they dominated most of the Duke game and it wasn't close until Duke made a couple late scores.

The North Carolina game though? Virginia was tremendously lucky there. UNC gained 6.54 YPP compared to 4.49 YPP for Virginia and the only reason the Cavs won is that they were lucky enough to win the turnover battle 3-0. 2 of those were fumbles which are even less correlated to skill than interceptions are. Also Virginia never had more than a 2 possession lead at any point of the game so it's not like they were just letting up when the game was out of reach.

Georgia Tech, meanwhile, didn't "make a run in the 2nd half". They trailed 21-17 at haltime and were outscored 7-6 in the 2nd half en route to a 5 point loss. This was another tremendously close game where GT had a drive in Virginia territory late in the game, but lost after two holding penalties killed the drive.

Georgia Tech also outgained UVA in terms of YPP, this time by a margin of 4.94 YPP to 4.78 YPP. The mere fact that Virginia briefly took a 2 TD lead in the first quarter doesn't mean that they "dominated the game". If anything, it would point to GT coming out unmotivated playing a morning game against a weak opponent the week after losing their biggest game of the season and not waking up until the deficit got too big.

The fact is that Virginia's an average team who's played a relatively weak schedule and has gotten extremely lucky to make it to 7-1. They have a 2 point win over a team who outgained them, a 5 point win at home over a team who outgained them in YPP, a 2 point win on a last second field goal, a 1 point win at home over a team that went 1/13 on 3rd down and a 1 point win after converting a 4th down on the final drive on possibly the worst spotting of the ball I've ever seen in my life.

That's not just a little lucky, it's extremely lucky. The only reason the computers have them so high is that they can't see margin of victory. If you assume normal distributions of points in wins over UNC, GT, UConn, and Maryland, it looks like you have a pretty good team. Knowing that those were all in the 1 to 5 point range and that one of them was an outright robbery of a call makes you look at things a little different.

In the Sagarin ratings for instance, the ratings that are used for the BCS that don't count MOV at all have Virginia ranked 8th. The predictor which relies solely on MOV, but is also proven to be the most accurate ranks the Cavs 45th. Obviously, there needs to be a little bit of a happy medium there and you have to give them some credit for just getting wins, no matter how they did it, but I think any ranking of Virginia in the 20-30 range would be very fair.

[Iplayboard]

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So if you're Ohio State , you just schedule OOC cakewalks like Kent State, scrape by against the Michigan States of the Big Ten, and your whole season comes down to one game. If you win, you make the NC...even though you'd lose 2-3 games in the SEC or Pac-10.

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Either you didn't watch the game or you are an idiot.

[NozeCandy]

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So if you're Ohio State , you just schedule OOC cakewalks like Kent State

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Saying Ohio State schedules OOC cakewalks is ridiculous. They just got out of a series with Texas and have more coming up with USC and another big name team (Oklahoma?). I'm not sure if you're talking about just this year (even though they still played a road game at a BCS school), but you make it sound like this is a yearly occurrence.

[kevin017]

I think this is kinda a complicated answer. i guess all i'd say is, when you don't include margin of victory, it throws the computers off. However, i also think you have to give it until the end of the year. Just under half a year left to go, and it will say a lot about the teams. If USC loses to oregon, ucla, and cal, and uva beats miami and vt and bc in a champ game, the rankings won't look so funny anymore. Computers deserve some say, because no matter how ugly uva wins, if we beat VT and BC by 1 where we get outrushed, outpassed, are out-talented and their dicks are bigger than ours, we deserve credit for those wins that human pollsters are very reluctant to give.


Speaking more specifically about UVA, as i'm a fan, i think
where we're at in the human polls right now is spot on, 20-25 is where we belong. I think most people voting us there think we don't deserve it and are just going on a soft schedule, but i disagree now. Our defense is good, and our offense, though mediocre, is rapidly improving. We have plenty of opportunity left to prove ourselves this year, we'll find out where we stand.

[Semtex]

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So if you're Ohio State , you just schedule OOC cakewalks like Kent State

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Saying Ohio State schedules OOC cakewalks is ridiculous. They just got out of a series with Texas and have more coming up with USC and another big name team (Oklahoma?). I'm not sure if you're talking about just this year (even though they still played a road game at a BCS school), but you make it sound like this is a yearly occurrence.

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USC is playing tOSU the next two years in a row, at the Coliseum in 08 and in Columbus in 09. I can't wait for these games because it'll finally be a way to settle the 'how does the Big 10 really match up with the Pac 10' debate to some degree. I'm predicting blowouts for USC 1 and 2 years in advance.

[BobJoeJim]

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View this:
(1-7) W 38-10
at (4-4) W 49-31
(2-5) W 47-14
at (2-5) W 27-24
(3-4) L 24-23
(2-6) W 20-13
at (1-7) W 38-0

compared to:

(5-2) W 28-13
at (5-3) W 26-23
(2-5) W 37-10
(6-1) W 21-13
at (4-3) W 35-23
(4-3) W 64-12
at (5-2) L 30-27

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This gives me an idea. I'm going to go through and list the current BCS top ten as "Team A, Team B, etc" with their schedules and results listed, but no team names. The game is to rank them from 1-10 without knowing who they are and see what interesting results emerge. If this sounds interesting to you, keep your eyes peeled for a new thread.