Ooten NCAAF Rankings Details and Explanation

This post is in progress. Please check back soon!

The coaches, media, and now an all-powerful committee of 13 publishes their Top 25 NCAA Football rankings. When you have a field of over 100 Division I-A (FBS) teams and a relatively tiny number of games to judge them by, you will have controversy. Well, I couldn't help myself... so I have applied my rating system to the college football system. This took a little while longer to launch (compared to my NFL and MLB ratings) because of the shear number of teams involved. It's not just the 100+ Div I-A teams, but they play the 100+ Div I-AA teams, and they play the vast Div II teams, and they play the vast amount of Div III. Thanks to really fast computations, I have rated well over 500 NCAAF teams, many of them I haven't heard of before. You can see the latest rankings here: NCAAF Rankings

Behind the Rankings

For the most part, my NCAAF rankings are very similar to my rating systems that I use for my NFL and MLB rankings. So if this text seems familiar, that's because it is! I don't want to get too in depth here into the details of the mathematics behind the ratings. So, I'll keep it relatively simple in this blog, and refer you to a reference where you can dig into it more if you'd like. I use a slightly modified version of Microsoft's TrueSkill ratings system. Why slightly modified? Two reasons: 1) Microsoft wouldn't elaborate on the complex details of competitions involving three or more competitors. 2) Microsoft would give the specific equations of the 'v' and 'w' functions (check the details in the reference if you care), so I had to curve fit.

Issue #2 isn't that big of a detail, my curve fit matches extremely close to their 'v' and 'w' function plots. Issue #1 doesn't effect head-to-head competitions, which cover the vast majority of sporting events, so this does not apply to my NCAAF rankings. For the curious readers out there, I devised a fairly accurate way of simulating their complex methods of three or more competitor events that tracks very closely with their results. With all that said, I'm satisfied with my Matlab version of the TrueSkill Rating system.

I think we can all agree that a team isn't always as good or as bad as their record. Strength of schedule matters. A team can have some very quality wins against a strong opponent, or an embarrassing loss against a poor opponent. From a 30,000 ft view, my NCAAF ratings (again, based on Microsoft's TrueSkill) measures each team based on the quality of opponent they compete against by tracking two parameters for each team: average skill (mu) and a measure of uncertainty of that skill (sigma). Many rating systems only track the "skill" term. By tracking both skill and uncertainty, you can converge to a more accurate representation of a player's (or team's) skill, with a smaller sample size. A team's opponent's skill, uncertainty, and outcome of the event effect that team's recalculated skill and uncertainty. The rating is generated from subtracting three times the uncertainty from the average skill (rating = mu - 3*sigma). This results in a 99% confidence that the team's skill is at or above that rating.

Everything I've mentioned to this point applies to my NFL and MLB ratings also. Where I start to diverge with my NCAAF ratings is the fact that I converge my NCAAF rankings. I do this for NCAAF and not the professional sports because in college sports there can be a huge variation of the quality of teams. Applying an iterative algorithm to the rating system allows learning of each team later in the season to be applied to early season results.

Each year, the teams are started off with the same base rating (or a regression to a base rating), so an early win or loss may not accurately yield the correct points added or subtracted from a team. For example, during the 2014 NCAAF season, Ohio State suffered and early loss to Virginia Tech. In the beginning of the season, these teams are similarly rated, so OSU was not penalized too much for losing to a near-equal team. However, as the season has progressed, Virginia Tech has lost several more games. This indicates that the loss to Virginia Tech was worse than losing to a near-equal team. The iteration process subtracts more points from Ohio State than was originally subtracted. The opposite can occur from an early season win over a team that proves to be high quality. The iterative process applies learning for each team's opponents to that team's rating, which can result in a small fluctuation of a team's rating even during a bye week. Currently, I iterate on the NCAAF ratings until the maximum team convergence is less than 1%.

More details here if you are interested! Microsoft TrueSkill Rating

I'd also be happy to answer questions if you'd rather have someone translate that for you: Post your questions via email or comments on this post and I'll get back to you.

Lawsuits Against the NFL

By Ryan Reeber

I have been paying close attention to all of the lawsuits that have been going on involving the NFL and it's former players. Like most people, I have formed my own opinions but haven't decided to voice them until now.

Since the concussion lawsuit has already happened I'm going to focus my article solely on the most recent lawsuit regarding team doctors hiding injuries and players taking medicines that have permanently damaged their bodies.  Please keep in mind that some of the players involved played in the 70's and 80's, so times were a little different then than they are now. Also, my opinions will not apply to ALL players listed in this lawsuit but I certainly think it applies to most.

The lawsuit is targeting many "team doctors" who either misled the players about their injuries, lied to them about injuries, or lied to them about possible side affects to prescription medicines (mainly painkillers).  When I first heard of this I instantly thought, oh great, here comes more deadbeat, broke former NFL players trying to make an easy pay day.  Here comes another blow to a sport that I enjoyed playing for 9 years and love watching in person or on television.  I paid close attention to media outlets and followed this story fairly closely to try to learn as much as I could about it. I do not have all the facts but I have enough to have an opinion.

The first thing about this lawsuit that really irritates me is who is being sued. The former players are blaming the TEAM doctors for how they were treated yet they are suing the NFL as a whole. Now I understand that the NFL is the big kahuna. But the NFL does not decide who these teams employ as their coaches or doctors.  If you want to sue who is truly responsible then sue your former team.  But why isn't that happening? I believe the answer is simple. These individual teams are worth pennies compared to what the NFL as an entity is worth. Meaning that a favorable decision in any lawsuit against the NFL will pay much more than against any individual team. So far, looks like a cash grab may be the true motive behind this lawsuit.

But that's not the whole story.

These players are claiming that team doctors misdiagnosed, misinformed and sometimes even misled the players about what injuries they sustained. For example, a player in the lawsuit claims he broke his leg and the doctors did not tell him that it was broken, so he played the whole season on a broken leg. Of course I could bring up common sense which should tell someone, "hey, I'm in a lot more pain than what a strain, sprain or bruise gives you....this has to be a break". But I'll give the player the benefit of the doubt on this one. Let's say, for the sake of the argument, that the doctor did lie to the player and the player had no idea. What then?  Does the player just blindly follow the doctors advice?  Now here is where your opinion might differ from mine. I think it's completely asinine for a player to blindly follow a doctor (who works for the TEAM) and not seek a second opinion. Did these players not have a personal doctor?  A doctor that worked for THEM and whom they could trust would have their best interests at heart?  I heard Cris Carter (former Buckeye great) say on Mike & Mike that he always got a second opinion from his personal doctor. So clearly, not all of these players lacked common sense. Why didn't these guys get second opinions? Was it pure laziness?  Was it blind faith in the wrong people?  Were they just "played" by someone they should be able to trust?  Personally, I think it's a combination of all those things and an enormous lack of accountability and responsibility.

These players played in the NFL. It's a violent sport in which your bodies get banged up every single day. You know when you strap on those pads that you may get hurt. Wouldn't it be in your best interest to make sure that your body (your most prized possession in your career) is taken care of?  Who is supposed to take care of it?  Are the doctors responsible for YOUR body or are you?  Let's go ahead and bring up the last part of this lawsuit, painkillers.

Some of these former players were prescribed painkillers to help treat the pain from their injuries. Seems pretty common right?  Most people now a days know that most, if not all, painkillers can be addicting. But again, this information may not have been well known in the 70's or 80's so I'll yet again give the players a pass on this one. However, I cannot give them a pass for putting pills into their body (again, their "moneymaker") without knowing exactly what they could do. These players are responsible for everything they do to or for their body, including everything they put into it. Stop blaming others for things you should be responsible for.  Many of these players, unfortunately, did get addicted to these painkillers and it ruined their life. They went bankrupt trying to afford the pills and some even ended up on the streets because of it. As sad as this is, I have no sympathy.

Bankrupt players suing the NFL...money grab?  Sure seems like it.

You can believe the motive behind the lawsuit is fueled by financial reasons or not, that's your choice. But one thing, in my opinion, cannot be debated and that is that these players refuse and still refuse to take ownership of THIER actions. They refuse to take responsibility and accountability for things they did or things they should have done but failed to do. Shame on you. Shame on you for trying to take another shot at a sport I enjoy so very much.

-Ryan Reeber