Watch The Throne, Otis

Greetings, and welcome to the online home of the Pittsfield Ratings Index.  I’m Nick, Michigan State class of 2002, creator and hopefully soon-to-be-proprietor of this whole deal, which was born out of frustration with both the BCS and the lazy journalism that surrounds college football back in 2006.  I tinkered around with a variety of different calculations until finally refining everything in December of 2008 while killing time at my day job.  I’ve shared this privately with friends since, but a variety of circumstances have led me to this public unveiling.  I hope you’ll stick around and enjoy the journey.

I’m sure you have some questions, and I’ll attempt to answer them below:

Do you know what you're doing?

As far as the formula?  Yeah, I have a pretty good idea despite not having any sort of background in statistics.  As far as blogging and trying to be a voice in the crowded sports landscape?  Not a clue.  It'll be a helluva toboggan ride if nothing else. 

What’s the formula?

Loosely based on college basketball’s RPI, it’s a two part calculation based on regular season performance:

A team’s record is not strictly wins and losses, it’s 60% of home 1-A wins + 140% of away 1-A wins divided by the total number of regular season games played.  Conference championship games are not included, as I consider them to be postseason games, and a comparison from previous years has shown that including the games would make little difference in the final standings.

The final score for a team is calculated thusly:  25% record, 50% strength of schedule, 25% opponent strength of schedule.

Let us use Michigan State’s sparkling 11-1 regular season from 2010 as an example:

7 home wins (Northern Colorado doesn’t count) + 3 away wins, as weighted above, divided by 12 total games played gives us a score of .7000.  Their schedule strength was .3931 (good for 74th in the country) and their opponent’s SOS was .3970.  So, using the weighted calculation as described above, their final PRI score was .4708, good for 15th in the final rankings last year.

Strength of Schedule as 50% of the final score?  Isn’t that a bit much?

Well, SOS is what frames the argument about the legitimacy of a team, particularly the mid-majors.  We constantly hear how Boise/Texas Christian/Utah/team du jour wouldn’t be able to hack it in the SEC or Big Ten.  Well, how true is that?  Again, we look to last year with 4 teams not selected at random:

Auburn                 77th SOS
Oregon                 103rd
Texas Christian    104th
Boise State           62nd

Why does TCU get slagged for their weak schedule yet Oregon does not (and I consider myself a fan of Oregon)?  Auburn has a middling SOS despite playing in the oh-so-hard SEC, yet Boise, who played all of two teams, one of whom lost to a 1-AA team, a result which “hurt” Boise, last year if you believe the usual wags, had a slightly less middling schedule and should have received the same amount of praise as Auburn receives.

There’s a lot of slant and lazy journalism out there.  Math, like greed, cuts through all that and clarifies.

Why aren’t 1-AA wins considered?

Games against 1-AA teams aren’t scheduled to be an athletic contest but to fill the coffers of an athletic department.  I understand that, but not only does it put the football team in a lose-lose scenario, but it’s a convenient cop-out for schools not to schedule challenging games that, ironically, would excite fans more than a schedule of two MAC teams, some cupcake from out west and a 1-AA team.  If it’s treated as a placeholder game by all parties then there is no reason for me to deem it otherwise.

How far back do your ratings go?

As of the summer of 2011, we have from 2003-2010 completed.  The plan is eventually to go back to 1985, which is the year that the 1-A/1-AA split finally sorted itself out as the Missouri Valley Conference finally decided to become a fully 1-AA conference.  It took 7 years for the split to finalize.

What can I expect from this website?

First and foremost, what you’ll get from me is a lot of numbers.  I predict all regular season games for a given season (1445 in 2011) and beginning sometime soon, a daily (weekday) conference projection will go up.  At the end of the season, I have a feature entitled “Let’s All Laugh At Nick” where we look back at my predictions what hit and what missed.

After all the conferences are done, I’ll make the bowl predictions and apply the PRI to my predictions.

Weekly ratings will begin after week 6.  I’ve done post-week 4 in the past, coinciding with the start of the worthless Harris poll, but due to the proliferation of early season 1-AA games as well as some other real life commitments, it will be moved a little later.  I’ll provide a brief analysis of things each week, and yes, I’ll be the first to say that a week’s ratings don’t make a lick of sense.

I’ll also be picking the AP Top 25 and ESPN Thursday Night games throughout the season, against the spread and over/under bets, including a Stone Cold Lock Of The Week.  For entertainment purposes, obviously, but last season if you bet my locks you had a return on investment of 140%,

I’ll probably be keeping opinion pieces to a minimum.  There’s far better places that rage against ESPN or debate whether the SEC receives too much or too little praise, so if you want that, I’ll direct you there.  I think Awful Announcing will make fun of Gary Danielson far quicker than I will.  After all, that's their job.  But, if asked, I’ll offer my opinion on things.

What’s your favorite Simpsons episode?

Declaring a college football national champion is easier than answering that.