BCS Championship Game:
We have done a lot of analysis on this game, and are going to pass for some reasons we will innumerate below; however, I think the odds of a dominate Auburn victory are infinitely higher than a dominate Oregon victory. We almost pulled the trigger on the LSU game based on a premise that the SEC West is a dominate conference when looked at independent of a weaker SEC East that is dragging down the power ratings of the total SEC which skews the projections for bigger out of conference games like the BCS. Below is some analysis we did pre-LSU which was certainly confirmed by their double digit victory over TAMU.
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Cotton Bowl</span>
Without directly accounting for strength of schedules (either as calculated via our computer rankings or as adjusted for the relative performance of the schedule?s bowl performance) and the line on this game looks about right (we?d have LSU with 24/27 and TAMU with 22/26). When we directly account for the calculated strength of schedule (computer generated taking into account all games played this year) we come up with a little wider margin (LSU 25-29 and TAMU 20-25). All of our models indirectly account for strength of schedule and we typically don?t worry too much about it because it only becomes relevant in out of conference games against perceptually similarly skilled comp. That typically occurs the 1<sup>st</sup> couple weeks of the season when strength of schedule is irrelevant as they haven?t played anyone, during the season when a AQ conference takes a week off vs the Sun Belt and you are staring down a 30-40 point line (again making an adjustment largely irrelevant), or the last couple weeks of the season which are typically rivalry games (which we do make the adjustment but the rivalry nature of the game introduces some other noise that makes it hard to really isolate strength of schedule). We have found it very useful in bowl situations as by definition you typically get two schools from conferences that carry with them perceptions that don?t always match reality.
That is what we have here, as on paper most would argue that the B12 and SEC are about the same (although most would argue the SEC is better but not by enough to materially alter the line). When you consider the entire conference I would tend to agree with you and that is translated in the strength of schedule which has LSU with a slight edge but largely indeterminate (less than 1%). However, when you consider the upper echelon of the league, which seems more relevant in bowl game settings, you start to get wide disparities. The SEC West, by my estimation, is by far the most difficult league in football this year, and actually gets penalized (strength of schedule wise) by playing some of the east teams. It is hard to fathom that of the top 5 teams in the West (Auburn, Arkansas, LSU, Alabama, and Miss St), they only lost one regular season game this year to teams other than themselves (being Alabama?s loss to South Carolina which was the best team in the East). Also consider the #4 team in the West (Alabama) destroyed the team tied for #1 in the B10 (Mich St) and the #5 team in the West (Miss St) destroyed the team tied for #5 in the B10 (Michigan). Also, for anyone that watched the Sugar Bowl, Arkansas (#2 SEC W) had every bad break one could imagine in the game and still almost beat the #1B10 team (Ohio State). The B12 by comparison had its #1 team (OU) beat a doormat as it should (but by not near the margins of Alabama/Miss St), its #2 team throttled a middle of the road Pac 10 team (Ok St over Arizona), which you would expect. From there TTU barely beat a mediocre NW team, Nebraska and Mizzou (the #3 & #4 teams in the B12) where embarrassed by unranked, barely .500 Pac 10 and B10 teams), and Baylor was embarrassed by a terrible Illinois team. I wish Ok State and OU would have faced real competition because it would be nice to have a better gauge of what to expect.
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">BCS Championship Game</span>
On to the actual game itself, both defenses look to have the edge (-1.2 yppl disadvantage for TAMU compared to -0.7 for LSU), and the projected offenses are about equally (347-350) which tends to support the 21/24 ? 24/27 type game outlined above. LSU is the only team in the SEC West I have no confidence in, largely because of a woefully inconsistent offense, and if this was any other SEC W team I would have no hesitation laying a much bigger number based solely on the strength of schedule disparity alluded to above (effectively the watering down of the SEC W strength of schedule by the SEC E). However, with no real consistency on O, it is hard to gain a lot of confidence in LSU; however, their D is capable of totally shutting down TAMU (Nebraska is the closest measure of comparable D to LSU and they held TAMU to 9). We?ll call for a 27-20 LSU W, but will resist making it a Recommended Play do to the inconsistency of the LSU O and the lack of real statistical support.
<a href="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-1.png"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1310" title="BCS Pic 1" src="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-1.png" alt="" width="549" height="137" /></a>
<img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Owner/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.png" alt="" />
<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span>
This game confirmed that there is an above average likelihood of our models inaccurately accounting for the comparable strength of the SEC West this year. Below is the variance calculation from our projections vs actual in all the SEC West games this bowl season.
<a href="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-2.png"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1311" title="BCS Pic 2" src="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-2.png" alt="" width="542" height="273" /></a>
So here is where things get interesting for this game. If you go strictly by the numbers, unadjusted for Strength of Schedule and/or relative performance of the SEC West we would project a 2-3 point Oregon W (on average) with a pretty volatile distribution of outcomes (with a slight skew to Oregon, say 52 out of 100 games, but with Auburn winning a larger distribution of the large wins). However, when you start making adjustments for strength of schedule (our strength of schedule unadjusted for SEC discussion above has Auburn with a 12% higher strength of schedule) and that projection flips to about a 53-54% Auburn edge laying 2. Now if I apply those same average variances outlined above to the projections for this game (making similar adjustments for the actual performance of the Pac 10 games) we start to see much larger victories for Auburn and a larger percentage of the time. While Stanford dominated VA Tech, the other two Pac 10 teams (Washington and Arizona) struggled (even though Washington Won) scoring a combined 29 points which when you look at projected vs actual actually means the underperformed some (even with the 40 Stanford points to our projected 34).
This sort of analysis is abstract at best, and not definitive enough for us to rely on as a recommended play; however, I do believe it supports what I believe to be the most probable outcome, namely a 5-7 average Auburn victory, with a higher propensity of large win outcomes to Auburn vs Oregon (we?ve got a 10+ Auburn Victory at about a 15-20% outcome compared to a 5-10% Oregon outcome). End of the day think it wise to stay away, but for those curious here are the projections unadjusted for comparable strength of schedule and adjusted to account for the SECW over performance in the bowls:
Without SEC W Adjustment
<a href="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-3.png"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1313" title="BCS Pic 3" src="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-3.png" alt="" width="845" height="441" /></a>
<strong> </strong> <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong> </strong><strong> </strong></span>
We have done a lot of analysis on this game, and are going to pass for some reasons we will innumerate below; however, I think the odds of a dominate Auburn victory are infinitely higher than a dominate Oregon victory. We almost pulled the trigger on the LSU game based on a premise that the SEC West is a dominate conference when looked at independent of a weaker SEC East that is dragging down the power ratings of the total SEC which skews the projections for bigger out of conference games like the BCS. Below is some analysis we did pre-LSU which was certainly confirmed by their double digit victory over TAMU.
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Cotton Bowl</span>
Without directly accounting for strength of schedules (either as calculated via our computer rankings or as adjusted for the relative performance of the schedule?s bowl performance) and the line on this game looks about right (we?d have LSU with 24/27 and TAMU with 22/26). When we directly account for the calculated strength of schedule (computer generated taking into account all games played this year) we come up with a little wider margin (LSU 25-29 and TAMU 20-25). All of our models indirectly account for strength of schedule and we typically don?t worry too much about it because it only becomes relevant in out of conference games against perceptually similarly skilled comp. That typically occurs the 1<sup>st</sup> couple weeks of the season when strength of schedule is irrelevant as they haven?t played anyone, during the season when a AQ conference takes a week off vs the Sun Belt and you are staring down a 30-40 point line (again making an adjustment largely irrelevant), or the last couple weeks of the season which are typically rivalry games (which we do make the adjustment but the rivalry nature of the game introduces some other noise that makes it hard to really isolate strength of schedule). We have found it very useful in bowl situations as by definition you typically get two schools from conferences that carry with them perceptions that don?t always match reality.
That is what we have here, as on paper most would argue that the B12 and SEC are about the same (although most would argue the SEC is better but not by enough to materially alter the line). When you consider the entire conference I would tend to agree with you and that is translated in the strength of schedule which has LSU with a slight edge but largely indeterminate (less than 1%). However, when you consider the upper echelon of the league, which seems more relevant in bowl game settings, you start to get wide disparities. The SEC West, by my estimation, is by far the most difficult league in football this year, and actually gets penalized (strength of schedule wise) by playing some of the east teams. It is hard to fathom that of the top 5 teams in the West (Auburn, Arkansas, LSU, Alabama, and Miss St), they only lost one regular season game this year to teams other than themselves (being Alabama?s loss to South Carolina which was the best team in the East). Also consider the #4 team in the West (Alabama) destroyed the team tied for #1 in the B10 (Mich St) and the #5 team in the West (Miss St) destroyed the team tied for #5 in the B10 (Michigan). Also, for anyone that watched the Sugar Bowl, Arkansas (#2 SEC W) had every bad break one could imagine in the game and still almost beat the #1B10 team (Ohio State). The B12 by comparison had its #1 team (OU) beat a doormat as it should (but by not near the margins of Alabama/Miss St), its #2 team throttled a middle of the road Pac 10 team (Ok St over Arizona), which you would expect. From there TTU barely beat a mediocre NW team, Nebraska and Mizzou (the #3 & #4 teams in the B12) where embarrassed by unranked, barely .500 Pac 10 and B10 teams), and Baylor was embarrassed by a terrible Illinois team. I wish Ok State and OU would have faced real competition because it would be nice to have a better gauge of what to expect.
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">BCS Championship Game</span>
On to the actual game itself, both defenses look to have the edge (-1.2 yppl disadvantage for TAMU compared to -0.7 for LSU), and the projected offenses are about equally (347-350) which tends to support the 21/24 ? 24/27 type game outlined above. LSU is the only team in the SEC West I have no confidence in, largely because of a woefully inconsistent offense, and if this was any other SEC W team I would have no hesitation laying a much bigger number based solely on the strength of schedule disparity alluded to above (effectively the watering down of the SEC W strength of schedule by the SEC E). However, with no real consistency on O, it is hard to gain a lot of confidence in LSU; however, their D is capable of totally shutting down TAMU (Nebraska is the closest measure of comparable D to LSU and they held TAMU to 9). We?ll call for a 27-20 LSU W, but will resist making it a Recommended Play do to the inconsistency of the LSU O and the lack of real statistical support.
<a href="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-1.png"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1310" title="BCS Pic 1" src="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-1.png" alt="" width="549" height="137" /></a>
<img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Owner/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.png" alt="" />
<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span>
This game confirmed that there is an above average likelihood of our models inaccurately accounting for the comparable strength of the SEC West this year. Below is the variance calculation from our projections vs actual in all the SEC West games this bowl season.
<a href="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-2.png"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1311" title="BCS Pic 2" src="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-2.png" alt="" width="542" height="273" /></a>
So here is where things get interesting for this game. If you go strictly by the numbers, unadjusted for Strength of Schedule and/or relative performance of the SEC West we would project a 2-3 point Oregon W (on average) with a pretty volatile distribution of outcomes (with a slight skew to Oregon, say 52 out of 100 games, but with Auburn winning a larger distribution of the large wins). However, when you start making adjustments for strength of schedule (our strength of schedule unadjusted for SEC discussion above has Auburn with a 12% higher strength of schedule) and that projection flips to about a 53-54% Auburn edge laying 2. Now if I apply those same average variances outlined above to the projections for this game (making similar adjustments for the actual performance of the Pac 10 games) we start to see much larger victories for Auburn and a larger percentage of the time. While Stanford dominated VA Tech, the other two Pac 10 teams (Washington and Arizona) struggled (even though Washington Won) scoring a combined 29 points which when you look at projected vs actual actually means the underperformed some (even with the 40 Stanford points to our projected 34).
This sort of analysis is abstract at best, and not definitive enough for us to rely on as a recommended play; however, I do believe it supports what I believe to be the most probable outcome, namely a 5-7 average Auburn victory, with a higher propensity of large win outcomes to Auburn vs Oregon (we?ve got a 10+ Auburn Victory at about a 15-20% outcome compared to a 5-10% Oregon outcome). End of the day think it wise to stay away, but for those curious here are the projections unadjusted for comparable strength of schedule and adjusted to account for the SECW over performance in the bowls:
Without SEC W Adjustment
<a href="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-3.png"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1313" title="BCS Pic 3" src="http://www.thegeeksheetsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/BCS-Pic-3.png" alt="" width="845" height="441" /></a>
<strong> </strong> <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong> </strong><strong> </strong></span>
