The Big East: Great NCAA Tournament Disappointment, or Greatest Disappointment?

There's been a lot of noise in the sports media about the Big East and their record number of bids to the NCAA tournament. A week ago, the chatter was all about how dominant the Big East was this year and how they truly deserved the unprecedented eleven bids earned by teams from Division I-A's largest conference. There were some naysayers, of course, but they were generally at the margins of the discussion. Each of the teams have proven themselves during the grueling Big East schedule. It used to be that if you finished at or above .500 in the ACC, you had a guaranteed bid to the tournament; this year, if you broke even or better in the Big East, you were in.

On paper, the Big East looked dominant: nine of the top 24 seeds were Big East teams. Going by the chalk these teams would make it to the round of 32, with 9-seed Villanova likely to pull an upset over 8-seed George Mason. Even 11-seed Marquette -- pitted against 6-seed Xavier, and having just defeated eventual 5-seed West Virginia in the Big East tournament -- was an upset candidate. Big East supporters dreamed big. Eleven teams in the round of 32! An all-Big-East Final Four!

Sneak Peek: Game Predictions

Today's sneak peek gives you a preview of the new look and feel for our per-game predictions. There are a few changes to the table to better fit the look and feel of the new site and to convey the same info but with less information overload. Instead of listing the odds of victory next to each game, we're using a color-coding scheme where the likelihood of victory is related to the intensity of the background color.

Home			Visitors			Home			Visitors
13	Arizona	36	28	Oregon St.	30	8	Arizona	35	36	Oregon St.	21
18	Arkansas	38	44	Texas A&M	32	23	Arkansas	38	51	Texas A&M	24
98	Ball St.	31	101	Western Michigan	29	99	Ball St.	31	111	Western Michigan	20
56	Baylor	30	31	Texas Tech	34	38	Baylor	29	37	Texas Tech	28
3	Boise St.	46	96	Toledo	22	11	Boise St.	52	100	Toledo	7
50	BYU	36	86	SDSU	27	64	BYU	34	79	SDSU	21
58	Fresno St.	41	78	Hawaii	34	66	Fresno St.	38	83	Hawaii	27
21	California	33	53	UCLA	26	15	California	34	46	UCLA	20
34	Cincinnati	40	106	Miami-OH	24	50	Cincinnati	41	104	Miami-OH	13
104	FIU	41	116	Western Kentucky	32	101	FIU	34	113	Western Kentucky	24
6	Florida	34	11	LSU	27	6	Florida	27	12	LSU	20
40	Georgia Tech	34	73	Virginia	27	47	Georgia Tech	28	32	Virginia	24
37	Georgia	34	47	Tennessee	29	21	Georgia	31	48	Tennessee	20
49	Houston	34	43	Mississippi St.	32	61	Houston	24	20	Mississippi St.	31
65	Iowa St.	27	15	Utah	34	59	Iowa St.	24	18	Utah	31
111	Kent St.	33	118	Akron	28	105	Kent St.	34	119	Akron	21
54	Kentucky	31	19	Auburn	35	49	Kentucky	21	17	Auburn	31
87	LA Tech	33	84	Utah St.	30	85	LA Tech	34	91	Utah St.	24
76	Louisville	36	107	Memphis	27	77	Louisville	35	109	Memphis	17
17	Miami-FL	35	23	Florida St.	30	13	Miami-FL	31	16	Florida St.	24
33	Michigan	35	38	Michigan St.	32	34	Michigan	34	41	Michigan St.	24
29	Missouri	35	75	Colorado	27	40	Missouri	31	58	Colorado	24
27	North Carolina	30	22	Clemson	29	22	North Carolina	28	30	Clemson	24
32	Nevada	43	119	SJSU	24	28	Nevada	55	116	SJSU	13
120	New Mexico St.	30	117	New Mexico	32	120	New Mexico St.	25	118	New Mexico	24
46	North Carolina St.	32	66	Boston College	27	52	North Carolina St.	31	62	Boston College	21
114	North Texas	33	99	Arkansas St.	35	114	North Texas	24	98	Arkansas St.	27
115	LA-Monroe	32	105	FL-Atlantic	34	112	LA-Monroe	28	NA	FL-Atlantic	27
74	Northern Ill.	33	70	Temple	31	87	Northern Ill.	21	56	Temple	31
59	Northwestern	31	67	Purdue	28	65	Northwestern	31	80	Purdue	21
35	Notre Dame	32	30	Pittsburgh	31	27	Notre Dame	28	33	Pittsburgh	21
5	Ohio St.	44	80	Indiana	24	7	Ohio St.	42	72	Indiana	17
93	Ohio	33	85	Bowling Green	31	96	Ohio	28	94	Bowling Green	24
14	Penn State	31	62	Illinois	22	14	Penn State	31	73	Illinois	13
26	South Carolina	24	1	Alabama	34	26	South Carolina	17	1	Alabama	27
51	South Florida	32	90	Syracuse	24	60	South Florida	31	82	Syracuse	17
72	SMU	36	60	Tulsa	35	NA	SMU	35	69	Tulsa	31
61	Southern Miss.	34	63	East Carolina	31	57	Southern Miss.	34	67	East Carolina	24
16	Stanford	38	20	USC	31	2	Stanford	34	25	USC	21
2	TCU	40	102	Wyoming	17	5	TCU	45	97	Wyoming	6
94	UTEP	39	103	Rice	33	92	UTEP	35	103	Rice	24
110	Tulane	29	89	Army	32	106	Tulane	24	86	Army	28
24	Air Force	38	108	Colorado St.	21	31	Air Force	35	110	Colorado St.	10
88	Vanderbilt	39	113	Eastern Michigan	26	75	Vanderbilt	42	117	Eastern Michigan	14
8	Virginia Tech	40	68	Central Michigan	24	9	Virginia Tech	35	70	Central Michigan	10
81	Wake Forest	29	45	Navy	32	45	Wake Forest	27	55	Navy	24
112	Washington St.	22	7	Oregon	45	102	Washington St.	10	3	Oregon	56
55	Washington	32	42	Arizona St.	30	35	Washington	31	39	Arizona St.	27
36	West Virginia	37	91	UNLV	25	42	West Virginia	38	89	UNLV	17
41	Wisconsin	35	64	Minnesota	29	44	Wisconsin	34	78	Minnesota	21

Key
Close game							Certain victory

Sneak Peek: Conference Projections

A new feature for next year will be projections for all 11 FBS conferences -- plus all the independent teams -- starting around week five. We'll include current and projected conference and overall standings, plus a breakdown of AdjO, AdjD, and AdjPace for each team. We'll update projected standings for four conferences each day on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and provide some commentary and insight about the remaining weeks.

ACC
Atlantic
Team	Conference		Overall		Adjusted
	Now	Projected	Now	Projected	Off.	Def.	Pace
Florida St. 24	4 - 1 0.800	6 - 3 0.667	5 - 2 0.714	8 - 5 0.615	25.4	17.1	163.4
Maryland 77	3 - 1 0.750	4 - 4 0.500	5 - 2 0.714	7 - 5 0.583	16.2	19.8	166.0
North Carolina St. 35	3 - 1 0.750	5 - 3 0.625	5 - 2 0.714	8 - 4 0.667	23.0	18.4	174.3
Clemson 20	2 - 3 0.400	4 - 4 0.500	3 - 4 0.429	6 - 6 0.500	20.9	13.8	165.5
Wake Forest 78	1 - 4 0.200	2 - 6 0.250	1 - 6 0.143	2 - 9 0.182	17.5	21.4	170.4
Boston College 67	1 - 4 0.200	3 - 5 0.375	2 - 5 0.286	5 - 7 0.417	15.5	16.5	164.1
Coastal
Team	Conference		Overall		Adjusted
	Now	Projected	Now	Projected	Off.	Def.	Pace
Virginia Tech 6	4 - 0 1.000	8 - 1 0.889	6 - 1 0.857	10 - 3 0.769	29.2	13.9	158.5
Georgia Tech 36	3 - 2 0.600	4 - 4 0.500	4 - 3 0.571	6 - 6 0.500	24.8	19.9	159.3
Miami-FL 14	3 - 2 0.600	5 - 3 0.625	4 - 3 0.571	7 - 5 0.583	22.9	13.4	170.4
North Carolina 32	2 - 2 0.500	4 - 4 0.500	4 - 3 0.571	7 - 5 0.583	21.7	15.8	159.0
Virginia 81	1 - 3 0.250	3 - 5 0.375	2 - 4 0.333	4 - 6 0.400	15.0	18.7	166.8
Duke 97	0 - 4 0.000	1 - 7 0.125	1 - 6 0.143	2 - 9 0.182	14.5	23.1	172.6
Projected records may not sum to total number of actual games due to rounding errors.

Sneak Peek: Top 25

A preview of our look for next year. We've redone the rankings to look a bit cleaner, and to include rankings for SOS, AdjO, AdjD, and AdjPace directly in the table. We're also going to use color-coding to indicate whether the data is coming from Justin's TFG system (blue) or Eddie's RBA algorithm (red). Feedback and comments are welcome.

Rank	+/-	Team	WinPct	SoS		Adjusted
						Off.		Def.		Pace
1	--	TCU	0.934	0.452	78	28.0	5	9.1	1	80.7	99
2	--	Boise St.	0.933	0.429	82	28.6	4	9.3	2	82.8	63
3	+1	Alabama	0.925	0.646	8	27.8	6	9.5	3	77.7	118
4	-1	Ohio St.	0.910	0.527	60	25.4	11	9.5	4	80.5	101
5	+1	Oregon	0.869	0.569	38	26.0	10	11.8	7	92.3	1
6	+2	Stanford	0.862	0.599	29	29.6	1	13.7	20	80.9	93
7	--	Oklahoma	0.853	0.602	23	23.4	20	11.2	5	91.8	2
8	-3	Virginia Tech	0.848	0.586	34	27.7	7	13.3	14	78.7	114
9	--	LSU	0.837	0.641	9	24.4	15	12.2	9	78.3	117
10	--	Auburn	0.833	0.662	3	29.1	2	14.9	28	83.4	55
11	+2	Florida	0.807	0.658	4	23.9	17	13.2	13	81.7	79
12	+3	Arkansas	0.800	0.658	5	27.2	8	15.2	31	84.2	45
13	-2	Iowa	0.798	0.564	40	21.1	29	11.7	6	80.8	97
14	--	Wisconsin	0.784	0.547	46	28.8	3	16.7	44	78.9	111
15	-3	Nebraska	0.780	0.507	66	22.2	22	13.0	12	80.1	105
16	+2	Florida St.	0.767	0.652	6	25.0	13	15.2	32	81.4	85
17	+4	Oklahoma St.	0.767	0.534	57	24.4	14	14.8	27	89.6	7
18	-1	Missouri	0.759	0.545	48	20.2	38	12.3	10	85.2	31
19	--	South Carolina	0.755	0.684	1	24.1	16	15.0	29	79.2	108
20	-4	West Virginia	0.750	0.537	55	18.9	49	11.9	8	81.4	86
21	+3	Notre Dame	0.733	0.599	28	19.6	42	12.8	11	84.7	36
22	-2	Utah	0.730	0.488	71	21.9	25	14.5	25	81.0	88
23	--	Georgia	0.716	0.616	17	25.0	12	16.9	47	77.2	119
24	+1	USC	0.710	0.591	33	21.9	24	15.1	30	84.0	47
25	-3	Miami-FL	0.705	0.633	13	19.3	45	13.4	17	85.8	29

New entries: none.

Dropped out: none.

A New Look

As you can see, we've done a slight redesign of the site this week. This redesign is the first step in a larger effort to provide better and more extensive analysis in a way that's a treat for your brain while being a joy for your eyes. The 2011-2012 season at TFG will include

• a Tuesday trivia segment;
• ongoing projections for all 120 FBS teams;
• in-depth analysis of championship contenders;
• in-depth analysis of previous champions;
• break-downs of all 36 (yes, 36) bowl games; PLUS
• all the usual goodies you've come to expect (weekly rankings, predictions, and commentary).

Watch this space for more updates, and enjoy the off-season!

2010 - 2011: Final Rankings -- RBA

Full rankings after the jump.

2010 - 2011: Final Top 25 -- RBA

Better late than never, right?  Presenting the final top 25 for Regression-Based Analysis:

Rank	+/-	Team	WinPct	SoS	Off Pts	Def Pts	Pace
001	--	Stanford	1.0000	0.5491	26.4	9.9	83.8
001	--	TCU	1.0000	0.4654	25.5	7.8	84.2
003	--	Alabama	0.9915	0.5507	26.1	7.0	78.8
004	--	Boise St.	0.9829	0.4608	26.6	8.6	84.6
005	--	Oregon	0.9746	0.5314	26.5	9.8	87.9
006	--	Ohio St.	0.9580	0.5291	26.1	8.1	79.8
007	--	Auburn	0.9492	0.5474	26.6	12.7	79.5
007	--	Oklahoma	0.9492	0.5439	24.5	8.2	85.3
009	--	Virginia Tech	0.9316	0.5301	24.9	8.4	79.1
010	--	LSU	0.9286	0.5459	22.5	8.9	80.3
010	--	Nebraska	0.9286	0.5285	21.5	9.4	83.5
012	--	Wisconsin	0.9204	0.5348	26.6	13.8	81.1
012	--	Iowa	0.9204	0.5218	18.2	9.8	81.9
014	--	Florida	0.9196	0.5562	23.2	9.3	80.9
015	--	Oklahoma St.	0.9189	0.5481	24.4	12.7	85.9
016	--	Arkansas	0.9035	0.5638	26.2	12.4	82.6
017	--	Florida St.	0.9018	0.5532	17.9	10.6	83.2
018	--	West Virginia	0.8673	0.5372	17.5	9.5	82.8
019	--	South Carolina	0.8571	0.5463	24.1	12.4	78.9
020	--	Georgia	0.8522	0.5502	26.4	10.4	79.7
021	--	Missouri	0.8496	0.5206	18.4	9.2	87.0
022	--	Mississippi St.	0.8257	0.5592	20.5	10.9	81.1
023	--	Nevada	0.8230	0.4673	23.3	14.5	85.1
024	--	Arizona	0.8198	0.5570	19.0	9.7	83.5
025	--	Arizona St.	0.8142	0.5260	20.0	9.2	87.0

RBA agrees with Justin that Auburn is not a particularly memorable national champion, placing them 7th overall.  The same reasons apply:  close games and flaky defense.  RBA declares a split title between Stanford and TCU.  The two teams would likely play to a tie on a neutral field.

The "conference title" is effectively wrapped up by the SEC, placing a ridiculous eight teams in the top 25.  The biggest WTF comes from Georgia's inclusion.  This is a direct result of their flakiness.  When the Bulldogs show up, they are a powerful team.  When they don't, well... you saw what happened against UCF.

2010 - 2011: Final Rankings -- TFG

Biggest jumps: Tulsa (+9, 57 to 48); North Carolina State (+7, 33 to 26); Mississippi State (+7, 39 to 32); Syracuse (+7, 83 to 76).

Biggest drops: Michigan State (-8, 35 to 43); Navy (-6, 38 to 44); Connecticut (-6, 49 to 55); Hawaii (-6, 52 to 58).

Full rankings after the jump

2010 - 2011: Final Top 25 -- TFG

The season is over, the bowl games have been played, Auburn defeated Oregon 22-19, and your TFG National Champion is ...

Rank	+/-	Team	WinPct	SoS	Off Pts	Def Pts	Pace
001	--	TCU	0.9342	0.4520	28.0	9.1	80.7
002	--	Boise St.	0.9333	0.4287	28.6	9.3	82.8
003	+1	Alabama	0.9251	0.6464	27.8	9.5	77.7
004	-1	Ohio St.	0.9103	0.5275	25.4	9.5	80.5
005	+1	Oregon	0.8690	0.5691	26.0	11.8	92.3
006	+2	Stanford	0.8616	0.5987	29.6	13.7	80.9
007	--	Oklahoma	0.8530	0.6022	23.4	11.2	91.8
008	-3	Virginia Tech	0.8484	0.5858	27.7	13.3	78.7
009	--	LSU	0.8368	0.6407	24.4	12.2	78.3
010	--	Auburn	0.8330	0.6619	29.1	14.9	83.4
011	+2	Florida	0.8075	0.6583	23.9	13.2	81.7
012	+3	Arkansas	0.7995	0.6583	27.2	15.2	84.2
013	-2	Iowa	0.7977	0.5639	21.1	11.7	80.8
014	--	Wisconsin	0.7844	0.5468	28.8	16.7	78.9
015	-3	Nebraska	0.7802	0.5073	22.2	13.0	80.1
016	+2	Florida St.	0.7670	0.6519	25.0	15.2	81.4
017	+4	Oklahoma St.	0.7668	0.5335	24.4	14.8	89.6
018	-1	Missouri	0.7592	0.5450	20.2	12.3	85.2
019	--	South Carolina	0.7554	0.6837	24.1	15.0	79.2
020	-4	West Virginia	0.7500	0.5367	18.9	11.9	81.4
021	+3	Notre Dame	0.7326	0.5989	19.6	12.8	84.7
022	-2	Utah	0.7299	0.4878	21.9	14.5	81.0
023	--	Georgia	0.7162	0.6161	25.0	16.9	77.2
024	+1	USC	0.7101	0.5908	21.9	15.1	84.0
025	-3	Miami-FL	0.7045	0.6326	19.3	13.4	85.8

the TCU Horned Frogs?

New entries: none.

Dropped out: none.

Not only is TCU at the top of the TFG heap, but BCS champion Auburn is barely in the top 10 and behind three teams it defeated (Alabama, Oregon, and LSU).  How can that be?

Simple: TFG only looks at points, it doesn't actually look at victories. There's a disconnect between offense and defense, and given that Auburn's offense only averaged 24.7 PPG against the three teams ahead of it -- and gave up 21.0 PPG in those games -- it's not hard to see why the Tigers didn't overwhelm the computers. On top of that, the Tigers needed freak play after freak play to even get where they were, including

• a dropped TD pass by Clemson in OT;
• a last-minute field goal to beat Kentucky;
• three Alabama turnovers inside the Auburn 5;
• four failed attempts by the Ducks to punch it in from the 1 (yet they went 2-for-2 in 2pt conversions);
• a failure of the Ducks to get the easy 3 on a 4th-and-goal from the 1; and
• a tackle that was (correctly) called not-a-tackle in the closing minute of the title game.

I'm not pointing these out because I'm anti-Auburn or anti-SEC. The SEC was the best conference this year, but not for the main reason the pundits claimed ("Five titles in five years!!!!!!!!"). The SEC placed five teams in the top 12 and seven in the top 25. Auburn was the last team standing because (a) they were very good, and (b) they were amazingly lucky, in part thanks to some of the reasons listed above. But their defense remained suspect -- 7th-worst in the top 25 -- even as their offense placed just behind Stanford at 29.1 PPH.

So in the end it was entirely fitting that it was not Cam Newton punching through for the winning touchdown on a QB sneak (a play that would have sent the ESPN university into a rabid frenzy), but rather a freak failed tackle and a last-second field goal that gave Auburn the title. To the bitter end, they did it their way.

TCU, on the other hand, only had a close call against Wisconsin. Otherwise the Horned Frogs basically did what they needed to do to by winning and winning convincingly. The Wisconsin offense had been prolific -- albeit against inferior opposition -- and the TCU defense stopped it cold.

What would happen if 14-0 TCU played 14-0 Auburn? TFG says that (1) TCU would defeat (10) Auburn, 35-31, with 74% likelihood. That might be the debate of the offseason, but with TCU going to the Big East that will blunt some of the arguments over how non-AQ teams will get access to BCS bowls and the national championship game.

Let the debates continue, and we'll see you next year.

What's up with the ACC?

Part II in our trivia series examines the crazy world that is ACC football. Unpredictable and frustrating, even ESPN has given up on providing anything but head-scratching bewilderment at what's going on there. But is there any actual data to support the gut feeling that the ACC is an anything-goes-who-knows-who'll-win-this-one collection of teams? That is the question we examine today.

The first part of this is how we define "unpredictable". While it might be difficult to predict a single game correctly, given a large enough sample size and an accurate enough predictor we should be able to know how many we should get right (see: expected value). As a simple example, think of flipping a coin and trying to predict its behavior. If we always guess "heads" then we'll be wrong roughly half the time. But if I tell you I'm going to flip a coin 1,000 times and I want you to tell me how many heads will come up, 500 would be a good guess. If the coin is fair the answer should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 500.

Similarly, if over time our college football predictor is correct 75% of the time and I tell you there are 400 ACC conference games in our set, then we should be able to get roughly 300 correct. There might be stretches of bad luck where the predictor is wrong, and there will be some big upsets. But over time we should get nearly 75% correct.

With that in mind, let's see how our predictor holds up for each of the "Big Six" conferences. For each conference we'll look at the

• total number of games,
• number we expected to get right,
• number we actually got right; and
• ratio of actual to expected.

These results are from the 2003-2004 season until the 2010-2011 season.

Conference	Games Played	Predictions
		# Expected correct	% Expected correct	# Actually correct	% Actually correct	Actual / Expected
ACC	383	274.8	71.8	255	66.6	0.928
Big 10	352	255.8	72.7	262	74.4	1.024
Big XII	392	287.1	73.3	294	75.0	1.024
Big East	195	135.1	69.3	136	69.7	1.007
Pac-10	345	253.7	73.5	253	73.3	0.997
SEC	392	290.2	74.0	288	73.5	0.992

Over the course of eight years the ACC is (a) the second-most-difficult to predict, and (b) even then we don't get close to the expected value. For most conferences the predictions are within 2-3% of what we expect to get correct; even the Big 10 and Big XII are within 10, but for those we're under-estimating the number we should get correct.

Let's put this in perspective: the Big XII has 49 conference games per year (48 regular season plus the championship game) and the predictions miss about 2.4% of the time. That means every 6 years it gets a total of 7 games wrong. The ACC, on the other hand, has the same number of regular season games but hits the 7-wrong-games mark in less than two seasons. This 7-game deficit is compounded by the fact that the computer is already less confident about ACC games to start with. The raw data tells that tale well enough; the computer gets 3 out of every 4 Big XII games correct, while it struggles to get 2 out of every 3 ACC games correct.

Why does this happen? We're not entirely sure. The ACC tends to chew through coaches somewhat regularly, so a lack of consistency may lead to fewer predictable results. Similarly the ACC is offensively challenged, so a favored team falling behind may have difficulty catching up. Small, improbable events such as pick-6s, interceptions, fumbles, and other odd plays could have a greater-than-usual effect on the result.

Until we figure it out, we'll just have to rely on the ACC Wheel of Destiny.