Category Archives: Sports

NFL Rankings After Week 6

SITW NFL Rankings after week 6.  (Last weeks NFL rankings) (And check out my NCAA Football Rankings)

Rank – After Week 5  Change
 New England  1 0
 Green Bay 2 0
Pittsburgh 3 0
Baltimore 4 0
 Atlanta 5 0
 NY Jets 6 0
 Chicago  7 0
Tampa Bay 8 1
New Orleans 9 -1
NY Giants 10 0
Detroit  11 0
Philadelphia 12 1
San Diego 13 -1
Buffalo 14 0
Oakland 15 2
Kansas City 16 0
Miami 17 -2
San Francisco 18 5
Cincinnati 19 -2
Cleveland 20 -1
Tennessee 21 -3
Washington 22 3
Seattle 23 -3
Indianapolis 24 -1
Minnesota 25 -1
Dallas 26 0
Jacksonville 27 0
Houston 28 0
St. Louis 29 0
Arizona  30 0
Denver  31 1
Carolina  32 -1

Cheers.

One More Arbitrary NCAA Football Ranking Scheme for the BCS

Rankings as of 10/16/2011.  Previous weeks rankings here.

 Team Rank Change
Oklahoma State 1 0
Oklahoma 2 0
Kansas State 3 0
LSU 4 1
Alabama 5 -1
Clemson 6 1
Texas 7 -1
Texas A&M 8 8
South Carolina 9 4
Stanford 10 4
Baylor 11 -3
Arkansas 12 3
Georgia Tech 13 -4
Wisconsin 14 6
Texas Tech 15 -5
Virginia Tech 16 5
Auburn 17 5
Penn State 18 7
USC 19 5
Oregon 20 6
Michigan 21 -9
Nebraska 22 1
Illinois 23 -12
Missouri 24 11
Boise State 25 11

BCS: If you want to contact me you can send me a tweet @StatsInTheWild.

Cheers.

One More Arbitrary NCAA Football Ranking Scheme for the BCS

I’ve been reading a little bit about the BCS computer rankings lately, and, while I’m a huge fan of ratings systems (I have my own for the NFL), the BCS computer rankings make me cringe.  The computer ratings, which account for only one third of the overall rankings, are made up of six seemingly arbitrarily chosen ratings systems that, in most cases, no one knows all of the details of how they work.  As one website puts it :

What do you know about the different computer rankings?

Not a whole lot. Most of the formulas are proprietary. Some are more forthcoming about what goes in than others. All of the systems use the same basic set of data (except where noted): Date of game, location of game, who played and who won. What distinguishes them is what they do with the data, how much they weigh certain factors, and what set of teams they rank.

That’s not comforting at all.  This means that there are 18-22 year old men out there who have spent their whole lives playing football and preparing to play in college, whose chance to play for a national title, will, in some small way, be affected by 6 almost completely black box computer rankings.  And sometimes they even leave data out of their black boxes.  (The fact the an FCS game between Appalachian State and Western Illinois can actually affect the ranking of a top ten FBS team is absolute high comedy.  It sounds like an Onion article: “Boise States top ten dreams rest in the hands of…… Appalachian State.”  Only the clowns that run the BCS could make this a reality.)

But even if the six computer rankings are all done perfectly every week, why these six? I found this to be an interesting explanation from Massey ratings website:

How did you get involved with the BCS?

I started working on college football ratings as an honors project in mathematics while at Bluefield College in 1995. Continuing this interest as a hobby, I developed a web page and helped pioneer the organization of college football rankings via my comparison. The BCS, which started in 1997, realized the need to expand its sample of computer ratings from three to seven. My web site became a central resource point as the BCS officials searched for quality, respected, and well-established computer ratings. I received a phone call from SEC commisioner Roy Kramer in the spring of 1999 to discuss the prospect of adding my ratings to the BCS formula. Mine were chosen because of their demonstrated accuracy and conformance to the consensus, and my personal expertise in the field.

Conformance to the consensus!?!  Massey states that a reason his computer model was chosen was because of its conformance to the consensus, which in this case I assume means the two polls which make up the other two thirds of the BCS rankings.  This makes it sound like the BCS went out and picked the 6 ranking systems that conformed most closely with the polls.  This would essentially render the computer rankings useless, as they would just be an elaborate extension of the polls.  (Note: I like the Massey ratings; I just don’t think they or any computer rating system should be used to determine a national champion.)

All of this has led me to produce my own rankings (which do not conform to the consensus).  Maybe if I post my rankings long enough, I will get a call from some big time conference commissioner, and they will add my totally black box ranking system to the BCS.  So anyway, here are my rankings.  (Some details: I’m only using data from 2011, all teams start on a level playing field (no preseason ranking is considered).  Strength of schedule plays a heavy role in my rankings (which the BCS should love because I’ll likely never put Boise State in my top ten.) I do not consider the location of the game, and I get my data from goldsheet.com.  So rather than using only FCS or FBS data points, I’m using only games that can easily be gambled on (I guess the NCAA BCS won’t be calling; they seem to frown on gambling.))

 Team Rank
Oklahoma State 1
Oklahoma 2
Kansas State 3
Alabama 4
LSU 5
Texas 6
Clemson 7
Baylor 8
Georgia Tech 9
Texas Tech 10
Illinois 11
Michigan 12
South Carolina 13
Stanford 14
Arkansas 15
Texas A&M 16
North Carolina 17
Iowa State 18
Arizona State 19
Wisconsin 20
Virginia Tech 21
Auburn 22
Nebraska 23
USC 24
Penn State 25

BCS: If you want to contact me you can send me a tweet @StatsInTheWild.

Cheers.

NFL Rankings After Week 5

SITW NFL Rankings after week 5.  (Last weeks rankings.)

No changes in the top 7 this week.  New Orleans and Tampa Bay flip flop at 8 and 9.  The biggest movers were Oakland and Indianapolis, in opposite directions of course.  Oakland is up 5 spots to number 17 after beating Houston and Indianapolis falls 6 spots to number 21 after losing to lowly Kansas City.  Indianapolis is the first team to five losses, but probably only because Miami and St. Louis had bye weeks.

And finally, for the first time all season we have a new team at the bottom.  Congratulations Denver Broncos!

Rank – After Week 5  Rank – After Week 4  Change
 New England  1 1 0
 Green Bay 2  2 0
Pittsburgh 3 3 0
Baltimore 4 4 0
 Atlanta 5 5 0
 NY Jets 6  6 0
 Chicago  7  7 0
New Orleans 8 9 1
Tampa Bay 9 8 -1
NY Giants 10 10 0
Detroit  11 11 0
 San Diego 12  13 1
Philadelphia 13 12 -1
Buffalo 14 18 4
Miami 15 17 2
Kansas City 16 19 3
Oakland 17 22 5
Cleveland 18 20 2
Washington 19 14 -5
Tennessee 20 16 -4
Indianapolis 21 15 -6
Cincinnati 22 26 4
San Francisco 23 27 4
Minnesota 24 24 0
Dallas 25 21 -4
Seattle 26 28 2
Jacksonville 27 23 -4
Houston 28 25 -3
St. Louis 29 29 0
Arizona  30  30 0
Carolina  31 32 1
Denver  32 31 -1

Projected playoffs after week 5.  Nothing changes in the AFC except for the 6 seed: The Jets are out and Buffalo is in.  Unlike the AFC, there are some big moves in the NFC.  I now haveNew Orleans as the 2 seed, which drops Tampa Bay to the second wild card slot.  San Francisco moves up from the 4 seed to the 3 seed, and, after two weeks out of the projected playoffs, Washington is back in as a 4 seed after the Giants disgraceful loss to the Seahawks.

Seed AFC NFC
1 New England Green Bay
2 Baltimore New Orleans
3 San Diego San Francisco
4 Tennessee Washington
5 Pittsburgh Detroit
 6 Buffalo Tampa Bay

Cheers.

NFL Rankings After Week 4

SITW NFL Rankings after week 4.  (Last weeks rankings.)

 Team Rank – After Week 4  Rank – After Week 3  Change
 New England  1 1 0
 Green Bay 2  2 0
Pittsburgh 3 3 0
Baltimore 4 5 1
 Atlanta 5  6 1
 NY Jets 6  4 -2
 Chicago  7  7 0
Tampa Bay 8 8 0
New Orleans 9 9 0
NY Giants 10 10 0
Detroit  11 12 1
 Philadelphia 12  11 -1
San Diego 13  13 2
Washington 14 15 5
Indianapolis 15 16 1
Tennessee 16 20 4
Miami 17 13 -4
Buffalo 18 14 -4
Kansas City 19 24 5
Cleveland 20 17 -3
Dallas 21 18 -1
Oakland 22 21 -1
Jacksonville 23 22 -1
Minnesota 24 23 -1
Houston 25 27 2
Cincinnati 26 26 0
San Francisco 27 28 1
Seattle 28 25 -3
St. Louis 29 29 0
Arizona  30  30 0
Denver  31  31 0
 Carolina  32  32 0

Projected playoffs after week 4.  All that I’m changing from week 3 in the NFC South Champion.  Tampa Bay and New Orleans are still both projected to make the playoffs, but Tampa Bay is more likely to win the division.  In the AFC, New England returns to the number 1 projected seed.  Pittsburgh drops all the way from 1 to 5 as they are now projected to be division runner-up with Baltimore winning the AFC North.  I still have Buffalo missing the playoffs.

Seed AFC NFC
1 New England Green Bay
2 Baltimore Tampa Bay
3 San Diego New York Giants
4 Tennessee San Francisco
5 Pittsburgh Detroit
 6 New York Jets New Orleans

Cheers.

NFL Rankings After Week 3

How can I reasonably still have Miami ranked above Buffalo?  I don’t know.  But Buffalo has climbed 10 spots in the SITW rankings this year, so it’s not so crazy.  The reason they aren’t higher is because they did only win 4 games last year.  That’s pretty bad.  They are basically starting from such a low position that its going to take more than 3 wins to move into the NFL’s elite.

SITW NFL Rankings after week 2.

 Team Rank – After Week 3  Rank – After Week 2  Change
 New England  1 1 0
 Green Bay 2  2 0
Pittsburgh 3 4 1
NY Jets 4 3 -1
 Baltimore 5  5 0
 Atlanta 6  6 0
 Chicago  7  7 0
Tampa Bay 8 9 1
New Orleans 9 10 1
NY Giants 10 11 1
Philadelphia  11 8 -3
 Detroit 12  12 0
Miami 13  13 0
Buffalo 14 15 1
San Diego 15 16 1
Indianapolis 16 14 -2
Cleveland 17 21 4
Dallas 18 23 5
Washington 19 17 -2
Tennessee 20 22 2
Oakland 21 24 3
Jacksonville 22 18 -4
Minnesota 23 19 -4
Kansas City 24 20 -4
Seattle 25 27 2
Cincinnati 26 26 0
Houston 27 25 -2
San Francisco 28 29 1
St. Louis 29 28 -1
Arizona  30  30 0
Denver  31  31 0
 Carolina  32  32 0

Here are my projected playoff seeds after week 3.  I’ve made four sets of predictions so far this season and I have thus far picked a different AFC South team to make the playoffs each week.

New England’s loss the the Bills drops them out of the projected number 1 spot and Pittsburgh takes over.  New Orleans and the New York Giants make their debut in the playoff projections at number 2 and 3 in the NFC respectively.  Everything else remains largely the same, with the Bills being so close to a playoff projected team.

Seed AFC NFC
1 Pittsburgh Green Bay
2 New England New Orleans
3 San Diego New York Giants
4 Tennessee San Francisco
5 Baltimore Detroit
 6 New York Jets Tampa Bay

Cheers.

Tennis Graph Masterpiece

Djokovic recently (a few weeks ago at this point) won the US Open and his rise to number 1 has been incredible.  The data for that graph in the article was collected from the ATP website using the R package XML (which I learned about from The Log Cabin).  In that graph, I was only looking at the top 8 players and their points since 2009.  (In 2009 the ATP changed the scoring system, so it’s difficult to compare players directly from before and after 2009).  Anyway, I had all this data and I figured I should mess around with it some more.  This led to my tennis masterpiece graph.

This graph contains the career trajectories for all of the 19 players who have been ranked number 1 in the tennis world since 1990.  Rather than display the total points of players, I am displayed the percentage of points a player had relative the the number one player in the world at any given time.  (Bearing in mind that the points system changed in 2009.)

The bottom part of the graph contains the time series plot for each player containing the percentage of points they had relative to the number one player in the world at the time.  Dashed and solid lines indicate whether a player is inactive or active, respectively and the width of the line is relative to the number of Grand Slam tournaments that a player has won.  The top part of the graph indicates the time period that a player was ranked number 1 as well as the number of gran slam tournaments a player has won.

All told this graph contains (1) the number of graph slam titles for each player (2) the time period each player was number one (3) a time series of their ATP points relative to the number one player in the world at any given time and (4) whether the player is currently active or inactive.  It’s no Napolean’s March on Russia, but what is?

Cheers!

NFL Rankings After Week 2

The ESPN Power Rankings for Week 3 have Houston at number 5; a good reason why I think most sports writers are idiots.  The reason for such a high ranking is because Houston sits at 2-0.  However, they have only beaten lowly Miami and an Indianapolis team without Peyton Manning; not enough for me to move them into the top ten yet, let alone top 5.  It seems just a tad early to proclaim that Houston is an elite NFL team this year.  They were 6-10 last year.   Maybe Houston really is that good, but they’ve got to win more than 2 games to prove it.

SITW NFL Rankings after week 2.

 Team Rank – After Week 1  Rank – After Week 2  Change
 New England  1 1 0
 Green Bay 2  2 0
NY Jets 3  3 0
Pittsburgh 5  4 1
 Baltimore 4  5 -1
 Atlanta 6  6 0
 Chicago  7  7 0
 Philadelphia 8  8 0
Tampa Bay 10  9 1
 New Orleans 9  10 -1
 NY Giants  11  11 0
 Detroit 14  12 2
Miami  12  13 -1
Indianapolis 13  14 -1
Buffalo 20  15 5
San Diego 15  16 -1
Washington 21  17 4
Jacksonville 16  18 -2
Minnesota 18  19 -1
Kansas City 17  20 -3
Cleveland 23  21 2
Tennessee 24  22 2
Dallas 25  23 2
Oakland 19  24 -5
Houston 27  25 2
Cincinnati  22  26 -4
Seattle 26  27 -1
St. Louis 29  28 1
San Francisco 28  29 -1
Arizona  30  30 0
Denver  31  31 0
 Carolina  32  32 0

Here are my projected playoff seeds after week 2.  (You can see my projected playoff teams prior to the start of the season here.)  New England and Green Bay are still the one seeds in the AFC and NFC, respectively.  I’ve swapped Pittsburgh and Baltimore since last week in the 2 and 6 seed spot, and I am now projecting Houston to make the playoffs as a three seed out of the AFC South. (In three weeks I have picked three different teams to win the AFC South so far.)  In the NFC, I’ve moved Atlanta up to the 2 seed after beating Philadelphia and Washington now gets the 3 seed as they are projected to win the NFC East, and I’ve dropped Philadelphia from the playoffs entirely.  I’m sticking with San Francisco out of the NFC West (at least for one more week).  Chicago has steadily dropped all three weeks in the playoff projections from 2 seed to 5 seed to 6 seed this week.  They have been passed over by the Detroit Lions who are projected to be the 5 seed in the NFC.  You heard it here first, Washington, San Francisco, and Detroit in the playoffs.

Seed AFC NFC
1 New England Green Bay
2 Pittsburgh Atlanta
3 Houston Washington
4 San Diego San Francisco
5 New York Jets Detroit
 6 Baltimore Chicago

Cheers.

NFL Playoff Predictions After Week 1

If other sites get to do an Absurdly Premature Playoff Picture, then so do I. Here are my projected playoff seeds after week 1.  (You can see my projected playoff teams prior to the start of the season here.)

Seed AFC NFC
1 New England Green Bay
2 Baltimore Philadelphia
3 Jacksonville Atlanta
4 San Diego San Francisco
5 New York Jets Chicago
 6 Pittsburgh Washington

I’m keeping new England as my one seed in the AFC and I’ve moved Baltimore from a wild card team to a division winner at the 2 seed.  I’m replacing Indianapolis with Jacksonville out of the AFC South and San Diego replaces Kansas City out of the AFC West.  I’ve also bumped the Jets up to 5 from 6 and dropped Pittsburgh to the final wild card spot.

In the NFC, I dropped Atlanta from the 1 seed to the 3 seed and moved Philadelphia up to 2.  I’ve flipped division winners in the NFC North with Green Bay now being my pick out of that division earning a number 1 seed.  Chicago is now project to the the 5 seed and San Francisco limps into the playoffs rather than Seattle out of the NFC West.

An finally, my boldest prediction to date, yes, you did read that correctly: Washington.  Why not?  There next 10 opponents are Arizona, Dallas, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Carolina, Buffalo, San Francisco, Miami, Dallas, Seattle.  Assume they won’t beat Philadelphia.  That leaves 9 games where they have a legitimate chance to win.  Through there first 11 games at something like 8-3 (which isn’t totally crazy (right?)),  they would probably only need to close the season out by winning 2 of their final five games, which are not exactly easy games, against Jew York Jets, New England, New York Giants, Minnesota, and Philadelphia.

Cheers.

NFL Teams Rankings After Week 1

SITW NFL Rankings after week 1.

 Team Preseason Rank  After Week 1 Rank
 New England  1 1
 Green Bay  3  2
 New York Jets  5  3
 Baltimore  6  4
 Pittsburgh  2  5
 Atlanta  4  6
 Chicago  7  7
 Philadelphia  10  8
 New Orleans  9  9
 Tampa Bay  8  10
 New York Giants  11  11
 Miami  13  12
 Indianapolis  12  13
 Detroit  16  14
 San Diego  15  15
 Jacksonville  18  16
 Kansas City  14  17
 Minnesota  17  18
 Oakland  20  19
Buffalo  24  20
Washington  23  21
Cincinnati  26  22
Cleveland  19  23
Tennessee  21  24
Dallas  25  25
Seattle  22  26
Houston  29  27
San Francisco  28  28
St. Louis  27  29
Arizona  30  30
 Denver  31  31
 Carolina  32  32

Cheers.