2016 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 7

It's been a busy 15 hours or so of football-related posts for me as I catch up following a long weekend. We're almost to the halfway mark of the season, if you can believe that. There's still a ton of time left in the season, even if we're almost out of non-conference games.

However, mainly because of the independents but also because there are some out of conference games that don't involve those teams still to come, I'm continuing to follow up on the schedules for each week by conference, though I'm not commenting on any of the conference games because, for the purpose of this metric, it doesn't matter.

The rankings are mostly stable as we go from week to week, but unexpected changes can and do happen. Either way, if you want a refresher on how this metric works, you can view that at my season intro post. Let's get to the schedule.

2016 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Week 6 Mock Bracket

All of my watching of games, and all of the data entry that goes with it... it all comes down to this.

I think this is a tie for the earliest I've ever been able to do this, but now that it's impossible for me to leave out any of the 11 remaining undefeated teams in college football, the time has come for me to build my first mock bracket for the Death to the BCS Playoffs.

Regular readers of Confessions of a Sportscaster are probably familiar with the format of this playoff, but if you're new here or missed out on my season introduction post, the basic premise of the Death to the BCS Playoffs follows the ideas set forth in the book of the same title pictured here written by Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter, and Jeff Passan. The College Football Playoff and its four team playoff is a good start, but the system still discriminates against some of the smaller conferences at this level by refusing to give them a chance to play for a national title. The Death to the BCS Playoffs remedy this by granting an automatic bid to each of the 10 conference champions, and we then fill the field with six at large teams for a total of 16. This then plays out in a classic bracket, but instead of playing quarterfinals or semifinals at bowl game sites, we up the stakes for the regular season by seeding the teams 1-16 and giving home field advantage for the first three rounds to the highest seeds before playing the national title game at the Rose Bowl because it's the Rose Bowl.

Photo by Scott Halleran (Getty Images)

To fill this field, especially for the mocks, I need to make some assumptions about presumed conference "champions" until the actual title games take place. But to seed the teams, I use a wealth of data I've collected. Non-Conference Schedule Strength (NCSS) gets factored in to a minor degree just to see what kind of non-conference slate each team plays, though as a general rule the Group of Five teams score higher than those from Power Conferences, just based on how the metric is calculated. I also factor in Playoff Points of three varieties: First Degree (PP1), which is just a sum of wins of defeated opponents by any given team, Second Degree (PP2), which averages the First Degree Playoff Points of each defeated opponent by a given team, and a new one this year in Adjusted Playoff Points (aPP), which takes the aforementioned sum of wins by defeated opponents, but subtracts the losses of opponents that beat the given team to arrive at a final score, which can be negative. All of this data can be found on this Google Sheet.

Photo from sagarin.com.

In an effort to remove any potential bias on my part, I also take multiple computer rankings into account to serve as a check as well as additional data to help arrive at a reasonable conclusion. Here's the important catch: unlike the old BCS, which refused to factor in margin of victory out of some misguided notion of sportsmanship, these computer rankings all include that factor because blowout wins should be valued more than a narrow victory. The two computer ranking systems I have used in years past are Jeff Sagarin's (SAG) rankings, as he used to do rankings for the BCS, but also did a ranking that factored margin of victory in. The late David Rothman (ROTH) built a similar ranking formula that included margin of victory, and before he died he made his formula public. A UCLA faculty member uses that formula to set up rankings of his own. Since said faculty member hasn't run his numbers for the 2016 season yet, I'm adding in a third ranking, and will use all three for the final selection. I discovered that the team over at All My Sports Teams Suck (AMSTS) run a formula to build a ranking as well, and they also factor in score, at least as a check, to help arrive at a final conclusion.

All of these data will combine together in a somewhat organic fashion (read: I look things over and try to make a fair decision based on the available data) to seed the 16 teams who will face off for the national championship. So, without further ado, here's my first mock bracket for the 2016 season.

2016 NCAA Playoff Points: Week 6

I took this weekend off to get some stuff done at home, hence the delay on this post until Tuesday afternoon. Of course, with another week of college football in the books, I need to get to work on updating things.

Looking at the standings, we're down to 11 undefeated teams. After looking close at how they're distributed, I have found that they're spread out enough for me to build my first mock bracket. That will come a little later this afternoon when I can look at everything and make a good call on how to build the bracket.

In the meantime, for reference you can check last week's rankings here. If you need a refresher on how most of this works, you can check that out at my season introduction post. For now, let's look at the points.

2016 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 5

We're a quarter of the way (give or take) through the NFL season, and our consortium of pickers are all not exactly bunched up, but there's not a huge gap either.

I'm still in last place, but I at least have some company in the basement after blanking on the early Sunday games but sweeping the late games as well as grabbing the Thursday night game to finish with my second straight winning week. Adam had his best week of the year to date, sweeping our three disputed games to go up by four, but he trails my dad by one through four weeks.

If you want to see a breakdown of the picks based on what we've all been picking, you can view a spreadsheet of those stats here. Through four weeks I'm the only person in our group who has yet to go hero, but I've struggled everywhere else a little bit. Hopefully my luck continues this week and I can close the gap with the leaders.

There are only 14 games this week thanks to byes, and Adam and I disagree on seven of those games. Let's take a look at the week.

2016 NCAA NCSS Rankings: Week 6

We're well into the month of October now, and conference play is in full swing.

Last week's rankings saw a little bit of movement as a few conferences were still wrapping up their out of league slates, but I expect that most of the rest of the way will be pretty straightforward. With the handful of independent teams though, there will still be a few non-conference games on the docket, and we haven't gotten to Nick Saban Is a Coward Week yet. Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, here's a look at this week's non-conference games. If you want a primer on how these rankings work, you can view that at my season introductory post.

COAS Hands Out 2016 MLB Awards

I'm following up on an annual feature here on Confessions of a Sportscaster. I debated about pushing this back until Wednesday to keep each day with one post, but I decided to push the timetable up to today since the season is concluded. This way no playoff results cloud my judgment.

For the most part, I've decided on a lot of these votes for awards already and it was just a matter of waiting for the final numbers. With those in the books, I am going to make my picks for Manager of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Cy Young Award, and Most Valuable Player for each league.

2016 NCAA Playoff Points: Week 5

Through five weeks of the college football season, we're down to just 16 undefeated teams left in all of FBS football. This would, in many circumstances, mean I could start looking at building mock playoff brackets. However, because many of these undefeated teams are bunched up in a few different conferences, giving an automatic bid to every conference champion would mean that some undefeated teams would be left out in the cold. I can't in good conscience do that.

As such, I will continue to just pore over Playoff Points numbers again this week based on the results from the weekend. I imagine that once again the rankings from last week will by and large remain the same, it's just the scores that will increase (or, in the case of Adjusted Playoff Points, decrease).

If you want a look at how these scores are calculated, you can view my season preview post. Here's our data from Week 5.