Stats in the Wild

Deadspin posted this story today: UNC Athletes Were Steered To School’s Sports Ethics Professor.  It’s the latest in the scandal that is happening at UNC academic fraud case related the the athletics department.  It’s an easy joke to make: ethics professor leading the way in unethical behavior.  And this was exactly my first thought.  There is something about college sports that makes adults act like idiots and fools.  I’ll never get it.

But then I thought, what exactly is unethical about what she, Jan Boxill, is alleged to have done?  She is basically alleged to have given passing grades to athletes who were doing almost nothing.  Sure, if these students are trying to get a degree, giving them credit for nothing is clearly unethical and devalues the degree for everyone.  But a lot of these athletes aren’t there to get some B.S. (pun intended) degree in [insert joke major].  This is big time college sports.  They are there to prepare for a career in sports.  And she is doing the best she can to help them focus on preparing for that career by keeping them eligible.  Remember, these students have almost no other options in preparing for a career in sports.  They pretty much have to bow down to the NCAA for at least a year.

Imagine this scenario in reverse where a student desperately wanted to be a physicist, but they wouldn’t let him or her work in the lab because they were failing basketball.  That’s insane.  But it happens all the time with sports.  That’s why I think that students should be able to major in a sport.  Call it athletic studies.  Make them take courses in finance, kinesiology, sports management, and whatever sport they are interested in.

The garbage argument in response to this is always, but most people don’t go on to play professional sports.  If getting a job in your major is the criteria for allowing a major to exist, then we need to get rid of philosophy, music, art, english, etc.  Basically anything outside of STEM.  (Speaking of ethics, is it really ethical to let an 18 year old study philosophy for 4 years and send them out into the world with $200K in debt?  At least some athletes don’t have to pay for their lack of marketable skills.)

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that, isn’t it possible that in some weird twisted way Boxill is actually acting ethically?  Or at least more ethically than one of the the lowest ethical bar setting organizations in the US: the NCAA?

#paytheplayers

Cheers.

Total (weeks 1-11) – SU: 111-49-1 (69.25%) ATS: 81-78-2 (50.93%, -4.8 units)   O/U: 84-75-2 (52.80%, +1.5 units)

Week 1 – SU: 9-7-0 ATS: 8-8-0 O/U: 13-3-0

Week 2 – SU: 10-6-0 ATS: 10-6-0 O/U: 10-6-0

Week 3 – SU: 12-4-0 ATS: 9-6-1  O/U: 8-8-0

Week 4 – SU: 7-6-0 ATS: 5-7-1  O/U: 5-8-0

Week 5 – SU: 14-2-0 ATS: 6-9-0  O/U: 9-6-0

Week 6 – SU: 11-3-1 ATS: 8-7-0  O/U: 6-9-1

Week 7 – SU: 11-4-0 ATS: 7-8-0  O/U: 8-7-0

Week 8 – SU: 11-3-0 ATS: 8-7-0 O/U: 8-7-0

Week 9 – SU: 9-4-0 ATS: 8-5-0 O/U: 4-8-1

Week 10 – SU: 9-4-0 ATS: 4-9-0 O/U: 6-7-0

Week 11 – SU: 9-5-0 ATS: 8-6-0 O/U: 7-7-0

Buffalo at Miami

Prediction: Dolphins 23-20

Pick: Bills +5.5 (57.09%)

Total: Over 42

Detroit at Arizona

Prediction:  Cardinals 22-21 (52.0%)

Pick: Detroit +1.5 (52.26%)

Total: Over 42

Atlanta at Carolina

Prediction: Panthers 24-21 (57.5%)

Pick: Panthers -2.5 (50.46%)

Total: Under 46.5

Minnesota at Chicago

Prediction: Bears 24-20 (63.4%)

Pick: Bears -3.5 (53.71%)

Total: Under 46.5

Houston at Cleveland

Prediction: Texans 22-21 (50.2%)

Pick:Texans +3.5 (60.04%)

Total: Over 41.5

Philadelphia at Green Bay

Prediction: Packers 27-23 (60.9%)

Pick: Eagles +5.5 (54.61%)

Total: Under 55.5 

Seattle at Kansas City

Prediction: Seahawks 21-19 (56.1%)

Pick: Seahawks +1.5 (60.31%)

Total: Under 42

Cincinnati at New Orleans

Prediction: Saints 27-23 (63.6%)

Pick: Bengals +7.5 (57.41%)

Total: Under 51

San Francisco at NY Giants

Prediction: 49ers 22-20 (54.3%)

Pick: Giants +4.5 (58.48%)

Total: Under 44.5

Oakland at San Diego

Prediction: Chargers 26-18 (69.6%)

Pick: Raiders +10.5 (59.42%)

Total: Under 45

Denver at St. Louis

Prediction: Broncos 27-21 (65.8%)

Pick: Rams +9.5 (60.75%)

Total: Under 51.5

Tampa Bay at Washington

Prediction: Washington Football Team 24-20 (62.4%)

Pick: Buccaneers +7.5 (58.72%)

Total: Under 45.5

New England at Indianapolis

Prediction: Patriots 27-26 (52.2%)

Pick: Patriots +2.5 (59.26%)

Total:  Under 58.5

Pittsburgh at Tennessee

Prediction: Steelers 22-21 (52.2%)

Pick: Titans +5.5 (63.25%)

Total: Under 46.5

A few weeks ago the College Football Playoff (CFP) committee published their first rankings.  That led to this train of though:

• Wow.  Those look a lot like the AP rankings.
• I wonder what rankings the CFP is closest too?
• Where can I get a bunch of different ratings to compere?  MASSEY!

So, I downloaded all of the ratings that Massey had collected and compared each of them to the CFP rankings using Kendall’s Tau.  And guess what?  The AP rankings are the most highly correlated rankings with the CFP with tau=.8478261.  So basically, we’re back to the days when the AP picked the national champion?  Well not exactly.  Now we have the AP AND the RPI.  Because guess what’s next most highly correlated? Real Time RPI!  At tau=.833333333333, the RPI falls just behind the AP in the most highly correlated rankings. This is rather alarming, because basically anyone who has any idea what they are doing, knows the RPI is terrible.  (See this, this, and this.)  To highlight this, I’ll take a quote from that second link from Nate Silver in regards to the RPI in terms of selecting NCAA basketball teams:

Over the long run, R.P.I. has predicted the outcome of N.C.A.A. games more poorly than almost any other system.

Basically, the RPI is terrible, everyone who knows what they are doing knows it, but it still gets used because….I have no idea.

Following the RPI, you have the USA Today Coaches poll with a tau of .8115942.  So basically the CFP is using some sort of secret combination of two human polls and basically the worst non-human ranking that is available.  As opposed to the BCS which was a known combination of two human polls and 6 computer systems that ranged from very good to dreadful.  (At least the BCS didn’t involve completely inexplicable people like Condoleezza Rice.  Seriously, why is she involved in this?  If you really want a woman on the committee aren’t there literally thousands of women more qualified for this than her?)

Also, for the sake of it, I made a decision tree to try to predict the CFB rankings.  It looks like the formula for getting into the playoff is be top 15 in coaches poll and then be top 3 in RPI.   The three variables are the USA Today coaches poll (X.USA), the AP poll (X.AP), and Real Time RPI (X.RTR).  My response was the CFP rank with all teams not ranked set to 26.

All of this of course would infuriate me if the NCAA was earnestly trying to find the 4 best teams in college football to put into a playoff.  But I suspect that’s not necessarily their goal.  The NCAA is about one thing: MONEY.  They can say whatever they want, but they are ruled by money (none of which goes to the actual people who produce the product!).  Because of this, this sham process somehow bothers me less.  The NCAA is trying to get the 4 “best” teams into the college football playoff.  They are just using their definition of best, which is probably much different than that of the average fan.  And besides I’ve got bigger problems with the NCAA. (See here, here, here, here, here, and here for starters.)

Cheers.

Mississippi State stays number 1 virtually everywhere (including my rankings) after remaining undefeated at 9-0.  My rankings have Alabama and Ole Miss moving up to numbers 2 and 3 after an OT victory over LSU and a blowout win over Presbyterian, respectively.  Auburn moves in the other direction, dropping 2 spots to number 4 after losing to Texas A and M.  So, if I were choosing the college football play-off, I’d take 4 teams from the SEC West.  Will this happen?  No.  For starters, a number of these top 4 teams have to play (beat the crap out of each other) in the next few weeks (i.e Miss St-Alabama, the Egg Bowl, Alabama-Auburn).  As far as I am concerned, all of these are de facto play-off games.

The rest of my top 10 includes: TCU, Oregon, UCLA, Baylor, Florida St, and Georgia.  TCU is up 2 spots with it’s win over Kansas State (who fell 3 spots and out of my top 10).  Oregon remains in 6th, with UCLA up 2 spots to 7th.  Baylor made the biggest move into the top ten this week jumping 11 spots to number 8 after their destruction of Oklahoma.  If Baylor and TCU win out, I see Baylor being ranked higher than TCU as a results of Baylor’s head-to-head win over TCU and Baylor’s remaining game against Kansas State.  TCU’s remaining schedule is Kansas, Texas, and Iowa State whose combined records are 10-18.  TCU basically can’t improve, whereas Baylor has one big game left to help it jump into the top 4.  Florida state continues to slowly climb the rankings moving from 10 to 9.  They are hurt by there very weak schedule, and that “big win” over Notre Dame looks a lot less impressive after Notre Dame got blown out by Arizona State.  If they go undefeated, their obviously in playoff.  No questions asked; No matter how weak their schedule.  Rounding out the top 10, I have Georgia after a blowout victory over Kentucky a week after recovering from their dreadful loss to the Florida Gators.

As for teams that dropped out of my top 25 this week: Notre Dame fell from 14 to 27; Michigan State fell from 21 to 32; Louisiana Tech fell from 25 to 34.

An finally, congratulations to New Mexico State for moving out of the basement, swapping places with Georgia State.  Go team!

Full Rankings: http://wp.me/PlZJR-Hv

Total (weeks 1-10) – SU: 102-44-1 () ATS: 73-72-2 ()   O/U: 77-68-2 ()

Week 1 – SU: 9-7-0 ATS: 8-8-0 O/U: 13-3-0

Week 2 – SU: 10-6-0 ATS: 10-6-0 O/U: 10-6-0

Week 3 – SU: 12-4-0 ATS: 9-6-1  O/U: 8-8-0

Week 4 – SU: 7-6-0 ATS: 5-7-1  O/U: 5-8-0

Week 5 – SU: 14-2-0 ATS: 6-9-0  O/U: 9-6-0

Week 6 – SU: 11-3-1 ATS: 8-7-0  O/U: 6-9-1

Week 7 – SU: 11-4-0 ATS: 7-8-0  O/U: 8-7-0

Week 8 – SU: 11-3-0 ATS: 8-7-0 O/U: 8-7-0

Week 9 – SU: 9-4-0 ATS: 8-5-0 O/U: 4-8-1

Week 10 – SU: 9-4-0 ATS: 4-9-0 O/U: 6-7-0

Cleveland at Cincinnati

Prediction: Bengals 25-19 (65.8%)

Pick: Browns +6.5 (52.3%)

Total: Under 46

St. Louis at Arizona

Prediction: Cardinals 23-19 (61.6%)

Pick: Rams +7 (58.1%)

Total: Under 43.5

Tennessee at Baltimore

Prediction: Ravens 24-18 (66.3%)

Pick: Titans +10 (61.5%)

Total: Under 44

Kansas City at Buffalo

Prediction: Bills 21-20 (53.3%)

Pick: Bills +2.5 (60.3%)

Total: Under 42

Miami at Detroit

Prediction: Lions 24-20 (60.1%)

Pick: Lions -3 (51.7%)

Total: Under 44

Chicago at Green Bay

Prediction: Packers 26-22 (62.5%)

Pick: Bears +7.5 (58.5%)

Total: Under 53.5

Dallas at Jacksonville

Prediction: Cowboys 24-20 (61.8%)

Pick: Jaguars +7.5 (59.3%)

Total: Under 45

San Francisco at New Orleans

Prediction: Saints 25-22 (56.1%) 

Pick: 49ers +5.5 (59.4%)

Total: Under 49.5

Pittsburgh at NY Jets

Prediction: Steelers 21-20 (51.1%)

Pick: Jets +6 (65.6%)

Total: Under 46

Denver at Oakland

Prediction: Broncos 28-20 (70.3%)

Pick: Raiders +12 (62.7%)

Total: Under 50

Carolina at Philadelphia

Prediction: Eagles 25-22 (58.7%)

Pick: Panthers +6.5 (59.7%)

Total: Under 49

NY Giants at Seattle 

Prediction: Seahawks 25-17 (69.3%)

Pick: Giants +9.5 (56.9%)

Total: Under 45.5

Atlanta at Tampa Bay 

Prediction: Falcons 22-21 (50.7%)

Pick: Buccaneers +3 (57.8%)

Total: Under 46

Nate Silver and Sam Wang are two of the most popular prognosticators of elections in the United States.  They are also known to be openly critical of each other’s methods.  But now that the elections are over, let’s take a look and see how each of them fared.

Wang suggests using the Briere Score to evaluate predictions, so I’m going to use that as one measure.  This measure compares the predicted win probabilities to the actual outcomes and takes the average the squared differences.  I also looked at the mean squared error of the predicted margins of victory as another measure of accuracy.

Silver amassed a Briere score of .14656 based on the 12 closest senate elections (Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Colorado, Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Virginia).  For those same races, the Silver put up a mean squared error of 38.727 for margins of victory. Wang fared worse by both these measures with a Briere score of .17018 and a mean squared error of 44.981.

I’ve summarized the results in the graphic below.  Each square represent the squared error of margin of victory within a state, and the color of the square corresponds to which direction Wang or Silver was wrong in.  For instance, Silver predicted a 5 point win for the Republicans in Arkansas, but they actually won by 17.13.  So the square is very red because they Republicans exceeded Silver’s expectations.   Alternatively, Louisiana was just slightly bluer than both Wang and Silver projected, so the square gets a slight hint of blue.

So I’m declaring Silver the winner of this round in the batter of Silver vs Wang.

However, if you look at all of the other popular senate predictions, Silver was not the winner.  According to Sam Wang, that title goes to Drew Linzer of the DailyKos for his Senate predictions based on Briere score and followed by the Washington Post.  FiveThirtyEight came next in a group that included the Huiffington Post and Betfair.com with Briere scores of 0.14.  (These Briere scores are slightly different than the ones I calculated, as I used a few more states.) This was then followed by the Upshot and the Princeton Election Consortium.  So while Silver, the highest profile of all the prognosticators, won the Silver vs Wang battle, he sort of finished in the middle of pack in terms of predictions.  At least he can take solace in the fact that he beat his old employer!

Cheers.

Massey has compiled a list of 114 different college football ratings for comparison.  Go take a look at them.  Now go to the bottom and look at the conference rankings.  Scroll across the page and you’ll see that the SEC is literally the unanimous….wait, what?  Only 110 of the 114 rankings have the SEC rated number 1.

This means there are four that rankings don’t have the SEC at the top. Which rankings are these?  3 of them are polls: The AP Poll, the USA Today Poll, and the College Football Playoff Committee.  However, you rank college football teams this year, if you don’t have the SEC rated as the best conference, you’re ranking is absolutely meaningless in my book (and I think many people would agree).  It’s absolutely insane that the three polls that get this wrong are 1/3 of the old BCS, a coaches poll, and the rankings that will determine the college football playoffs.  (At this point, is it reasonable to assume the the NCAA is just messing with college football fans in an elaborate work of performance art?) It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the SEC is the best conference in college football this year. If you’re rankings don’t reflect that, it’s simply hard to have any faith that you know what you are doing.  

But wait, it gets worse.  Something called FEI has the SEC ranked THIRD (?!?!) best conference in football this year behind the Pac-12 and the ACC.  What in the world is the FEI?  FEI is apparently and abbreviation for the Fremeau Efficiency Index.   Apparently this is one of the two components that Football Outsiders uses in it’s F/+ ratings.  Now I swear to you, I’m not actively going out of my way to pick on Football Outsiders for bad statistics, but it just seems to keep happening.  (See for instance, former FO writer Bill Barnwell doing a terrible “study” and some of their “analysis” of place kicking.) Now add in that their overall ranking system for college football has the SEC ranked 3rd and it’s even harder to take their slogan seriously: “Innovative Statistics, Intelligent Analysis”.

There is a fine line between genius and insanity and Football Outsiders are either geniuses who see something in the Pac-12 and the ACC that literally no one outside of the media polls sees or they are living in a completely alternate college football reality.

Cheers.

Total (weeks 1-9) – SU: 93-40-1 (69.8%) ATS: 69-63-2 (52.2%, -.2 units)   O/U: 71-61-2 (53.7%, +4 units)

Week 1 – SU: 9-7-0 ATS: 8-8-0 O/U: 13-3-0

Week 2 – SU: 10-6-0 ATS: 10-6-0 O/U: 10-6-0

Week 3 – SU: 12-4-0 ATS: 9-6-1  O/U: 8-8-0

Week 4 – SU: 7-6-0 ATS: 5-7-1  O/U: 5-8-0

Week 5 – SU: 14-2-0 ATS: 6-9-0  O/U: 9-6-0

Week 6 – SU: 11-3-1 ATS: 8-7-0  O/U: 6-9-1

Week 7 – SU: 11-4-0 ATS: 7-8-0  O/U: 8-7-0

Week 8 – SU: 11-3-0 ATS: 8-7-0 O/U: 8-7-0

Week 9 – SU: 9-4-0 ATS: 8-5-0 O/U: 4-8-1

New Orleans at Carolina

Prediction: Saints 25-24 (50.3%)

Pick: Panthers +3 (58.2%)

Total: Over 49

Jacksonville at Cincinnati

Prediction: Bengals 26-16 (76.2%)

Pick: Jaguars +11.5 (54.3%)

Total: Under 43.5

Tampa Bay at Cleveland

Prediction: Browns 23-19 (58.9%)

Pick: Buccaneers +7 (60.8%)

Total: Under 44

Arizona at Dallas

Prediction: Cowboys 25-21 (61.2%)

Pick: Cardinals +4.5 (51.5%)

Total:  Over 45 PUSH

Philadelphia at Houston

Prediction: Texans 24-22 (55.8%)

Pick: Texans +2.5 (62.7%)

Total: Under 48.5

NY Jets at Kansas City

Prediction: Chiefs 21-17 (62.3%)

Pick: Jets +10 (65.6%)

Total: Under 42

San Diego at Miami

Prediction: Dolphins 23-21 (53.7%)

Pick: Dolphins -1 (50.8%)

Total: Under 44.5

Washington at Minnesota

Prediction: Vikings 22-21 (53.7%)

Pick: Washington Football Team +2.5 (53.5%)

Total: Under 43.5

Denver at New England

Prediction: Patriots 28-27 (53.9%)

Pick: Patriots +3.5 (63.6%)

Total: Under 56

Baltimore at Pittsburgh

Prediction: Steelers 23-21 (55.1%)

Pick: Steelers -1 (52.3%)

Total: Under 48.5

St. Louis at San Francisco

Prediction: 49ers 25-17 (71.6%)

Pick: Rams +10 (55.7%)

Total: Under 44

Oakland at Seattle

Prediction: Seahawks 26-15 (78.2%)

Pick: Raiders +15 (61.5%)

Total: Under 43.5

Indianapolis at NY Giants

Prediction: Giants 24-23 (54.0%)

Pick: Giants +3.5 (63.7%)

Total: Under 52

Full Rankings