College Football Top 25 Week 8

The top 25 for college football according to the aggregate. Lots of movement this week the biggest being two teams that moved double digit spots to move into the top 25 including one that lost. Also some surprising non-movers. 

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The two biggest movers were Wisconsin and South Carolina. Wisconsin gets into the top 25 for the fist time this season. The Badgers started 28th at the beginning of the season, but dipped to as low as 60th before rising the last four weeks. They are coming off of their best win of the year a 35 point drubbing of a good Rutgers team. 

South Carolina moved up double digits despite losing this week. The Aggregate rewarded the Gamecocks after they almost beat Alabama at Alabama. South Carolina was a 21.5 point underdog, but lost by only two.  

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The biggest story out of the Aggregate's top 25 is that both Oregon, ranked 9th, and Ohio State, ranked 2nd, did not move. This despite the Ducks beating the Buckeyes 32-31. To try and help make sense of this we'll breakdown how the Aggregate saw this game. First the Aggregate had going into the game Ohio State's rating as 53.8 and Oregon's as 43.1. Oregon played at home which Action network has as a homefield advantage of 2.5 points. This gave Oregon a rating of 45.6 playing at home. That meant to the Aggregate Ohio State was an 8.2 point favorite. Obviously Oregon bucked that trend winning by one at home, but a one point win at home is not worth as much as other wins. The way the Aggregate evaluates wins is it awards you the points of your opponents strength minus your homefield advantage plus how many points you beat them by so Oregon's value from the win was 53.8-2.5+1. Giving them a game value of 52.3. The Aggregates awards losers accordingly taking your opponents rating, subtracting how much you lost by and in this case adding the homefield advantage so Ohio State's game evaluation was 43.1-1+2.5. Giving them a value of 44.6. Ultimately these game values didn't change either teams average rating enough to change their rank. Ohio State lost .9 points on their rating and Oregon gained 1.0. 

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	Top 25 and 1 Aggregate Power Ranking
Rank	Team	Record	Change	Rating	AP Ranking
1	Texas	6-0	0	57.5	1
2	Ohio State	5-1	0	53.2	4
3	Tennessee	5-1	0	50.1	11
4	Miami (FL)	6-0	+1	49.2	6
5	Notre Dame	5-1	+2	48.1	12
6	Mississippi	5-2	-2	48.4	18
7	Alabama	5-1	-1	46.5	7
8	Clemson	5-1	+2	44.4	10
9	Oregon	6-0	0	43.0	2
10	Georgia	5-1	-2	41.6	5
11	Penn State	6-0	0	41.6	3
12	Southern California	3-3	0	40.5	37
13	Texas A&M	5-1	0	38.8	14
14	Iowa	4-2	+3	39.1	31
15	Iowa State	6-0	+3	38.7	9
16	Louisiana State	5-1	0	37.8	8
17	Louisville	4-2	-2	38.1	36
18	Oklahoma	4-2	-4	35.6	29
19	Indiana	6-0	0	36.9	16
20	Wisconsin	4-2	+24	34.7	NR
21	Virginia Tech	3-3	0	34.4	NR
22	Arkansas	4-2	0	35.6	34
23	South Carolina	3-3	+12	35.0	NR
24	Brigham Young	6-0	+7	36.4	13
25	Kansas State	5-1	+2	33.8	17
133	Kent State	0-6	0	-12.9	NR

Adjusted Winning Percentage for Big 10 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.

Moore at 

The coach with the best adjusted winning percentage for the Big 10 is technically Sherrone Moore. Who as an interim coach won one game. You can see in the chart below that the Adjusted metric only credits Moore with 12.5% of that win, but with no losses that gives him a 100% winning percentage. Beyond him Ryan Day has the highest winning percentage despite having a worse adjusted win percentage than traditional. 

The other coach with a worse adjusted win percentage than traditional was Lincoln Riley. Both Riley and Day have very good winning percentages, but started their coaching careers in very successful programs. As such the adjusted winning percentage see's both as not quite as good as their traditional win percentage would suggest. 

The other most notable thing for Big 10 coaches in the adjustable win percentage is the amount of coaches that have a much better  adjusted than traditional win rate. The Big 10 has six coaches with over a 5% better rate. Other large conferences have zero coaches with that large of difference. What does that mean? Mostly that those coaches are a bit undervalued in traditional winning percentage. 

The largest of those differences belongs to Nebraska's Matt Rhule with an adjusted rate of 61.7%. That's 10.7% higher than his traditional. Rhule is of course in his second year with Nebraska and seems to be on the rise. The Cornhuskers played a ton of close games last year and 5-7 was an improvement on seasons before.  

Here are the total results:

Big 10 Coaches	Team	W	L	Adjusted W Pct	Traditional W Pct	Difference
DeShaun Foster	UCLA	0.0	0.0	#DIV/0!	0.0%	#DIV/0!
Sherrone Moore	Michigan	0.1	0.0	100.0%	100.0%	0.0%
Ryan Day	Ohio State	46.9	7.5	86.2%	87.5%	-1.3%
Curt Cignetti	Indiana	15.0	2.5	85.7%	82.6%	3.1%
Dan Lanning	Oregon	17.0	3.5	82.9%	81.5%	1.4%
LIncoln Riley	USC	53.5	14.0	79.3%	80.4%	-1.1%
Luke Fickell	Wisconsin	53.8	15.8	77.3%	69.6%	7.7%
James Franklin	Penn State	88.8	37.5	70.3%	67.5%	2.8%
PJ Fleck	Minnesota	66.0	35.8	64.9%	58.8%	6.1%
Kirk Ferentz	Iowa	192.0	105.8	64.5%	62.2%	2.3%
Matt Rhule	Nebraska	38.3	23.8	61.7%	51.0%	10.7%
David Braun	Northwestern	2.0	1.3	61.5%	61.5%	0.0%
Bret Bielema	Illinois	89.5	58.3	60.6%	59.9%	0.7%
Jonathan Smith	Michigan State	31	25.75	54.6%	49.3%	5.3%
Greg Schiano	Rutgers	78.3	78.0	50.1%	47.8%	2.3%
Jedd Fisch	Washington	15.6	15.6	50.0%	43.6%	6.4%
Mike Locksley	Maryland	27.4	35.4	43.6%	34.4%	9.2%
Ryan Walters	Purdue	2.0	4.0	33.3%	33.3%	0.0%

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Big 10 End of Year Rankings

 The end of the year rankings for the Big 10 are here. The Aggregate had no changes at the top of the conference, but did have some other moves. Rutgers rose a spot after their bowl win over Miami. Iowa dropped even further after their bowl loss. The Hawkeyes lack of offense continues to keep their Aggregate rating down. Northwestern jumped two spots up to #9 after their bowl victory pushing Purdue and Illinois further down.