THE POWER RANK

  • About
    • About The Power Rank
    • Start Here
    • Contact
  • Predictions
    • Games
    • March Madness
  • Content
    • Must Read
    • Blog
    • Podcast
    • The Craft of Sports Betting Professionals
    • March Madness Book
  • Rankings
    • College Basketball
    • College Football
    • NFL
    • NFL passing success rate
    • World Soccer/Football
    • MLB
    • Cluster Luck
  • Members
    • My Account
    • Login
    • Become a member
  • Log in

Will The SEC Still Make The BCS Title Game?

By Dr. Ed Feng 5 Comments

When Alabama lost to Texas A&M this weekend, it left no undefeated SEC teams. In response, my friend Chris Haddock, a family practice doctor and raging Georgia Bulldogs fan, posted this on Facebook:

UGA has one win against a BCS Top 10 opponent. Florida has three. Alabama has two. Comined Kansas State, Oregon, Notre Dame have ZERO. Nada. Zilch. If the SEC Championship Game winner doesn’t play for the national championship then it is a tainted title to whichever of these undeserving non-SEC teams wins.

Since the SEC has won the last 6 national championships, many will share this sentiment.

And our numbers agree. Alabama only dropped to 2nd behind Oregon in our rankings, and 6 of the top 10 teams come from the SEC. With this many good teams in a conference, you expect every team to lose at least once.

The question becomes whether the SEC champion, either Alabama or 7th ranked Georgia, makes the BCS title game. For this to happen, two of these 3 teams must lose.

Oregon.

  • Team rank: 1st.
  • Probability of remaining undefeated: 58.7%.
  • Toughest remaining game: 76.3% chance to beat Oregon State.

Kansas State.

  • Team rank: 3rd.
  • Probability of remaining undefeated: 64%.
  • Toughest remaining game: 80% chance to beat Texas.

Notre Dame.

  • Team rank: 8th.
  • Probability of remaining undefeated: 41.4%.
  • Toughest remaining game: 44% chance to beat USC.

Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be able to publish Chris’s next post if Notre Dame squeaks past USC and into the national title game ahead of the SEC champion.

Last week, Alper Akanser, a Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech, took our undefeated probabilities and determined the chance that 0, 1, 2… teams would remain undefeated. This week, his code gives a 42.7% chance that 0 or 1 teams remain undefeated, opening the door for the SEC champion.

That’s pretty good odds for the SEC.

Filed Under: Alabama Crimson Tide, College Football, College Football 2012, College Football Analytics, Georgia Bulldogs, Kansas State Wildcats, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Oregon Ducks

Comments

  1. matt says

    November 14, 2012 at 2:46 pm

    All the proves is confirmation bias. If people think the SEC is very good and then SEC teams lose a game to each other, they don’t get knocked down because everyone thinks its such a tough conference that one loss is ok.

    South Carolina has lost two games and their best win is against Georgia. The next best win would be what? Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee? Georgia’s best win is Florida but they lost badly to a South Carolina team that hasn’t proven a thing against anyone of substance. You can continue to use this logic.

    Reply
    • Ed Feng says

      November 14, 2012 at 2:55 pm

      Well, I certainly have my biases. And so do my friends down South.

      But my rankings do not. There’s nothing human about the 5 SEC teams in the top 10 right now.

      Crap, I made a mistake. There are 6 SEC teams in the top 10. I skipped LSU.

      Reply
      • matt says

        November 14, 2012 at 3:10 pm

        I can respect a quant based approach and its certainly better than the always subjective eye test, but things seem to get muddied when the only above average team a particular team plays is against another team that does the same thing. Sounds confusing so I’ll lay it out like this.

        How do we know South Carolina is good? Their 6 conference wins have come against teams with a combined conf record of 13-21. Eliminate Georgia and its 6-20. But Georgia is a good win. Or is it? Their 7 conf wins have come against opponents with a combined SEC record of 15-33. Eliminate Florida and it’s 8-32. So South Carolina is good because they beat Georgia who beat Florida?

        This seems to a lot of transitive property at work. Yes, the SEC has some very good teams, but it’s ridiculous to say that the top 10 teams in the country are all in that conference when the conference itself is very top heavy. So each team loses a game to another top team and its fine, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of their wins have come against bad teams. We don’t know how good the SEC is because for the most part, they don’t play anyone of merit outside the conference and pad their schedules with bottom tier FBS and even FCS schools.

        Reply
        • Ed Feng says

          November 15, 2012 at 3:02 pm

          The 6 SEC teams in the top 10 results from 2 factors:

          1. large margin of victory in out of conference wins. Bama over Michigan comes to mind first.

          2. these 6 teams with big margin of victory over the lower teams in the conference.

          While the SEC certainly doesn’t challenge itself out of conference as well as it should, they do have big games coming up: South Carolina against Clemson, Florida against Florida State. We’ll see how these games turn out, as well as bowl games.

          Reply
      • Aaron says

        November 15, 2012 at 5:29 am

        Asked another way: What out of conference wins are making the sec so strong? Presumably your metrics wouldn’t reward for in conference unless those were validated by out of conference results. Can you point to a few(?) games whose results are propelling the sec to the top? If one or two had gone differently, would it affect you rankings in any material way?

        Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Data driven betting information

Valuable. Concise. Entertaining.

To sign up for The Power Rank's email newsletter, enter your best email and click on "Sign up now!"

Popular Articles

  • How to predict interceptions in the NFL
  • 5 insights from academic research on predicting world soccer/football matches
  • How to win your NCAA tournament pool
  • The ultimate guide to predictive college basketball analytics
  • Accurate football predictions with linear regression
  • The surprising truth about passing and rushing in the NFL
  • Football analytics resource guide
  • The Reason You Can’t Avoid The Curse of Small Sample Size
  • The essential guide to predictive CFB rankings
  • How computer rankings make you smarter about sports
  • How to win your college football bowl pool
  • Do you make these 3 mistakes with college football statistics?
  • The Top 10 Things to Know About The Power Rank’s Methods

Recent Articles

  • 5-Nugget Saturday, March 25, 2023
  • Alabama’s championship probability
  • Members: Sweet Sixteen futures
  • 5-Nugget Saturday, March 18, 2023
  • Members: NCAA tournament prop bets

© 2023 The Power Rank Inc., All rights reserved.

About, Terms of Use, Privacy Policy

Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes

Valuable. Concise. Entertaining.


These are the goals with every correspondence, which cover bets on the NFL and college football.


To sign up for The Power Rank's free email newsletter, enter your best email and click on "Sign up now!"


No thanks, I'll make my predictions without data and analytics.

{"cookieName":"wBounce","isAggressive":false,"isSitewide":true,"hesitation":"","openAnimation":false,"exitAnimation":false,"timer":"","sensitivity":"","cookieExpire":"","cookieDomain":"","autoFire":"","isAnalyticsEnabled":true}
  • About
    • About The Power Rank
    • Start Here
    • Contact
  • Predictions
    • Games
    • March Madness
  • Content
    • Must Read
    • Blog
    • Podcast
    • The Craft of Sports Betting Professionals
    • March Madness Book
  • Rankings
    • College Basketball
    • College Football
    • NFL
    • NFL passing success rate
    • World Soccer/Football
    • MLB
    • Cluster Luck
  • Members
    • My Account
    • Login
    • Become a member