Monday, October 11, 2010

Week 7: Top 25 -- RBA

Week 7 brings the debut of the new RBA top 25 system.  Previous weeks have sorted the teams by expected win percentage based on Pythagorean expectations.  The problem with this system is that RBA requires the opponent strength as an input to this computation, which is computed from the output of this computation.  I could try to develop an iterative computation that converges on a solution.  However, most people think of a top 25 as an ordering of teams where higher ranked teams would beat lower ranked teams, so I decided to have all 120 teams play a round robin series on a neutral field and sort them based upon their winning percentages.  With this in mind, I present the new RBA top 25 output.


Rank+/-TeamWinPctSoSOff PtsDef PtsPace
001--Alabama0.97900.548925.67.878.8
002+4Nebraska0.97850.529324.59.183.6
003-1Oregon0.97420.531527.310.787.7
004-1TCU0.97010.462623.87.284.6
005-1Iowa0.95750.520920.36.482.1
006-1Florida0.94400.559424.48.880.8
007+1Ohio St.0.93970.529324.18.479.9
008+2Boise St.0.93420.458727.410.984.8
009-2Stanford0.93100.556429.37.784.2
010-1Virginia Tech0.92540.533722.99.379.3
011+1LSU0.92440.546318.37.480.4
012-1Oklahoma0.91520.547320.811.584.7
013+2Florida St.0.89610.554121.311.783.5
014--Arizona0.86460.560122.09.383.2
015+9Utah0.86460.460125.111.583.4
016--Texas0.86100.519320.710.284.2
017--Nevada0.86100.465624.614.885.2
018-5Miami-FL0.85710.554419.87.981.4
019-1Arkansas0.85400.565421.111.182.5
020+2California0.84980.531928.010.884.3
021-2USC0.84440.532723.213.083.4
022-2Auburn0.83700.544823.612.179.4
023+2South Carolina0.83640.547517.410.478.8
024-3Air Force0.81060.473917.611.182.4
025+1North Carolina0.80260.546116.88.981.9


New entries:  North Carolina

Dropped out:  Oklahoma State

Although losers at South Carolina, Alabama remains the #1 team in RBA's rankings thanks to their consistent defensive performance.  Even against a 1.000 opponent, Alabama should surrender only 11.3 PPH.  This week, we see Nebraska rise to #2 in the RBA poll thanks to an offense that keeps getting  better every week (admittedly against somewhat inferior competition).  We should learn a lot more about their performance against quality competition this week when they face Texas.