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Around SBN: Notre Dame's Turnaround: How Have The Irish Done It?

RTT's Week One Ready, Fire, Aim BlogPoll draft ballot

Second draft of the Ready, Fire, Aim RTT BlogPoll ballotty thing. For a complete refresher on what we're doing, go here, but here's the briefiest version:

  • The goal is to have the RTT BlogPoll ballot be a community-developed computer poll using stats that generally correllate to success.
  • Why a computer poll? To minimize or eliminate human inconsistency.
  • What about subjectivity? Doesn't any computer inherit bias from its programmer? Yes, but the goal is to develop something approximating a consensus among the community of people who know what they're talking about. Once we agree on the subjectivity, we can live with it and then just make sure it's applied consistently.
  • Your numbers are unreliable. Yes. At the beginning of the season, the numbers are meant only to inform living, breathing opinion and will be subject to Total Human Override. As the season progresses and the computer is tweaked, overrides will hopefully decrease. The carbon forms are watching closely, though.
  • There's more, but that's the nutshell.

So on to this week, which has its very own caveats:

  • The biggest change from the preseason to this week is that rather than throw in actual numbers like yards gained and try to figure out how to weigh them in relation to other stat categories, I simply ordered every team in every category from first to last and then weighted the categories in order of importance.
  • Not every team played. Not every team that played has uploaded their stats. The stats are incomplete and almost completely unreliable at this point.
  • Everybody who played and uploaded their stats is tied for either first or second in the all-important Win/Loss category.
  • There are no strength of schedule numbers even approaching reliability, so I have everyone tied for first.
  • Because not every team is represented (and because it is late), I tied everyone for Experience, too.
  • The categories again: Win/Loss, Strength of Schedule, Pass Efficiency Defense, Rush Defense, 3rd Down Offense, Total Defense, Pass Efficiency Offense, Experience, Opponents Points Per Game, Total Offense, and 3rd Down Defense. The AVG R column is Average Ranking, and the last column is Weighted Average, with multipliers of 1-11 for each successive stat category.
  • Expect Rampant Human Override Without Reproach again this week.
  • Mistakes? Oh, yeah. Solve.

All right, then. Here's what we have:

Rank
Team
WL
SOS
PED
RD
3DO
TD
PEO
EXP
OPPG
TO
3DD
AVG R
W AVG
1
Arizona
1
1
1
27
12
4
10
1
1
16
4
7.09
44.45
2
South Fla.
1
1
5
23
14
3
9
1
4
17
3
7.36
46.18
3
Oklahoma
1
1
4
7
36
1
18
1
3
23
1
8.73
57.36
4
Houston
1
1
46
11
4
33
6
1
7
5
13
11.64
64.45
5
Southern California
1
1
20
10
48
13
13
1
8
11
13
12.64
76.82
6
Ohio St.
1
1
48
1
23
2
28
1
26
21
5
14.27
89.18
7
Eastern Mich.
1
1
2
33
48
8
36
1
8
2
22
14.73
93.00
8
Boise St.
1
1
44
54
18
19
4
1
14
9
29
17.64
102.36
9
Air Force
1
1
57
4
16
7
39
1
29
18
13
16.91
107.00
10
Texas Tech
1
1
40
8
17
69
24
1
14
1
23
18.09
110.82
11
Cincinnati
1
1
84
17
48
15
8
1
36
12
13
21.45
118.55
12
Florida
1
1
17
24
23
26
32
1
4
45
19
17.55
122.55
13
Kansas St.
1
1
31
51
12
18
42
1
21
31
10
19.91
125.36
14
Penn St.
1
1
61
19
1
30
19
1
2
8
64
18.82
126.36
15
Alabama
1
1
35
2
6
14
41
1
46
41
6
17.64
128.64
16
Georgia
1
1
37
49
42
47
5
1
21
14
29
22.45
135.73
17
Miami (Fla.)
1
1
30
18
23
5
50
1
8
42
34
19.36
139.45
18
Texas
1
1
41
14
23
49
11
1
8
19
55
20.27
140.27
19
LSU
1
1
36
19
67
24
29
1
29
34
8
22.64
142.36
20
Southern Miss.
1
1
25
97
20
77
30
1
13
3
19
26.09
145.64
21
Kansas
1
1
6
29
11
10
57
1
36
56
8
19.64
148.27
22
Rice
1
1
75
6
8
59
15
1
4
33
52
23.18
154.27
23
Nevada
1
1
60
3
45
23
77
1
14
4
39
24.36
154.55
24
Wake Forest
1
1
16
44
23
30
31
1
29
59
13
22.55
158.27
25
Oregon
1
1
21
46
36
27
27
1
24
20
54
23.45
163.55
26
Buffalo
1
1
27
30
2
39
1
1
27
25
77
21.00
163.91
27
BYU
1
1
89
68
2
68
7
1
29
10
46
29.27
171.27
28
Northwestern
1
1
13
56
39
22
45
1
56
25
25
25.82
176.82
29
Nebraska
1
1
72
5
58
63
22
1
19
28
46
28.73
184.18
30
Duke
1
1
8
80
23
24
63
1
50
63
1
28.64
195.09
31
Wisconsin
1
1
71
31
8
50
40
1
39
30
52
29.45
199.18
32
Navy
1
1
73
9
39
66
14
1
29
6
84
29.36
200.00
33
Ball St.
1
1
59
43
45
56
3
1
17
23
82
30.09
202.45
34
Oklahoma St.
1
1
18
53
79
16
58
1
38
62
10
30.64
204.18
35
Auburn
1
1
19
37
74
20
98
1
46
45
6
31.64
211.09

Really not that crazy considering all of the caveats.

  • Where is Missouri? 40th. West Virginia? 55th. Surely these are too low, no?
  • Arizona State? 39th. Utah? 45th. South Carolina? 37th.
  • Fresno State? UCLA? No stats yet.
  • Miami? Huh. Almost nonexistent on any of the major polls, even in the Others Receiving Votes categories. Let's see. Against whom did they get those stats? Ah, I see. Charleston Southern. Okay, then.
  • Arizona, South Florida, Houston, and Eastern Michigan. One human eyebrow raised to the hairline. Great stats will necessarily follow a 70-0 peeling of Idaho. Or a thumping of Tennessee-Martin or Indiana State or Southern University. Don't get overexcited about these games. They're at least worth keeping an eye on, though. Basically, that's the theme for this week. Most of those stats above -- and not just for lower-level teams -- were accumulated over polite audiences. So adjustments galore.

Here's the drafty draft draft. We've got a short turn-around time on this, as the ballot goes hard around 10:00 tomorrow morning unless y'all think it should be tweaked before then.

RankTeamDelta
1 Oklahoma 2
2 Southern Cal 5
3 Ohio State 1
4 Florida 6
5 LSU 4
6 Texas Tech 13
7 Georgia 1
8 West Virginia 4
9 Missouri 1
10 Auburn 1
11 Alabama 15
12 Penn State 5
13 Texas 5
14 Kansas 5
15 Arizona State 1
16 Brigham Young 4
17 South Florida 2
18 Wisconsin 8
19 Wake Forest 7
20 Oregon 6
21 South Carolina 5
22 Fresno State 4
23 Utah 3
24 UCLA 2
25 Miami (Florida) 1

 

Dropped Out: Virginia Tech (#5), Clemson (#13), Tennessee (#20), Hawaii (#21), Michigan (#22), Illinois (#23), Oregon State (#24), Boston College (#25).

So. Thoughts?

Comment 3 comments  |  0 recs  | 

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As good as anything for 1 week.

I’m already on record for saying that polls don’t carry significant meaning for the first few weeks, but it’s clear that some teams were more prepared for the season opener than others. I don’t know if UCLA should be in the top 25, given their atrocious first half and that they still barely eked out a win against UT’s absolute worst. But, who else?

Also, watch out for attempts by the main polls to rank USC and OSU 1-2 in some order. Makes for better hype for their game. Not that it needs any hype, really.

Any thought to Eastern Carolina? Or just not enough room in the 25?

by David Hooper on Sep 3, 2008 9:57 AM EDT reply actions  

Eastern Carolina

Didn’t have any auto-stats on them, so I didn’t know what to do with ‘em. I’d bet they line up pretty well against those up there in the top 25.

Go Vols!

by Joel Hollingsworth on Sep 3, 2008 10:22 AM EDT up reply actions  

Fair enough.

I don’t know what to do with them either. Like everybody else, they have a few more weeks to let us know where they belong.

by David Hooper on Sep 3, 2008 10:32 AM EDT up reply actions  

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