Al's Top 25 Pre-Season Rankings are out!

Here's Al’s Top 25 Pre-Season Rankings (AP rankings in parentheses)

1. Florida (1)
2. Texas (2)
3. Virginia Tech (7)
4. Georgia (13)
5. Oklahoma (3)
6. Cincinnati (33)
7. Utah (19)
8. USC (4)
9. Boston College (40)
10. Michigan State (29)
11. West Virginia (32)
12. Wake Forest (NR)
13. Ohio State (6)
14. Boise State (14)
15. Texas Tech (31)
16. Alabama (5)
17. Missouri (47)
18. LSU (11)
19. Connecticut (NR)
20. Penn State (9)
21. BYU (20)
22. Georgia Tech (15)
23. Ball State (NR)
24. Wisconsin (NR)
25. East Carolina (36)

As you can see, my first poll is pretty out of whack with the AP poll. That’s not all together surprising. Those that I’ve predicted to do much better than the AP will most likely fall fast in my poll once they start losing games that I’ve predicted they’d win. Likewise, those ranked higher in the AP will rise in the AT25 when they start winning games that I predicted they’d lose. Trust me, the AT25 and the AP rankings will look more alike as the year goes on.

Notice that Florida is the predicted champion in both polls, as well as others. They’re the returning champs and they have more returning starters than any other team. This is a no-brainer prediction…but will it be reality?

Texas is also not so much a surprise at number two, but you may be surprised to see Virginia Tech at number three. They’ll be tested immediately as they host Alabama in the first week. Georgia has the highest rating for “quality of opponent” which boosts them up to number 4. Their game with Florida on Halloween should be a great one to watch. Finishing out the top five is Oklahoma who has their showdown with Texas in mid-October.

Cincinnati and Utah have higher rankings than shown in the AP due primarily to their previous years’ performances. These two teams may surprise folks…or they may come tumbling down within the first two weeks. USC’s weaker strength of schedule kept them at number eight in the AT25 as opposed to much higher rankings elsewhere. Boston College and Michigan State are two other teams with rankings having been helped by previous years performances. Like Cincinnati and Utah, The Eagles and the Spartans could surprise others, or disappear my ranking view quickly.

The games to watch this first week should be Virginia Tech-Alabama, Georgia-Oklahoma St., Cincinnati-Rutgers, Oklahoma-BYU, and Boise St.-Oregon.

How I figure out Al's Top 25

When I was growing up and becoming a college football fan, I was always frustrated by the use of the AP and UPI polls to determine the NCAA Division I football champion. It seemed to me that the voting would be biased to the specific region and conference and easily influenced by media coverage. You have to remember that I grew up a West Virginia University fan and back in the day, ABC was the only network that covered college ball and that was usually one or two games a week. It was big news when WVU made the score list during the post-game show, let alone a televised game. Anyhow, I realized that the best way to determine a champion was to have a playoff system. This is a debate that continues to this day. But in the absence of such a system, I figured that there had to be some statistical method of determining the true champion. Thus was the brainchild of Al’s Top 25.

Admittedly, today’s BCS poll considers the input of several computer rankings that are far more complex than mine. I’m a supporter of computer rankings having a little more weight in the BCS ranking than they currently hold. Still, my idea of a numerical system pre-dates the published systems, so I’d like to think that I’m the first to really manifest the idea. I’m sure I wasn’t, but I’d like to think I was.

The statistical system I use has developed over the years. I still calculate most of the results manually, or at least enter the numbers into a spreadsheet manually. Perhaps one day I’ll become savvy enough to really write a true calculating program. But where’s the fun in that?

So Al’s Top 25 (or the AT25) considers four factors in it’s calculations: predicted record, strength of opponent, quality of opponent, and new to this year’s calculation, returning starters. Here’s the breakdown of each.

Predicted Record. This is exactly as it sounds. I review each and every college football game (yes, there are over 1400 games in a season) and determine the winner of each. This is done by comparing the records of the two previous seasons combined, while assigning an additional win in the record of the home team. For example, Florida State and Georgia Tech each had 16-10 records over the 2007 and 2008 seasons. I added a “win” to Georgia Tech’s record when comparing the two teams due to them having the home field advantage. As a result, Tech had a17-10 record versus FSUs 16-10 record, thus I awarded Georgia Tech the win. I know this is not a perfect system, but it’s a start.

Strength of Schedule. Usually, I have multiple teams that are predicted to have a perfect record. This year, I have eight teams listed as not losing a game. But to most pundits, there is no comparison between an undefeated Florida or Texas team versus an undefeated Ball State. To differentiate, I took a look at the overall predicted win-loss record of each team’s opponents. This was probably the most time-consuming calculation of all, but it certainly offered a separation between teams as described above. For instance, Florida’s opponents have an overall predicted record of 73-58-1 (yes, my predicted record can predict ties, although there is no longer ties in NCAA football). Ball State’s opponents’ combined record was calculated at 55-74-3. Florida, by far, faces the tougher schedule of these two teams. And by the way, Louisville has the toughest schedule of all with their opponents predicted to have a 92-39-1 record overall.

Quality of Opponent. Another consideration is that while having Ball State on one’s schedule increases the Strength of Schedule ranking due to their predicted undefeated season, this is a team that could be beaten by more talented teams with worse records. For instance, I predict LSU will have a record of 10-2-0. Despite my method of predicting outcomes outlined above, I think most would predict LSU to be big favorites in a match-up with Ball State. (By the way, they don’t play each other…this is just an example). To keep a lesser team with a good record from weighing too much in an opponent’s favor, I decided to rank the quality of one’s opponents. This was a much easier calculation in that I simply looked at how one’s conference performed versus out-of-conference competition. There may be more complicated and accurate ways to calculate a team’s “quality,” but this seemed to fit my needs and do the trick. And just so you know, the team playing the highest quality opponents is Georgia. And not coincidentally, the SEC is rated as the highest quality conference with a 73.6% winning percentage versus out-of-conference opponents. The Sunbelt Conference scored the lowest by winning only 28.9% of their non-conference games.

Returning Starters. This one is self-explanatory. I simply took the number of returning starts on offense, defense and kickers and divided by the number of starting players (24). If a team’s quarterback was returning, I awarded an extra half point for his return. The team with the highest number of returning starters is Florida (20 ½ out of 24). Considering they are the defending National Champions, it’s not surprising that most polls and rankings have Florida repeating as such due to their returning starters.

I won’t get into how these variables are calculated. For the most part, I fiddle around with multiplying and adding the numbers in various ways until there seems to be an even and logical distribution of teams. But how I use the numbers throughout the year is what distinguishes my ranking for many others.

Most provide a ranking of which teams are the best “right now.” I offer up a prediction of how the teams will be ranked at the end of the year. If every game ends up as I predict, the ranking will be just as I’ve posted them today. However, if there’s an upset, the underdog winner team will increase in points by a certain margin while the team that was upset will lose the same number of points. Since I predict Florida will go undefeated, in my system, they can never increase their point total by winning a game. However, they can lose points when they’re upset. My system sets high expectations for the predicted winners, and low expectations for the losers. And at the end of the year, any that exceeded my expectations will most likely be ranked a lot higher than they are today.

There are obviously flaws to my system. For instance, when I last did this several years ago (this is too time and brain consuming to do every year), Miami, OH was the declared champ at the end of the season. But taking away that glitch (I had no “Quality of Opponent” factor at that time), I had USC and Texas as the top two…the same two teams that met for the National Championship that season.

My main goal for this is to offer a little debate, provide some entertainment, and act as a means to get myself familiar with the college football world once again as it approaches. And for me, there’s no better sport to get geared up for than college football.

Welcome to Al’s Top 25. I hope you enjoy it and feel free to contact me with any feedback and trash talk.