Team Ratings

What is the team power ratings on this website and how are they used? What do all the columns mean? One thing that we want to do better with this website is use our numbers and information a little better. I have been tweaking a formula to rank teams since I was in College (5 years ago), and I have since updated the formula again. I think this will be the most accurate formula yet! Here is a rundown on how to understand the Team Power Ratings.

What the Team Power Ratings are and are not.

First of all, we have to understand how to use this information. What is our end goal? Some computer rankings tell you how good a team is. They try to tell you about how the season has gone so far, but these power ratings tell you how good a team should be going forward. It takes the information and tries to give you a fair and balanced picture of what should be happening.

How does it do it?

I believe that not all games are created equal. I think we all believe that, but I actually invert the what the Longo does. The longo rating says that if you beat a NAIA or NCAA DIII school that should count for more. I believe that those games have to many variables to get an accurate picture of what actually happened in the game:

1. Was someone hurt on the NAIA squad?

2. Was the game that important to the NCAA DIII school?

3. Was this the best that the NCCAA DII team could play… ever?

I think that the one game that is actually measurable against all other teams is NCCAA DII teams. That is why I weigh those games over everything else. I want to know how well that team played against other schools that all play each other.

The 4 Factors:

Pythagorean Expectation. More on this formula here. 

Coaches Poll – Weekly poll voted on by the coaches. Each position is weighted to 1 being the highest value or percentage.

Strength of Schedule – The average value of the opponent the team plays head to head.

Opponent Strength of Schedule – The average value of the opponent’s opponent that they play head to head.

O Adjusted  and D Adjusted

This column on the Team Power Ratings tells us how good the offense is for a certain team. How does this work? I simply take the goals per game and multiply in the strength of schedule the team has played against so far. This creates a formula that evens the playing field when it comes to goals. 1 Goal against a bad team (.5000) is really only .5 of a goal.

Defense % is the same as Offense, but in reverse. This tells us how good a team’s defense really is.

Luck

Because we use the Pythagorean Expectation to get a better picture of a team’s winning percentage, we can use this to tell us how lucky a team seems to be. We compare the Pythag to the actually winning percentage, and that can tell us that a team is over performing or under performing.

Conclusion

In no way are these rankings perfect, but the goal is to continue with the process of finding a better way to evaluate teams. I simply am not sold on Longo, and I believe that this can tell us who is good and who is not. It also provides us with a comparable measure to use with our Player Ratings and Game Predictor. I hope you enjoy the rankings.