2012 College Football Season thread

[Coach McGuirk]

New AP poll out. Alabama now #1 with USC #2. BYU with 63 votes. Utah with 34

http://espn.go.com/college-football/rankings

[TripletDaddy]

Hard to argue after Alabama pounded such a highly ranked team. Unless the argument is that the highly ranked team really had no business being ranked that high in the first place.

That being said, Alabama is unquestionably good. I think we will know a little more about SC over the next 2 weeks. Syracuse and the Farm. Both road games.

[The_Douger]

Michigan is overrated every year.

But Bama boat raced them so I don't think it really matters.

I think there's Alabama and USC, and the rest of us are just playing in their world.

[dabrockster]

Another reason I dislike Pre-season polls.. UM get trounced badly and still is ranked in the top 25 leaving BYU out of it..

I say do away with polls until the 5th week.. Let things shake out.. Pre-season polls hurt teams and UM still ebing ranked proves this.. BYU is just barely out when I figured they'd be in by UM getting dropped completely out..

[The_Douger]

Yeah, it would be better if they did that. They always rank the same teams based on their successes of yesteryear.

[Portland Ute]

Another reason I dislike Pre-season polls.. UM get trounced badly and still is ranked in the top 25 leaving BYU out of it..

I say do away with polls until the 5th week.. Let things shake out.. Pre-season polls hurt teams and UM still ebing ranked proves this.. BYU is just barely out when I figured they'd be in by UM getting dropped completely out..

I guess I don't see how anything would change.

Those same biases would still be in place come week 5. A 4-1 Michigan team is still going to get more "respect" than a 4-1 BYU team.

And, while there might not be official AP or USAToday polls, it's not as if other media outlets won't be doing "unofficial" rankings.

Those would inevitably influence the Week 5 Official polls.

All the magazines would continue to have pre-season polls. How would you stop them?

[TripletDaddy]

I guess I don't see how anything would change.

Those same biases would still be in place come week 5. A 4-1 Michigan team is still going to get more "respect" than a 4-1 BYU team.

And, while there might not be official AP or USAToday polls, it's not as if other media outlets won't be doing "unofficial" rankings.

Those would inevitably influence the Week 5 Official polls.

All the magazines would continue to have pre-season polls. How would you stop them?

By using the skills and talents of the people of Santa Poco!

[UtahJazzFan88]

The biggest joke of them all is Florida getting ranked to start the season, and barely getting by a mediocre MAC team in Bowling Green, and still getting that ranking.

[CardiacCoug]

Utah and BYU are 29 and 30 in Sagarin now. I'm excited for the game already -- I think the teams are pretty even.

[pelagius]

Utah and BYU are 29 and 30 in Sagarin now. I'm excited for the game already -- I think the teams are pretty even.

Ok, so here is what I think Sagarin does at the beginning of the season. I think he using an empirical Bayes procedure (sometimes called Bayesian shrinkage which is different than Seinfeldian shrinkage and not technically Bayesian). Essentially, the rating is primarily end of last years ranking (where BYU and Utah ended very close in the ranking) but then shrunk back slightly to their average ranking over the past probably 4-5 years and then updated slightly based on last weeks result. So you're mostly picking up that BYU and Utah had similar results last year (in terms of Sagarin ranking) which is probably a reasonable but noisy predictor of quality this year.

[Donuthole]

Ok, so here is what I think Sagarin does at the beginning of the season. I think he using an empirical Bayes procedure (sometimes called Bayesian shrinkage which is different than Seinfeldian shrinkage and not technically Bayesian). Essentially, the rating is primarily end of last years ranking (where BYU ended very close) but then shrunk back slightly to their average ranking over the past probably 4-5 years and then updated slightly based on last weeks result. So you're mostly picking up that BYU and Utah had similar results last year (in terms of Sagarin ranking).

That was a lot of jibber jabber that mostly went over this attorney's head. I'll probably retain an expert to help me understand it before trial rolls around. But for now, I took it to mean Cardiac Coug has a very small penis.

[CardiacCoug]

Ok, so here is what I think Sagarin does at the beginning of the season. I think he using an empirical Bayes procedure (sometimes called Bayesian shrinkage which is different than Seinfeldian shrinkage and not technically Bayesian). Essentially, the rating is primarily end of last years ranking (where BYU and Utah ended very close in the ranking) but then shrunk back slightly to their average ranking over the past probably 4-5 years and then updated slightly based on last weeks result. So you're mostly picking up that BYU and Utah had similar results last year (in terms of Sagarin ranking) which is probably a reasonable but noisy predictor of quality this year.

Makes sense that he would be going off last year primarily -- not that I understood much of the rest of that. I really do think these teams are very evenly matched though. Both look to have very good defenses and average offenses so it will probably come down to turnovers and field position.

That was a lot of jibber jabber that mostly went over this attorney's head. I'll probably retain an expert to help me understand it before trial rolls around. But for now, I took it to mean Cardiac Coug has a very small penis.

Nope, no Bayesian or Seinfeldian shrinkage happening here.

[pelagius]

That was a lot of jibber jabber that mostly went over this attorney's head.

Well, I am admittedly guessing but it's what I would do. Here is what I mean. Utah ended last year ranked 39 by Sagarin but since Utah's 5 year average is better than 39 , Sagarin adjusts the ranking down (but it's less important). This is probably where the 30 basically comes from. The one game would have a small effect unless, for example, Utah would have lost and then it would have led to a fairly large reduction in the rating.

[BoylenOver]

Another reason I dislike Pre-season polls.. UM get trounced badly and still is ranked in the top 25 leaving BYU out of it..

I say do away with polls until the 5th week.. Let things shake out.. Pre-season polls hurt teams and UM still ebing ranked proves this.. BYU is just barely out when I figured they'd be in by UM getting dropped completely out..

People dislike preseason polls...but everyone gets excited when the first one is released, and it builds excitement if/when there's a marquee match-up in week one.

The BCS rankings don't come out until October, and I think that helps, but we'll never see an end to preseason rankings.

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

New AP poll out. Alabama now #1 with USC #2. BYU with 63 votes. Utah with 34

http://espn.go.com/college-football/rankings

We have a semi-official poll thread for the 2012 season, feel free to drop updates in it anytime!

http://cougaruteforum.com/showthread.php?t=60595