Interconference records
One of the hottest topics every fall is the relative strength of different conferences. I think way too much time is spent in these, since conferences don't play games, hire coaches, recruit and graduate players, etc. Still, there is some value in having a metric that allows us to evaluate the worth of teams' conference records.
This really isn't important until all games have been played, when we wonder "might team A's 4-4 record in conference X be better than team B's 5-3 in conference Y?" Even then when we're comparing teams that haven't met, there are other things that are more useful, especially records vs common opponents.
The best measure would be interconference won-loss records if every team in conference X played a "conference schedule" against conference Y's teams, but they don't. So we need some kind of SOS adjustment to normalize for "top team from conference X beat bottom team from conference Y." The one I've chosen is the original Sagarin Rating, because it includes a rating value (not just rank) for all division 1 teams.
Note; The original Sagarin rating is what he now calls the Predictor rating, not the one used by the BCS.
The way I use it is to take the sum of opponents' ratings for games the conference team won and divide it by the number of games played against the other conference. So if teams from conference X split with two teams in conference Y, losing to a team rated 90.00 and winning over one rated 80.00, the conference rating is 40.00. If a conference team then beat a team rated 86.00, the conference rating is (80+86)/3 = 55.3.
The fields on the report are:
- aSOS
- the calculation described above. I call it "adjusted SOS" because it's a combnation of SOS and winning percentage. For a conference that is undefeated against another conference, it will be equal to the SOS.
- Conf
- the conference abbreviation, and also a link to the details for the conference.
- SOS(w)
- the average opponents' rating for all the non-conference games won by teams in this conference
- W
- the total number of wins against non-conference foes by teams in this conference
- L
- the total number of losses against non-conference foes by teams in this conference
- SOS(l)
- the average opponents' rating for all the non-conference games lost by teams in this conference
- SOS
- the average opponents' rating for all the non-conference games played by teams in this conference
The ordinal rank of the conference precedes the aSOS and follows the SOS ratings. For each conference summary line, there's a link to a breakdown by team:
- Rnk
- The ordinal rank (within all division 1) corresponding to the aSOS for the conference member
- aSOS
- Same as above
- Team
- A link to the conference member's schedule and results
- SAG
- The Sagarin Predictor value for the conference member
- NCSOS
- The average Sagarin Predictor for all non-conference opponents for the conference member
- W
- Number of non-conference wins by the conference member
- _SOS
- The average Sagarin Predictor for non-conference opponents beaten by the conference member
- L
- Number of non-conference losses by the conference member
- _SOS
- The average Sagarin Predictor for non-conference opponents who beat the conference member
The details section has the following for each conference:
- Conf
- a link to this conference's consolidated schedule and results page. The remaining fields are repeated for each other conference with which teams from this conference have games.
- Cstr
- the average rating for games by this conference's teams against teams from the other conference (the other conference's SOS with respect to this conference)
- Rec
- combined wins and losses by teams from this conference against teams from the other
- Ostr
- the average rating for games by the other conference's teams against teams from this conference (this conference's SOS with respect to the other conference)