Sagarin Rankings

[hungry]

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/ncaaf/sagarin/?AID=10709313&PID=4003003&SID=ifd3zp2cdc001y6k00dth

This is one of my favorite rankings to follow and I regularly use it at the end of the season to help me predict bowl games

It is designed to get more and more accurate every week.

 

[hungry]

If you look at The Predictor portion of this, it has Michigan ranked #6

 

[bphillips4gg]

Very interesting stuff. Things I noticed:

Texas has the 2nd toughest SoS according to this ranking, hence the 1-4 record.

BYU has the toughest, Michigan is a big part of that, hence the 3-2 record.

Utah isn't as high as I'd have thought, given the ass-whooping they put on Oregon, but then again, I wasn't that impressed with them, I put the loss more on the Michigan offense's inability to get out of their own way than I'm willing to give Utah credit for doing anything particularly special to stop Michigan.

Also, I'm surprised that the highest ranked American team is Memphis at 51 after the American has multiple wins over the ACC (Houston over Louisville, No. 32 and Cincy over Miami, No. 50) as well as a win over the B1G (Temple over Penn State, No. 56). Maybe those early season non-conference wins will start to help once conference play starts (assuming Louisville, Miami and Penn State don't suck, which I'm not holding out much hope).

I guess the point is, as you said in your post, those early season non-conference wins don't start to help until a few weeks into conference play and ONLY if those teams that the conference beats continue winning.

 

[Michchamp]

If you look at The Predictor portion of this, it has Michigan ranked #6

the predictor feature seems important for the future. i've noticed that as long as its "positive," that is, higher than a team's current ranking, they seem to do well. even if it's only one spot higher. it shows sagarin's formula likes a team.

under Hoke it seemed like our predictor was always negative... and over the course of the season we'd sink into oblivion.

 

[Michchamp]

hot off the press: We're now up to #3 in Sagarin's rankings.

by his metric we should beat MSU by 17, factoring in the home advantage.

the "predictor" metric no longer has us climbing... #3 is where we'll stay. #1 is Alabama, and #2 is Baylor. Baylor hasn't played anybody either, but unlike that complete fraud TCU, they keep winning comfortably.

the real head scratcher is trying to figure out why his system likes USC so much. they seem like a disaster of a team & now have two losses.

 

[hungry]

3. Michigan 91.40 SoS 28
39. Michigan State 77.47 SoS 89

Took me a second to even find Michigan State. This brings up another major factor that I like looking at in this Sagarin rating and that is Strength of Schedule (SoS.) Teams that play a harder schedule and do well are, in my mind, better than teams that play a weaker schedule and do well. The SoS difference in this upcoming game should be significant.

 

[hungry]

Michigan is 3rd in Predictor. Meanwhile, MSU is 50th. There is a difference of 18 points in the calculation.

 

[Michchamp]

sagarin still looks good for us... 13th with a 30th ranked SOS. predictor has us 4th.

MSU is 19th and 57th respectively with a predictor that has them falling over time.