Once again, the annual argument about the validity of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings has begun! I am happy to lead the charge against this assault on the intelligence of the American sporting public. My public rantings have been raged in this space many times before and will continue. The BCS is as unscientific, [...]
As we head into the 2011 college football season, let’s take a look back at last year to discuss a couple of consistently argued topics: strength of schedule and conference strength. SportsMeasures’ objective measures for college and pro sports teams are exactly what is needed to solve many of the issues and arguments in sports [...]
I wonder if the NCAA Selection Committee knows something about estimating ability of athletic teams that I don’t? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not insulting the committee of men who gathered in a hotel conference room last weekend to select the 68 teams for this year’s Men’s Basketball Tournament. However, I am asserting my knowledge [...]
04.05Masters Golf
Check out the SportsMeasures.com blog later this week for complete analysis of the 2010 Masters golf tournament! You will see golf analysis unlike anything you’ve seen before. Starting Wednesday I will explain some of the details that this analysis will cover: hole difficulty, unexpected scores (by hole), player ability for example. I hope you post [...]
For the duration of my entry into the contest at www.lastfanstanding2010.com I will be blogging there. As soon as I lose in this contest I will return to SportsMeasures.com to continue blogging about sports. – Patrick
Here is the field of 65 as seen by SportsMeasures.com. The columns are as follows: Seed, SM.com ranking, team, measure, standard error 1 1 Kansas 76.90 2.54 1 2 Kentucky 73.37 2.57 1 3 Syracuse 72.78 2.14 1 4 Duke 72.58 2.00 2 5 West Virginia 69.74 2.00 2 6 [...]
03.02Conference strength
Here are the top six men’s basketball conferences for the 2009-10 season: Big 12 – 64.63 ACC – 63.78 Big East – 63.57 SEC – 61.51 Big 10 – 61.11 Pac-10 – 58.70 It is no surprise that the Big 12 is at the top of the list. It is somewhat surprising to see the [...]
Projected seedings for NCAA men’s basketball tournament Ranking, Seed, Team name, Measure, Error 1 1 Kansas 78.83 3.24 2 1 Syracuse 75.60 2.67 3 1 Kentucky 75.35 3.31 4 1 Duke 74.32 2.24 5 2 Purdue 71.68 2.47 6 2 Villanova 71.63 2.48 7 2 Kansas St 71.02 2.41 8 2 West Virginia 70.72 2.29 [...]
To create my projected NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament field of 65 teams, the conference leader as of today was each conference’s “champion” and received the automatic bid (New Mexico has a .5 game lead over BYU but, BYU has a better measure. There may be other instances where the conference leader is not the best [...]
Here is the crux of what SportsMeasures.com can do: This is a live, in-action-as-I-write example. As of this writing, Illinois has a two game lead over Minnesota in the Big 10 standings (9-5 vs. 7-7) and a one-half game lead overall (17-10 vs. 16-10). Yet, Illinois is getting votes in the AP writer’s Top 25 [...]