{"id":3127,"date":"2017-01-11T10:26:04","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T16:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/?p=3127"},"modified":"2017-01-11T10:26:04","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T16:26:04","slug":"jp-college-football-rankings-how-did-we-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/2017\/01\/11\/jp-college-football-rankings-how-did-we-do\/","title":{"rendered":"JP College Football Rankings: How did we do?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by guest bloggers Dr. Ryan Jessup and Dr. Don Pope<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Well, the dust has settled on another bowl season and it is time to evaluate the success (or, lack thereof) of the JP ranking system.<\/p>\n<p>You might remember from last season that we concluded that a blind squirrel would be about as equally effective as our ranking system.\u00a0 Well, this season that blind squirrel (technically, he is blindfolded) made us look silly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3128\" style=\"width: 285px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3128\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3128\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/files\/2017\/01\/blind-squirrel.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"275\" height=\"183\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/files\/2017\/01\/blind-squirrel.jpg 275w, https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/files\/2017\/01\/blind-squirrel-150x100.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 275px) 100vw, 275px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3128\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1. How well did we do? If last season we did about as well as a blind squirrel flipping a coin then this season that blind squirrel took our money.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You see, out of 42 bowl games we correctly predicted the winner approximately 54% of the time, and, in the 6 games in which we predicted a different winner compared to the college football playoff (CFP) selection committee, we were correct half the time and they were correct the other half.\u00a0 However, we correctly predicted against Vegas 48% of the time.\u00a0 So, this year the squirrel beat us.<\/p>\n<p>What went wrong?\u00a0 This is always a useful question.\u00a0 One issue is that the Big 10 was a Big Letdown, finishing a miserable 3-7 in their bowl games, performing overwhelmingly worse than expected.\u00a0 Likewise, Clemson outperformed expectations as they upset both Ohio State and Alabama, two teams that both we \u2013 and Vegas \u2013 thought would win.\u00a0 Why these things occurred is rather difficult to determine: did the Big 10 perform well against non-conference games \u2013 which usually take place early in the season \u2013 and then fall off later on?\u00a0 It is hard to know for sure.<\/p>\n<p>Regarding Vegas, last bowl season the Vegas favorite covered the line approximately 60% of the time.\u00a0 Interestingly, they only covered the line a mere 35% of the time this season meaning even they had a hard time predicting the outcomes.\u00a0 But in the end, you can\u2019t fight city hall, and, really, you probably shouldn\u2019t mess with Vegas either as the house is truly playing with a stacked deck.<\/p>\n<p>One thing that does give us hope is that, even though hundreds of millions of dollars are on the line for the college football playoff and a prestigious 13 member selection committee generates the rankings, our simple ranking system fares about as well, getting the same number of correct predictions.\u00a0 So, maybe next year the CFP should drop their committee-based ranking system and just hire that squirrel.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by guest bloggers Dr. Ryan Jessup and Dr. Don Pope Well, the dust has settled on another bowl season and it is time to evaluate the success (or, lack thereof) of the JP ranking system. You might remember from last season that we concluded that a blind squirrel would be about as equally effective as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[818,6633,467],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics","category-coba-faculty","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3127"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3133,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127\/revisions\/3133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/coba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}