WOW! No Official Ranking Thread. I Will Start One

[iggymcfly]

Oh come on, you're a sports bettor, you know better than this. The Sagarin predictor is far from "LOL". Obviously, the SEC didn't perform very well in non-conference that season and was looked down on for that reason. You know very well the predictor doesn't look at wins and losses. That's what the rating portion is for and it had Auburn #2.

The point is that the margin of victory showed that Auburn really wasn't all that talented that year and while they likely deserved a title shot as much as anyone including Oklahoma based on their resume, they probably would have lost to Cal or Utah on a neutral field if there were a playoff.

[Black Aces 518]

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All I can say to anyone still trying to prove that Oklahoma wasn't a pretender after that championship game is LOL.

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You do realize that for the first quarter+, Oklahoma was controlling the game, right? And then they muffed a punt on their own 8 yard line, threw a pick when a WR slipped, and fumbled a handoff in the next 10 minutes? Any team that commits 4 turnovers in 12 minutes against the best team in the country is gonna get blown out. OU wasn't getting physically dominated or outclassed.

So what do you think the score would have been had Auburn turned it over 4 times in the 2nd quarter vs USC? They would probably still have won, right? After all they beat Phat Phil and Tennessee TWICE.

[Austiger]

Auburn would have lost to Utah?? Oklahoma was controlling the game against USC?? I can't argue against this kind of stuff.

Iggy- I realize that PREDICTOR does not count wins and losses. That doesn't make it correct. There is no way that Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee and LSU were on average 10 spots higher in the polls than they should have been in a score predictor. If you use the predictor to determine who played the tougher schedule between Auburn and Oklahoma, then you're using a tool that has all of Auburn's toughest opponents underrated. If you really think that PREDICTOR has Auburn, LSU, Georgia and Tennessee correctly rated as #8, 20, 23, 28 or whatever they are, when they were 40-2 against other teams, then we have to agree to disagree.

[Black Aces 518]

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Oklahoma was controlling the game against USC?? I can't argue against this kind of stuff.


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DRIVE 1: USC 4 plays, 7 yards, punt
DRIVE 2: OU 12 plays, 92 yards, TD
DRIVE 3: USC 6 plays, 75 yards, TD, after converting a 3rd and 11
DRIVE 4: OU 3 plays, 7 yards, punt
DRIVE 5: USC 4 plays, 20 yards, punt

So with :45 to go in the first, total yards are 102-99, and OU has the longest sustained drive. USC's drives are 2 4 play punts, and another drive where they converted barely a 3rd and 11, and then hit a 33 yard diving, spinning TD catch to Byrd. A great play, but it's not like USC had been driving hard.

OU was taking the ball back and ready to drive again, then the Bradley muff giving USC 1st and G on the 7. After the TD, OU drove right down the field again, until White is picked on the USC 11 after a WR slipped making his cut. USC got held to 3rd and long again but converted, then hit Jarrett on the bomb, and the snowball was on, leading White to force into triple coverage on the next drive. GG OU.

I'm not saying OU was def better, but you can't just look at the score and think, oh OU didn't deserve to be there. They clearly had the talent to match up with USC and provide a classic matchup, and a couple of unforced errors happened at the worst possible time.

Again, I ask, what would the USC-Auburn score be if Auburn turned it over 4 times in the 2nd?

[iggymcfly]

Utah was a hell of a team in 2004. Way better than Boise State was last year. It's not a dig on Auburn at all to say that the Utes would have been better than 50/50 to win. Honestly, I think they could have given USC a run for their money if they'd gotten a chance to play in the title game.

[Semtex]

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Oklahoma was controlling the game against USC?? I can't argue against this kind of stuff.


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DRIVE 1: USC 4 plays, 7 yards, punt
DRIVE 2: OU 12 plays, 92 yards, TD
DRIVE 3: USC 6 plays, 75 yards, TD, after converting a 3rd and 11
DRIVE 4: OU 3 plays, 7 yards, punt
DRIVE 5: USC 4 plays, 20 yards, punt

So with :45 to go in the first, total yards are 102-99, and OU has the longest sustained drive. USC's drives are 2 4 play punts, and another drive where they converted barely a 3rd and 11, and then hit a 33 yard diving, spinning TD catch to Byrd. A great play, but it's not like USC had been driving hard.

OU was taking the ball back and ready to drive again, then the Bradley muff giving USC 1st and G on the 7. After the TD, OU drove right down the field again, until White is picked on the USC 11 after a WR slipped making his cut. USC got held to 3rd and long again but converted, then hit Jarrett on the bomb, and the snowball was on, leading White to force into triple coverage on the next drive. GG OU.

I'm not saying OU was def better, but you can't just look at the score and think, oh OU didn't deserve to be there. They clearly had the talent to match up with USC and provide a classic matchup, and a couple of unforced errors happened at the worst possible time.

Again, I ask, what would the USC-Auburn score be if Auburn turned it over 4 times in the 2nd?

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this is not sying anything. usc was a slow start team that year. i don't remember the specifics, but games against stanford, cal and oregon state played out like this at first too i believe. and those games ended much closer than oklahoma.

[Black Aces 518]

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Oklahoma was controlling the game against USC?? I can't argue against this kind of stuff.


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DRIVE 1: USC 4 plays, 7 yards, punt
DRIVE 2: OU 12 plays, 92 yards, TD
DRIVE 3: USC 6 plays, 75 yards, TD, after converting a 3rd and 11
DRIVE 4: OU 3 plays, 7 yards, punt
DRIVE 5: USC 4 plays, 20 yards, punt

So with :45 to go in the first, total yards are 102-99, and OU has the longest sustained drive. USC's drives are 2 4 play punts, and another drive where they converted barely a 3rd and 11, and then hit a 33 yard diving, spinning TD catch to Byrd. A great play, but it's not like USC had been driving hard.

OU was taking the ball back and ready to drive again, then the Bradley muff giving USC 1st and G on the 7. After the TD, OU drove right down the field again, until White is picked on the USC 11 after a WR slipped making his cut. USC got held to 3rd and long again but converted, then hit Jarrett on the bomb, and the snowball was on, leading White to force into triple coverage on the next drive. GG OU.

I'm not saying OU was def better, but you can't just look at the score and think, oh OU didn't deserve to be there. They clearly had the talent to match up with USC and provide a classic matchup, and a couple of unforced errors happened at the worst possible time.

Again, I ask, what would the USC-Auburn score be if Auburn turned it over 4 times in the 2nd?

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this is not sying anything. usc was a slow start team that year. i don't remember the specifics, but games against stanford, cal and oregon state played out like this at first too i believe. and those games ended much closer than oklahoma.

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Well, that helps make my point. Does anyone really think Stanford or Oregon State were better than Oklahoma? I'm sure some think Cal was, and some don't. But the final score of OU-USC doesn't prove that OU shouldn't have been there, it proves that if you turn the ball over 4 times in 14 minutes against a Top 2 team, you lose. Badly.

Edit to add that USC jumped out 10-0 on Stanford and 13-3 on Cal. Oregon State did take a 13-0 early lead. USC scored the first TD in every game they played, save Oregon State, Notre Dame and Oklahoma.

[Black Aces 518]

Also, to say Utah would beat Auburn over 50% may be a stretch, but they were good. Take a look at this I put together for a Texas board when people were trying to say Hawaii 07 = Utah 04 and Boise 06:

Boise 2006 played Sacramento St, Oregon State, Wyoming and Utah OOC. Not murderer's row, but they beat Oregon State, which finished 10-4, by 28, and won at Utah, which finished 8-5, by 33. So Boise's 3 I-A OOC opponents finished 24-15 on the season and lost by a combined 57 points, or 19/gm. Sac State is I-AA, but were down 35-0 at half, and had 3 first downs and 82 yds for the game.

Boise had 3 games that were within a touchdown. A 17-10 win that was 17-3 late in the 4th Q at 6-6 Wyoming, a 41-34 win over 11-3 Hawaii that Boise led 34-14, and that Hawaii scored with 3:00 to go to cut from 41-27, and a 23-20 win at those San Jose State Spartans, who finished 9-4 last year. Boise did trail late in that one.

So of their 12 regular season wins, 11 of them were either double digit wins or wins by 7 where the other team scored a TD to cut it from 14 late. The record combined of the 3 teams that played them within 7 points is 26-13.

Utah 2004 is the same story. Their OOC is Texas A&M, at Arizona, at Utah St, North Carolina. 3 BCS conf teams, 2 road games. The record of teams that played Utah within 13 points or better in 2004? 0-0. NO ONE DID. Closest win was 49-35 over Air Force, who scored with :22 to go to cut it from 49-28. The only other teams to play Utah within TWENTY were Arizona who lost 23-6 at home and the FIGHTIN FARMIN BAWLSQUEEZIN AGGY who lost 41-21 in the Torbush Game, which also featured a slop TD with :10 to go to cut it from 41-14. So every opponent but Arizona was down 21 or more with 1:00 to go in the 4th. Wyoming also lost by 'only 17', but they trailed 45-14 with 1:00 to go and scored 2 TD in the final minute. to lose 45-28.

[teamdonkey]

MT2R -

if i understand it right, the rankings system you're using compares a team's record with how a hypothetical #5 team would have fared with the same schedule. So just wins and losses are accounted for, much like Sagarin's elo_chess. Have you thought about doing the same sort of thing, but instead with predictor's spreads?

For example, Oregon has scored 175 points more than its opponents this year. If Predictor says the #5 team would have outscored that schedule by 130 points, Oregon's score would be 45.

You'd end up with 2 rankings... one based on win-loss and one based on margin of victory.

[iggymcfly]

Pretty sure the second ranking would just end up being the Sagarin predictor except slightly less accurate. Don't see any point in that.