Stats Analysis from Fellow MAC Blog

Over the Pylon, a BSU blog, has weighed in with a bit of his own statistical analysis for college football. Much like me, they like to play around with various statistical analysis tools.

He looks at each of the 17 NCAA stat categories, and evaluates how team's are ranked across the board.

It comes up with some interesting stuff. A couple notes:

He acknowledges that strength of schedule is omitted, and that all categories are ranked as equal. While it might seem like some category weighting would make sense in theory, and you would have to do a hell of a lot of work to develop the weights. Further, the mere fact that the tool looks at such a wide variety of measures helps to mitigate this, so long as you remember what it measures (statistical balance).

Of course, this allows us to see some things. Just how important is balance? Are teams which dominate one area more effective than teams that have balance?

Note the very high statistical ranking for Troy, the Falcons first opponent.