The Tempo-Free Gridiron: August 2012

Friday, August 31, 2012

Week 1: Friday In-Game Win Probabilities

Last updated: Fri Aug 31 22:18:03 2012

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Week 1: Thursday In-Game Win Probabilities

Last updated: Thu Aug 30 23:54:04 2012

As our regular readers may have noticed, during the regular season we churn out a decent amount of content each week. Weekly top 25, full rankings, conference projections, plus our new in-game win probabilities; and all of that doesn't include the Twitter feed. Given that we have day jobs and other things holding our attention, how exactly do things work behind the scenes?

This blog post is here to give you a peek behind the curtain. A look under the hood, as it were.

Ready?

Pull back the curtain after the jump ....

Week 1: Full Rankings -- RBA

Note that RBA hasn't seen any games from the new FBS teams, yet. Expect them to drop rapidly as they get pasted by superior competition.

Biggest jumps: UTSA (0.500); South Alabama (0.500); Massachusetts (0.500); Texas State (0.500); Toledo (0.018)

Biggest drops: Texas Tech (-0.015); Wake Forest (-0.013); Purdue (-0.013); Virginia (-0.013); Western Michigan (-0.013)

Full rankings after the jump.

Rank	+/-	Team	WinPct	SoS		Adjusted
Rank	+/-	Team	WinPct	SoS		Off.		Def.		Pace
1	--	Alabama	1.000	0.551	10	26.0	6	5.0	5	156.8	120
2	--	LSU	0.992	0.550	13	26.9	4	6.5	6	160.1	112
3	--	Oregon	0.984	0.531	47	25.4	7	10.6	12	176.1	3
4	--	Oklahoma St.	0.984	0.550	12	27.0	3	13.9	48	173.3	7
5	--	Boise St.	0.967	0.462	95	26.6	5	11.6	24	168.8	35
6	--	Wisconsin	0.967	0.534	37	28.8	1	11.8	27	161.5	108
7	--	Oklahoma	0.958	0.544	23	22.9	12	10.0	10	171.7	14
8	--	Stanford	0.951	0.543	25	27.5	2	11.1	18	167.0	55
9	--	Arkansas	0.941	0.566	1	23.6	9	11.1	19	165.5	79
10	--	South Carolina	0.933	0.544	22	21.1	20	9.8	9	157.8	119
11	--	Florida St.	0.933	0.549	16	18.9	34	9.5	8	165.7	75
12	--	Southern Miss.	0.924	0.484	76	20.4	26	13.8	47	169.1	32
13	--	USC	0.914	0.532	44	22.0	18	10.6	13	166.8	58
14	--	Georgia	0.908	0.550	11	22.9	11	10.8	16	159.7	113
15	--	TCU	0.898	0.464	92	23.5	10	13.3	40	167.8	44
16	--	Florida	0.898	0.559	5	20.7	23	7.8	7	161.3	109
17	--	Michigan	0.891	0.542	28	22.7	13	11.7	26	167.6	49
18	--	Michigan St.	0.890	0.542	26	20.9	22	11.2	21	167.2	53
19	--	Texas A&M	0.867	0.555	8	22.3	15	12.0	28	172.7	11
20	--	Notre Dame	0.845	0.566	2	18.6	37	11.7	25	164.9	85
21	--	Texas	0.835	0.523	59	19.4	28	10.7	15	168.2	42
22	--	Houston	0.835	0.474	82	22.4	14	14.0	51	175.6	4
23	--	Ohio St.	0.833	0.532	42	18.6	36	12.0	29	159.0	117
24	--	Virginia Tech	0.832	0.527	56	17.6	42	11.0	17	158.2	118
25	--	Missouri	0.829	0.527	57	17.7	40	11.3	22	174.2	5

Rankings through games of 2012-08-26

If you've seen Justin's post, the same disclaimers apply. RBA thinks that Kellen Moore is still at Boise State, Andrew Luck is still at Stanford, and Bobby Petrino is still employed. Expect dramatic changes in the first few weeks as we sort out the roster changes and move past FCS competition.

New entries: none.

Dropped out: none.

Follow us on Twitter @TFGridiron

Week 1: Full Rankings -- TFG

[ Note: There are four teams which joined the FBS ranks this year: UMass, UTSA, South Alabama, and Texas State. The TFG rankings will not include any of those teams until they have played a few games. Look for them to join the full rankings starting in week five. ]

Biggest jumps: SMU (0.074); West Virginia (0.026); Northern Ill. (0.021); SDSU (0.013); Mississippi St. (0.010)

Biggest drops: Pittsburgh (-0.056); Clemson (-0.039); Arkansas St. (-0.015); Kansas St. (-0.015); Ball St. (-0.012)

Full rankings after the jump.

Rank	+/-	Team	WinPct	SoS		Adjusted
Rank	+/-	Team	WinPct	SoS		Off.		Def.		Pace
1	--	Alabama	0.975	0.667	5	37.7	2	8.8	1	149.8	120
2	--	LSU	0.940	0.717	1	33.6	5	11.2	2	153.7	112
3	--	Boise St.	0.898	0.432	83	34.1	4	14.3	5	160.9	83
4	--	Wisconsin	0.874	0.555	50	40.2	1	18.5	38	152.3	117
5	--	Stanford	0.865	0.561	45	34.7	3	16.5	21	158.1	99
6	--	Oregon	0.858	0.614	15	30.1	9	14.7	7	180.2	6
7	--	Oklahoma	0.852	0.596	28	24.9	26	12.4	3	179.2	7
8	--	TCU	0.850	0.420	86	32.1	6	16.1	20	159.0	94
9	--	Oklahoma St.	0.837	0.598	26	29.2	10	15.2	12	181.3	3
10	--	Arkansas	0.821	0.642	8	31.9	7	17.3	29	168.0	33
11	--	South Carolina	0.810	0.633	11	27.6	13	15.5	16	156.6	102
12	--	Florida St.	0.797	0.547	52	26.3	19	15.2	13	155.5	108
13	--	Michigan St.	0.785	0.607	20	25.7	22	15.3	14	161.8	75
14	--	Michigan	0.784	0.574	34	31.0	8	18.5	39	156.1	106
15	--	USC	0.771	0.570	37	27.6	14	17.0	23	164.0	53
16	+2	Notre Dame	0.761	0.619	14	23.9	31	15.1	11	164.9	47
17	--	Virginia Tech	0.759	0.518	61	24.5	29	15.4	15	156.6	103
18	-2	Florida	0.757	0.673	4	24.7	27	15.7	17	157.3	101
19	+1	Texas A&M	0.755	0.596	27	22.6	42	14.4	6	184.6	1
20	-1	Georgia	0.754	0.619	13	26.9	16	17.2	24	163.1	58
21	--	Houston	0.742	0.396	94	28.1	12	18.4	37	180.5	4
22	--	Ohio St.	0.727	0.567	42	25.4	23	17.2	26	153.4	114
23	--	Missouri	0.716	0.568	41	21.6	50	14.9	9	170.3	21
24	NA	Nebraska	0.709	0.602	25	22.5	43	15.7	18	164.2	51
25	--	Temple	0.706	0.304	120	24.4	30	17.2	27	150.4	119

Rankings through games of 2012-08-26

If you're a regular reader of the Tempo-Free Gridiron you may be saying to yourself, "Justin, these rankings look almost exactly like the final top 25 rankings from last year." If so, you are correct. We don't use any data to try and prediction the upcoming season other than our historical data from the last few years. The upshot of this is that our early season predictions may be slightly off since we don't know that Ohio State and Arkansas have new coaches, or that USC is fully reloaded. The algorithm should figure it out, slowly but surely.

Until then, the only churn from last year to this year is the result of some housekeeping where we were improperly including results from some FCS teams last year. All of that has been cleaned up and the results you see are our starting point for the 2012-2013 season.

New entries: Nebraska.

Dropped out: Texas.

Follow us on Twitter @TFGridiron

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Welcome to the 2012 - 2013 Season

Welcome to the 2012-2013 college football season!

After a lengthy slumber the Tempo-Free Gridiron is back for the new year, and the theme of this year is "Fresh Content." Last year we provided you with more interesting and more frequent updates to keep you coming back for more. This year our goal is to provide you with fresh content, primarily in-game win probabilities. During each and every game of the 2012-2013 season will will create graphs like this

The title reflects the current score and time remaining, with the line below it indicating the current favorite and their odds of winning. The home team is on the top X-axis, while the away team is on the bottom. The numbers are each axis reflect the score of the game as it unfolded; for example, the score at the end of the third quarter was California 41, Arizona State 38. At that time, both TFG and RBA had the Golden Bears as slight favorites to win (~55%), with TFG having slightly more confidence in Cal than RBA.

We'll also be tweeting the probabilities for each game at the end of each quarter, as well as upset watches (a heavy pre-game favorite is likely to lose), upset warnings (a heavy pre-game favorite is on the verge of losing) and upset emergency notices (they're pretty much toast). So subscribe to our twitter feed (@TFGridiron) for all that and more.

Along with the new content, there's the usual content we added last year, including

Tuesday Trivia. Each Tuesday in September will explore a random trivia topic.
Undefeated Countdown. Every other Thursday starting in October we'll examine the remaining undefeated teams, their possible road to a perfect season, and the main obstacles in their way.
Conference Projections. Starting in October we'll have a weekly breakdown of the twelve conferences, including both the current standings and the projected final standings.

Games of the Week. Along with weekly predictions we'll focus on specific Saturday games that are interesting in some way or another.

This is all on top of our weekly predictions, discussions, rankings, and complete bowl coverage that we've provided the previous years. Keep an eye on the blog or follow us on Twitter.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Are You Smarter Than A Computer: 2012 Edition

Edit: Redditors go here. Farkers go here.

Do you look at this site and think "these guys are a bunch of idiots; I know more about football than these computers"? If so, it's time to put your ego where your mouth is and join the Tempo-Free Gridiron 2012 Pick'em.

TL;DR Version

Over the course of 12 weeks, earn points by picking the winners of college football games.

The Long Version

We run The Tempo-Free Gridiron, where we discuss our computerized systems for predicting the winners of college football games. In an effort to pit our computers against the masses, we are hosting the 2nd Annual TFG College Football Pick’em.

Who

Everyone is eligible for this contest. There’s no entry fee, and it’s all for your college football know-how honor. Think you can beat a computer that thought the 2011 Alabama squad was the #1 team in college football … over the last 10 years?

Where

We are hosting the contest at FunOfficePools.com (the same site as last year).

Pool name: TFG 2012 Pick’em

Pool link: http://www.funofficepools.com/joinpool.php?Passed_Pool_Key=53b966da323

We understand the website isn’t the best in the world, but it gives us more flexibility over the scoring, which games we choose, and every aspect of managing the program. If you don’t like it, yell at Yahoo! to get off their butts and let pick’em pool owners choose which games to include each week and how to score it.

What

Each week there will be either 12 or 15 games for which you must pick the winners AND then sort the picks from least to most confident. If you get your least-confident pick correct, you get 1 point; if you get your second-least-confident pick correct, you get 2 points; etc, etc.

This means that in a week with 12 games to pick, you can score a maximum of 78 points (1+2+3+...+11+12); in a week with 15 games to pick, you can score a maximum of 120 points.

PICKS ARE DUE AT NOON, EAST COAST TIME EACH SATURDAY. THE WEBSITE WILL LOCK YOU OUT IF YOU DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR PICKS BY THIS DEADLINE.

IF YOU DO NOT GET YOUR PICKS IN BY NOON, EMAIL ME (justin@tempo-free-gridiron.com) YOUR PICKS ASAP. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PICK ANY GAMES THAT HAVE ALREADY STARTED, AND WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ASSIGN THE MOST VALUABLE POINTS TO ANY GAMES THAT WEEK.

(Ahem. Shouting is now officially over.)

The college football regular season has 14 weeks. It will be broken into a pre-season (picks don’t count towards the final points total) and the “regular season”. Here is the schedule, with the date next to each week being the Saturday.

Preseason

Week 1 (Sept 1) - 12 games

Week 2 (Sept 8) - 12 games

Regular Season

Week 3 (Sept 15) - 12 games

Week 4 (Sept 22) - 12 games

Week 5 (Sept 29) - 12 games

Week 6 (Oct 6) - 15 games

Week 7 (Oct 13) - 12 games

Week 8 (Oct 20) - 12 games

Week 9 (Oct 27) - 12 games

Week 10 (Nov 3) - 15 games

Week 11 (Nov 10) - 12 games

Week 12 (Nov 17) - 12 games

Week 13 (Nov 24) - 12 games

Week 14 (Dec 1) - 15 games

You’ll see that the last week in each season is worth significantly more than the other 3 weeks.

Other

If you have any other questions, please let me know at justin@tempo-free-gridiron.com.

Good luck.

Follow us on Twitter @TFGridiron

Key
Close game							Certain victory
Close game							Certain victory

Key
Close game							Certain victory
Close game							Certain victory

The Tempo-Free Gridiron

Friday, August 31, 2012

Week 1: Friday In-Game Win Probabilities

Week 1: Friday Predictions

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Week 1: Thursday In-Game Win Probabilities

Week 1: Thursday Predictions

Behind the Scenes

Wednesday, August 29, 2012