THE POWER RANK

How To Use Simple Division to Evaluate Notre Dame at USC

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The BCS calculus for Notre Dame is simple. Beat USC on Saturday and play in the national championship game. Can the Fighting Irish do it?

Most of the headlines focus on Notre Dame’s defense. Led by linebacker Manti T’eo, the Fighting Irish have allowed 10.1 points per game, best in the nation. With the injury to USC quarterback Matt Barkley, Notre Dame’s defense will most likely have a good day.

But what about Notre Dame’s offense?

Notre Dame’s Offense

The raw statistics suggest Notre Dame has a poor offense. For example, the Fighting Irish pass for 211 yards per game, a number that includes negative yards from sacks. Their 74th ranking places them below average nationally.

However, total yards per game is a misleading statistic.

Yards per game depends on how many times a team throws the ball. Notre Dame doesn’t throw the ball as often as the spread offense of West Virginia. Using simple division, we divide total pass yards per game by the number of attempts to obtain a better metric of pass offense. Notre Dame averages 6.83 yards per pass attempt, 51st best in the nation.

Simple division turns a below average pass offense into an above average one.

Dividing total yards by the number of plays lets us account for the pace of the football game. It is analogous to the tempo free statistics that Dean Oliver introduced into basketball. Looking at points per possession shed a new light on offenses that didn’t fast break and looked for the best possible shot late in the shot clock. Yards per attempt is the first step in incorporating these ideas into football.

Match Up With USC’s Defense

At The Power Rank, we take yards per pass attempt and adjust it for strength of schedule. Since Notre Dame has played top pass defenses such as Stanford, Michigan State and Oklahoma, our algorithm bumps up their pass offense from 51st to 28th. Their rating of 7.04 gives a predicted yards per attempt against an average pass defense.

Below, we show how our adjusted numbers for Notre Dame’s offense match up with USC’s defense. A better defense has a blue dot further to the right. Then the unit with the dot further to the right is predicted to have the advantage in the match up. By overall yards per play, Notre Dame’s offense enjoys a slight advantage over USC’s disappointing defense.

The Power Rank shows how teams match up with data visualization.

These visuals appear on our interactive team pages, the heart of our premium college football product. For more information, click here.

Outlook

Our team rankings predict a very even game (USC by 0.3 points). However, these numbers reflect a USC team with quarterback Matt Barkley. The Vegas line has Notre Dame as a 6 point favorite.

Is the injury to Barkley worth 6 points? We’ll find out Saturday.

Thanks for reading.

Will The SEC Still Make The BCS Title Game?

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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.

How Likely is BCS Chaos?

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Earlier this week, we calculated that Alabama, Kansas State, Oregon and Notre Dame had a 6.7% chance to all remain undefeated. Alper Akanser, a member of The Power Rank, went one step further. Using our probability for each team to remain undefeated, he calculated the likelihood that any number of teams remain undefeated.

  • 0 of 4 teams remain undefeated: 5.4%.
  • 1 of 4 teams remain undefeated: 23.5%.
  • 2 of 4 teams remain undefeated: 38.0%.
  • 3 of 4 teams remain undefeated: 26.4%.
  • 4 of 4 teams remain undefeated: 6.7%.

For those of us keen to inflict extra embarrassment upon the lame duck BCS system, there’s a 33.1% chance that at least 3 of these teams remain undefeated.

Thanks, Alper. We appreciate others doing work for us 🙂

14 Reasons The Top 4 BCS Teams Won’t All Remain Undefeated

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The Playoff PAC made this trophy for those undefeated teams that do not play in the National Championship game.

If Alabama, Kansas State, Oregon and Notre Dame remain undefeated, there will be some angry college football fan in early December. The antiquated BCS can pick only 2 teams for its championship game. The four team playoff that will grace this sport in 2014 can’t come soon enough.

However, the likelihood that all 4 teams remain undefeated is small. To understand why, assume these teams have a 80% chance to win each of their remaining games. The 80% reflects the dominance of these teams, and the uniform win probability makes the math simple. Including the conference championship games, these teams have 14 games remaining. The probability that they all remain undefeated is 0.8 to the 14th power, or 4.4%.

Not very likely.

What Retirement Says About College Football

To understand why this probability is so small, consider a retirement account. If this investment returns 10% annually, then $10,000 becomes $11,000 next year but compounds to $174,494 in 30 years. In the opposite way, the chance these teams remain undefeated decreases rapidly with the number of remaining games. Your mathematician friends call this an exponential decrease. The 14 remaining games are the reasons we won’t likely see four undefeated teams at season’s end.

Again, the 80% win probability is a uniform number that simplifies the math in showing the exponential decrease. On the field, Alabama has a higher likelihood (81.1%) of beating Texas A&M on Saturday. With the more realistic win probabilities of The Power Rank, there is a 6.7% chance these 4 teams remain undefeated. This includes an Alabama versus Georgia SEC championship game. Also, it assumes UCLA, the most likely team to win the Pac-12 South, travels to Oregon for the Pac-12 championship game.

Detailed Breakdown of the Four Teams.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the remaining defeated teams. The team rank come from our college football rankings. The offense and defense rankings results from adjusting yards per play for strength of schedule.

Alabama. Either the Crimson Tide pass defense had an off night against LSU or Zack Mettenberger became Andrew Luck overnight. The former is more likely.

  • Team rank: 1st.
  • Probability of remaining undefeated: 58.7%.
  • Toughest remaining game: 75.6% chance to beat Georgia.
  • Offense rank: 1st.
  • Defense rank: 2nd.

Kansas State. While Colin Klein’s arm motion isn’t pretty, he is leading the 4th best pass offense according to our numbers.

  • Team rank: 3rd.
  • Probability of remaining undefeated: 57.1%.
  • Toughest remaining game: 82.2% chance to beat TCU.
  • Offense rank: 7th.
  • Defense rank: 30th.

Oregon. Can a team slow down Oregon’s rushing attack enough to make freshman quarterback Marcus Mariota beat them? While Stanford has the 3rd best rush defense, the Ducks have made them look silly the past two years.

  • Team rank: 2nd.
  • Probability of remaining undefeated: 48.2%.
  • Toughest remaining game: 72.4% chance to beat Oregon State.
  • Offense rank: 6th.
  • Defense rank: 13th.

Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish were 5th in our rankings before their near death experience at home against Pitt.

  • Team rank: 9th.
  • Probability of remaining undefeated: 41.6%.
  • Toughest remaining game: 49.7% chance to beat USC.
  • Offense rank: 23rd.
  • Defense rank: 11th.

What do you think?

Will these teams all remain undefeated? Who will go down first? Please leave us a comment.

Thanks for reading.

TCU and other teams that make early season rankings difficult

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Long road to the top
Coach Patterson, TCU
Rose Bowl hangover?

There’s always a long road before true success. Gary Patterson’s road started in Davis, California. In the 80’s, this sleepy suburb of Sacramento had an innovative football program that won 20 straight conference championships in Division II. Boise State coach Chris Peterson and former Oregon coach Mike Bellotti both spent time at UC Davis. In 1986, Patterson got the job as co-linebackers coach, a position that paid $1,500… at the end of the season. He made ends meet through the generosity of others. It wasn’t glamorous, but Patterson learned about the flex defense that Tom Landry developed with the Dallas Cowboys, the foundation for the record setting defenses Patterson has coached at TCU.

In the late 90’s, Patterson found himself as the defensive coordinator at TCU when head coach Dennis Franchione left for Alabama. His old boss told TCU that Patterson wasn’t ready to be head coach. The school disagreed, and Patterson has turned TCU into an annual contender. Franchione, on the other hand, is now the coach at Texas A&M… oh wait, he resigned after going 19-21 in Big 12 play in 5 years. No, he’s the coach at Texas… oh wait, they would never hire a guy who sold a secret newsletter about this team at Texas A&M. Franchione recently took the head coaching job at Texas State. At least the Bobcats step up to the top subdivision of Division I football next year. Coaches may want to think twice before leaving a good situation with a great defensive coordinator.

Gary Patterson has brought TCU to the pinnacle of college football, winning 99 games over the last ten years and the Rose Bowl over Wisconsin last year. But this year, the Horned Frogs are one of those teams that make early season rankings so hard. They lost senior quarterback Andy Dalton, 4 of 5 starters on the offensive line, and 6 starters on defense. In their season opener, TCU lost 50-48 to a Baylor team they thumped 45-10 last year. Patterson’s secondary, which returns no starters from last year, gave up 6 touchdown passes and 14.3 yards per pass attempt. This past week against Air Force, TCU won 35-19 but the defense gave up 5.8 yards per carry compared to 4.5 last year against Air Force. With these two weak performances from the defense, it’s not clear whether this TCU team will end up 7th or higher in The Power Rank at the end of the season. This week, we highlight other teams whose early season rank might not reflect their true strength.

2. Oregon. The Ducks lost 3 offensive linemen and 6 starters on defense. They make this list largely due to their 69-20 win over Nevada this weekend. Nevada ended last season 11th in The Power Rank, but they might not sustain such a high rank this year. While they ended 2010 with a 15.0 rating, they averaged a -1.6 rating the 5 seasons before that. So Oregon’s win this past weekend might not mean as much by the end of the year.

4. Auburn. The Tigers lost quarterback Cam Newton and only had 6 returning starters overall. Last week, they should have lost to Utah State at home. However, they rebounded this week to beat 19th ranked Mississippi State by 7 at home with a brilliant goal line stand as time expired. But it’s reasonable to question whether Auburn will end the season as high as 4th.

36. Notre Dame. Thank you, fighting Irish, for having two turnovers within twenty yards of Michigan’s endzone. Thank you, Irish, for giving up 28 points in the fourth quarter. The Power Rank made its first prediction in which some common sense about turnovers modified our calculations. While we said Notre Dame would cover the 3 points they were favored by, they lost by 4 when Michigan drove 80 yards in 0:28 for the winning touchdown with 0:02 left in the game. We would make the same call every time. While many expected Notre Dame to content for a major bowl this year, their performance so far this year makes a rise in the rankings questionable.

Rankings through Saturday, September 10.

1. Boise State, 13-1, 23.52
2. Oregon, 12-3, 22.25
3. Alabama, 12-3, 20.73
4. Auburn, 16-0, 20.31
5. LSU, 13-2, 19.91
6. Stanford, 14-1, 19.83
7. TCU, 13-2, 19.73
8. Arkansas, 12-3, 17.12
9. Wisconsin, 13-2, 16.57
10. Oklahoma, 12-2, 15.59
11. Ohio State, 14-1, 15.38
12. Virginia Tech, 15-1, 15.13
13. Oklahoma State, 13-2, 14.75
14. Nebraska, 12-4, 13.60
15. Florida State, 11-3, 13.25
16. South Carolina, 11-5, 12.60
17. Missouri, 10-5, 12.06
18. Texas A&M, 9-4, 11.64
19. Mississippi State, 10-5, 11.09
20. Arizona State, 8-6, 10.67
21. West Virginia, 11-4, 10.33
22. San Diego State, 11-4, 9.33
23. Nevada, 11-3, 9.23
24. North Carolina State, 9-6, 8.74
25. Florida, 10-5, 8.66