Top 25 Rankings Post Week 3

               

         

The Aggregate's second Top 25 and 1 rankings of the season are out. Texas claims the new top spot. Despite losing Quinn Ewers the Longhorns topped UTSA 56-7. The Roadrunners were the 103rd ranked team coming into the week, but the lopsided victory still helped Texas surpass Tennessee this week. 

The aggregate had four teams who moved eight spots this week. Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Louisiana State, and Missouri all notched big victories. Notre Dame crushed 78th ranked Purdue 66-7. Texas A&M won at the swamp beating 43rd ranked Florida 33-20. LSU won a hotly contested contest at 22nd ranked South Carolina vaulting them back into the top 25. Missouri came back and beat 13th ranked Boston College propelling them back into the top 25.  All of these are interesting although for the eye test we think the Aggregate might have been rating Florida and Boston College too high. 

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The biggest drops this week went to Georgia, Utah and Central Florida. All of whom dropped four spots. All three teams won, but their games were much closer than the Aggregate expected. Georgia beat 63rd ranked Kentucky by one point. The Aggregate expected them to win by 18. Utah beat 113th ranked Utah State 38-21 in what was a one possession game until the 4th quarter. UCF beat 58th ranked TCU 35-34. 

Both Michigan and South Carolina dropped out of the power ranking. Carolina is referenced above, but Michigan had a lackluster performance at home against 119th ranked Arkansas State, winning 28-18.

The Aggregate included two teams in the top 25 that did not receive any votes in the AP list Baylor (2-1) and Georgia Tech (3-1). Baylor has a 2-1 record and a +19.7 average point differential against the 26th hardest schedule so far this year and Tech is 3-1 with a +18.8 point differential against the 21st hardest schedule. The Tech schedule is assuming that Florida State was actually a good team which has yet to be shown, but it also points out that Tech's loss was really not that bad. The Aggregate has Syracuse as it's 29th best team in the FBS. 

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	Top 25 and 1 Aggregate Power Ranking
Rank	Team	Record	Change	Rating	AP Ranking
1	Texas	3-0	+1	57.2	1
2	Tennessee	3-0	-1	56.7	6
3	Alabama	3-0	+1	53.3	4
4	Ohio State	2-0	-1	52.7	3
5	Miami (FL)	3-0	+1	52.2	8
6	Mississippi	3-0	-1	51.5	5
7	Notre Dame	2-1	+8	48.3	17
8	Southern California	2-0	0	45.2	11
9	Penn State	2-0	0	44.9	10
10	Oregon	3-0	+7	43.5	9
11	Georgia	3-0	-4	42.9	2
12	Clemson	1-1	0	40.9	21
13	Louisville	2-0	+1	40.4	19
14	Utah	3-0	-4	39.6	12
15	Central Florida	3-0	-4	38.8	38
16	Boston College	2-1	-3	38.7	30
17	Texas A&M	2-1	+8	37.7	25
18	Oklahoma	3-0	0	37.4	15
19	Kansas State	3-0	+1	37.3	13
20	Louisiana State	2-1	+8	36.7	16
21	Baylor	2-1	+3	36.5	#N/A
22	Georgia Tech	3-1	-3	35.9	#N/A
23	Oklahoma State	3-0	-2	35.5	14
24	Missouri	3-0	+8	35.3	7
25	Iowa	2-1	-2	35.2	33
133	Kent State	0-3	0	-12.5	#N/A

First Top 25 Rankings of the Year

                                     

Not totally done working out all the automation kinks in the predictive part of the metric, but we were able to get the record keeping and ranking evaluation tool totally automated and up to date. Here are the first top 25 Aggregate power rankings of the year. Hopefully predictions are coming soon. One note, Change in the table below is tracking the teams ranking change since the start of the year. 

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	Top 25 and 1 Aggregate Power Ranking
Rank	Team	Record	Change	Rating	AP Ranking
1	Tennessee	2-0	+18	57.0	7
2	Texas	2-0	+3	56.7	2
3	Ohio State	2-0	+1	52.7	3
4	Alabama	2-0	+12	50.8	4
5	Mississippi	2-0	+1	50.7	5
6	Miami (FL)	2-0	+7	47.6	10
7	Georgia	2-0	-5	46.2	1
8	Southern California	2-0	+19	45.2	11
9	Penn State	2-0	-2	44.9	8
10	Utah	2-0	+7	42.5	12
11	Central Florida	2-0	+25	41.1	T42
12	Clemson	1-1	-1	40.9	22
13	Boston College	2-0	+32	40.8	24
14	Louisville	2-0	+12	40.4	19
15	Notre Dame	1-1	-12	40.0	18
16	Michigan	1-1	-4	39.8	17
17	Oregon	2-0	-16	38.0	9
18	Oklahoma	2-0	-9	37.6	15
19	Georgia Tech	2-1	+23	37.2	#N/A
20	Kansas State	2-0	+5	36.9	14
21	Oklahoma State	2-0	+10	36.4	13
22	South Carolina	2-0	+16	36.2	#N/A
23	Iowa	1-1	0	36.1	32
24	Baylor	1-1	+37	35.8	#N/A
25	Texas A&M	1-1	-15	35.7	28
133	Kent State	0-2	0	-12.6	#N/A

Final Week One Picks

There will be two college games remaining after Saturday ends and the Aggregate has the break down for both. 

The Aggregate is predicting a 45-42 victory for LSU over USC. The Tigers look just a smidgen better to the Aggregate algorithm with a 55% chance to win. In the matchup on Labor Day the Aggregate still likes Florida State to prevail, but after the Georgia Tech game, the algorithm is now giving Boston College an 18 % chance.

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Sunday, September 1st and Monday, September 2nd
Teams	Record	Score Prediction	Chance to Win	Vegas Line	O/U	Moneyline
Southern California	0-0	42	44.4%
Louisiana State	0-0	45	55.6%	-6	62.5	-$185.00
Boston College	0-0	31	16.7%
Florida State	0-1	40	83.3%	-21.5	51.5	-$800.00

Adjusted Winning Percentage for ACC Coaches

I've often felt that winning percentage is not a great look at how good coaches actually perform as it does not factor in a multitude of items including environment, player talent and competition. As a result I devised a formula to try and tackle some of that problem and give a more accurate portrayal of what part of the wins and losses the head coach was responsible for. 

This metric, the adjusted win percentage for FBS coaches, tries to take into account at least the players that each coach is responsible for. For example when a new head coach wins in their very first year the credit only lies somewhat with them. Many of the players they are winning with were recruited by the previous staff. Often these coaches go on to not be successful in the long term. The best examples I can think of are Ed Orgeron at LSU or Gene Chizik at Auburn. Both should be noted actually had their best year a few years in, but neither lasted after a prolonged time. On the flip side new coaches often lose heavily in their first year because it takes time to recruit and install new systems and to get a full buy-in from players. Think Sabin's first year at Alabama or Bobby Petrino's first at Arkansas.

The basic thrust of the formula is this, the longer a coach has coached a team the more accountable he is for their wins and losses. The transfer portal has changed some of this in that the formula now holds coaches more accountable sooner. Gone are the days when you had four years to show some results.

Special notes, these statistics are based on fbs wins and losses only. The time period for the coaches is endless so all the coaches years are included, but it is only an evaluation of current coaches not coaches from the past.

In the ACC no one has a higher adjusted winning percentage than Dabo Swinney at Clemson. No surprise, Swinney has helmed one of the best college football programs of this century and it shows in his win percentage. Many consider the last few years at Clemson to be down years because of Swinney's unwillingness to embrace the transfer portal, but he still has 80.6% winning rate since the portal began. Time will tell if the Tigers are going to regress, but the Aggregate has them as the 11th best team in the country this year.

Possibly the most interesting aspect of the metric for the ACC was which coaches seem to have been helped by rosters that they did not create. Dave Doeren at NC State, Bill O'Brien at Boston College, Pat Narduzzi at Pitt, Justin Wilcox at Cal and Tony Elliot at Virginia all have a better traditional winning percentage than adjusted, but no one has a bigger difference than Jeff Brohm at Louisville at -1.5% worse. This shows these coaches have had more success early in their time at programs which at least implies that these coaches have come into favorable situations early in their coaching and their traditional win percentages are at least a little inflated. 

Here are the full results:   

ACC Coaches	Team	W	L	Adjusted W Pct	Traditional W Pct	Difference
Fran Brown	Syracuse	0.0	0.0	#DIV/0!	0.0%	#DIV/0!
Dabo Swinney	Clemson	154.3	32.1	82.8%	79.8%	3.0%
Rhett Lashlee	SMU	14.5	6.0	70.7%	66.7%	4.0%
Mike Norvell	Florida State	54.5	23.3	70.1%	67.6%	2.5%
Mack Brown	UNC	252.0	109.5	69.7%	65.7%	4.0%
Dave Doeren	NC State	81.3	48.5	62.6%	62.7%	-0.1%
Manny Diaz	Duke	18.5	11.5	61.7%	58.3%	3.4%
Bill O'Brien	Boston College	5.5	3.5	61.1%	62.5%	-1.4%
Jeff Brohm	Louisville	48.3	32.5	59.8%	61.3%	-1.5%
Pat Narduzzi	Pittsburgh	53.8	42.0	56.1%	56.5%	-0.4%
Dave Clawson	Wake Forest	82.0	69.0	54.3%	50.5%	3.8%
Mario Cristobal	Miami	57.8	51.1	53.0%	50.3%	2.7%
Brent Key	GT	9.0	8.0	52.9%	52.4%	0.5%
Brent Pry	Va Tech	8.5	10.0	45.9%	41.7%	4.2%
Justin Wilcox	California	28.8	34.8	45.3%	45.6%	-0.3%
Tony Elliott	Virginia	4.5	12.5	26.5%	27.3%	-0.8%
Troy Taylor	Stanford	1.5	4.5	25.0%	25.0%	0.0%

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