Stakes even higher in ACC-SEC rivalry

[Northeast Stinger]

Any poll that has Auburn at #5 right now is a pretty useless poll.

Yep. Dismissed it as poppycock right after I saw where Auburn was ranked.

This is the problem with starting a narrative that assumes SEC dominance. You can no longer tell the relative strength of particular teams. Texas A&M can get blown out by 59 points, Auburn can get shellacked and other teams can struggle mightily like LSU, but if they are all assumed to be strong then rankings don't mean anything any more.

 

[OldJacketFan]

Awbarn 5? LSWho 16? 5 loss arKansas 20? flooorida 21? What ranking is this? pullsecrankingsoutofyourarse.com? Jeezzzz

 

[JDjacket]

I want a shot at as many SEC teams as possible give me them in the bowl game too. I'd love the chance to start killing the narrative. Ole miss has been on a skid but has lost their best Defensive player and best O weapon. I'd say their team from last year to this year is very similar in terms of starters at least with those 2 players and their QB. They managed to beat us by 1 possession. They also beat Alabama by one possession. I'm not going to argue a transitive property that says we'd beat Alabama by 1 possession but its apparent that we'd be pretty damn competitive against a team that would be called to blow us out of the stars.

 

[iggymcfly]

Any poll that has Auburn at #5 right now is a pretty useless poll.

It's not a poll. It's the opinions of the bookmakers that take down millions of dollars in wagers derived from the betting lines only.

 

[DTGT]

The ACC might have improved some but it's not a ton, and the SEC is at an all-time level of dominance this year. Here's a link to Vegas power rankings for all the SEC teams and ACC teams in the Top 50:
http://stats.inpredictable.com/rankings/ncaaf.php

It's not a poll. It's the opinions of the bookmakers that take down millions of dollars in wagers derived from the betting lines only.

It's not a poll; it's a line plus noise model.

It does not predict the score or the winner; it predicts what the line will be.

 

[megatron]

It's not a poll. It's the opinions of the bookmakers that take down millions of dollars in wagers derived from the betting lines only.

So it's reflective of what the market thinks.

So this doesn't show a quality or strength of a team, it shows how overhyped they are.

 

[GTNavyNuke]

It's not a poll; it's a line plus noise model.

It does not predict the score or the winner; it predicts what the line will be.

And the Vegas line is generally the best indication of who the winner will be.

Come on, we've been here before.

 

[GTech63]

And the Vegas line is generally the best indication of who the winner will be.

Come on, we've been here before.

Not always and this is going to be a "not Always game" The big hype and big underdog works in our favor.

 

[GTpdm]

No SEC West games lost OOC games this year. Went a perfect 28-0. The SEC East hasn't been quite as good, but still went 20-3 for a total SEC non-conference record of 48-3. For comparison's sake, the ACC went 38-14 in non-conference. Not exactly on the same level.

This is absurd—have you looked at who the SE West actually played OOC? Out of 21 non-FCS opponents, only 4 were be from a Power-5 conference. The remaining 17 games were against teams who currently have a collective record of 3-32 against P-5 opposition. Only two SEC-West teams (Auburn, Mississisippi) have played more than one OOC opponent who currently has a winning record. The SEC East is somewhat better, playing 7 games against P-5 opposition, but keep in mind that four of those are traditional SEC-ACC rivalry games that are locked in to their schedule. Among their remaining games, their opponents are 5-23 against P-5 opposition.

The ACC, on the other hand, has a total of 18 games against P-5(*) opponents. (* I am counting independents Notre dame and BYU as being equivalent to a P-5 team. I think that's a fair representation of the challenge level of their schedules.) Both the Atlantic and Coastal will play nine P-5 OOC opponents. That's more than twice what the SEC West will dare to do. Even if you exclude our inter-conference rivalry games still comes out ahead by a factor of two: 14 games to 6, versus P-5 opponents.

"Not exactly on the same level" is about the only thing accurate in your post—except that it applies to the SEC West's OOC scheduling priorities. It's easy to look impressive, when you are a fifth-grader beating up second-graders.

 

[Techster]

Here's an interesting site where you can compare how different conferences have fared against each other. Here's what the SEC vs ACC showdowns look like. They even list every matchup towards the bottom. I'll just present it without comment:

http://mcubed.net/ncaaf/tvc/sec/acc.shtml

 

[dressedcheeseside]

This is absurd—have you looked at who the SE West actually played OOC? Out of 21 non-FCS opponents, only 4 were be from a Power-5 conference. The remaining 17 games were against teams who currently have a collective record of 3-32 against P-5 opposition. Only two SEC-West teams (Auburn, Mississisippi) have played more than one OOC opponent who currently has a winning record. The SEC East is somewhat better, playing 7 games against P-5 opposition, but keep in mind that four of those are traditional SEC-ACC rivalry games that are locked in to their schedule. Among their remaining games, their opponents are 5-23 against P-5 opposition.

The ACC, on the other hand, has a total of 18 games against P-5(*) opponents. (* I am counting independents Notre dame and BYU as being equivalent to a P-5 team. I think that's a fair representation of the challenge level of their schedules.) Both the Atlantic and Coastal will play nine P-5 OOC opponents. That's more than twice what the SEC West will dare to do. Even if you exclude our inter-conference rivalry games still comes out ahead by a factor of two: 14 games to 6, versus P-5 opponents.

"Not exactly on the same level" is about the only thing accurate in your post—except that it applies to the SEC West's OOC scheduling priorities. It's easy to look impressive, when you are a fifth-grader beating up second-graders.

I like you post, but I think you let yourself get lured onto the hook by the wannabe crafty fisherman. Beware of stinky bait.

 

[GTNavyNuke]

Here's an interesting site where you can compare how different conferences have fared against each other. Here's what the SEC vs ACC showdowns look like. They even list every matchup towards the bottom. I'll just present it without comment:

http://mcubed.net/ncaaf/tvc/sec/acc.shtml

SEC twice as good as ACC with 24-12 record over ACC in head to head since 2010. Sorry guys, we (ACC) needs to win more. Till then stop whining.

 

[DTGT]

And the Vegas line is generally the best indication of who the winner will be.

Come on, we've been here before.

Models that are line plus noise have consistently been inferior to the opening line and updated line. That model may correlate with the line and the line may correlate with the result, but that doesn't mean that the model will correlate to the result.

Example: Jar of beans.
1. Have a crowd guess the number of beans in a jar. The average of the guesses will correlate with the number of beans in the jar.
2. Develop a model that will estimate the average crowd guess based on jar and type of bean. Ignore the actual number of beans in the jar. Error is the difference between the estimate and the crowd guess.
3. Model is "improved" by reducing the error between the model's guess and the crowd's guess.
4. Error between model and crowd exists. There is now error from jar to crowd and crowd to model. Error from the model to the jar is necessarily worse than the error from the crowd to the jar (this is essentially by definition of how errors add and accumulate).

In our above example, any systemic error that is present in the crowd guess will be systemic in the model of the crowd guess. Per http://www.atomicfootball.com/ the mean square error of the line is about 235 (root mean square = 15.3) and the mean absolute error is about 12. That the root mean square error is 25% greater than the mean absolute error shows that the line has at least some bias in one direction. What direction? Indeterminate. If you could determine the bias, you could become very rich.

True Error = Absolute Error + Bias

Bias in the line will be transferred to the model. Additionally, modeling the line will add its own absolute error and its own bias error. If you make a model of a model of a cat, you don't have a cat; you have a worse model of a cat.

 

[WreckinGT]

SEC twice as good as ACC with 24-12 record over ACC in head to head since 2010. Sorry guys, we (ACC) needs to win more. Till then stop whining.

Having Louisville beat Kentucky most years will make the ACC look like a better conference. Just typing that made me realize how stupid conference comparisons are.

 

[JDjacket]

SEC twice as good as ACC with 24-12 record over ACC in head to head since 2010. Sorry guys, we (ACC) needs to win more. Till then stop whining.

http://mcubed.net/ncaaf/tvc/bigeast/sec.shtml
Guess the Big East/American was/is the best conference in the nation with a winning record over the SEC...

I think the ACC and SEC are really the main conferences that go head to head. Pac12/Big10 don't constantly play games against them so they don't have stats to show them being dominated more.

Look at pac12 vs ACC. Its not like their matching up against good times. UVA has played UCLA and Oregon in the past couple of years and lost but UVA is near the bottom of the ACC. That's a bit of a mismatch, but Oregon vs Mich St. is more top vs top. I wish teams of relative strengths inside their own conferences would match up more often. Beating up on the bottom of opposing conferences is kinda pointless.

 

[COJacket]

And check out what our "friends" over at Bleacher report are saying: IS TECH EVEN A WORTHWHILE OPPONENT?

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2...fb-playoff-era

 

[GTNavyNuke]

Models that are line plus noise have consistently been inferior to the opening line and updated line. That model may correlate with the line and the line may correlate with the result, but that doesn't mean that the model will correlate to the result..........

Got it. Of course, models aren't as good as the real thing, no matter how they are generated. One problem is that the underlying thing you are trying to model in college football has a lot of "noise".

I think we both agree we what I said, "And the Vegas line is generally the best indication of who the winner will be." It's just I was talking about the line and you were talking about the model which purportedly makes the line. (I couldn't see evidence of that, but didn't look real hard.) We may be talking about a distinction without a difference.

 

[GTNavyNuke]

http://mcubed.net/ncaaf/tvc/bigeast/sec.shtml
Guess the Big East/American was/is the best conference in the nation with a winning record over the SEC...
.........

LOL. Good point. I was a bit tongue in cheek. But I sure wish we had a winning record over the SEC, then we could talk trash. Till then ......

 

[ClydeBrick]

And check out what our "friends" over at Bleacher report are saying: IS TECH EVEN A WORTHWHILE OPPONENT?

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2...fb-playoff-era

If "owning" a series in the recent past is the measure for keeping a rivalry game, then Florida could have made a decent argument for dropping UGAg in 2010.

 

[COJacket]

If "owning" a series in the recent past is the measure for keeping a rivalry game, then Florida could have made a decent argument for dropping UGAg in 2010.

Well said ClydeBrick!