Top Massey Rated Team Minus AQs and non participants

[underdawg]

1. Towson

2, McNeese

3. YSU

4. William and Mary

5. SDSU

6. Montana

7. UNI

8. SIU

9. Villanova

10. Northern Arizona

11.Coastal Carolina

12. Fordham



These are the top Massey rated teams of the top 20 with Automatic Qualifiers removed and teams from the Ivy League (who don't participate in the playoffs) removed,


How many At-Large teams are they? 11?

[skinny_uncle]

11 AQs and 13 at-large.

[ValleyTalk]

Valley would be sitting pretty, but we know the Valley is getting a max of 3 in.

[stevdock]

How many of those 12 teams are even going to get in?? I'm guessing no more than 8.

[skinny_uncle]

How many of those 12 teams are even going to get in?? I'm guessing no more than 8.

Massey seems to place a heavier emphasis on strength of schedule than most polls. SOS is an important factor to the committee or else Lehigh would have made the field last year. You have to look at more than just the number of wins a teams has.

[Catbooster]

You missed Sam Houston between Montana and UNI

I have a hard time taking these computer models seriously even though we are far enough into the season that they should be well connected. If you look at the non-participants that are removed in the OP, it has Princeton at 2 and Harvard at 10. If these Massey rankings are accurate, the AGS (and other) poll voters are clueless. Personally, I think the human polls are closer to reality. I can see using the computer ratings as a data point, but they should not be given much weight IMO.

[lionsrking2]

Personally, I think the human polls are closer to reality. I can see using the computer ratings as a data point, but they should not be given much weight IMO.

Some individual poll voters are closer to reality, but the actual polls themselves ... not so much. I'm not a huge fan of the computer ratings either, because they lack common sense, but they do get some things right ... that's why you need a committee of competent, informed and relatively unbiased experts who can put the pieces of the puzzle together. There will never be a perfect method of ranking and selecting teams for the playoffs.

[thebootfitter]

Some individual poll voters are closer to reality, but the actual polls themselves ... not so much. I'm not a huge fan of the computer ratings either, because they lack common sense, but they do get some things right ... that's why you need a committee of competent, informed and relatively unbiased experts who can put the pieces of the puzzle together. There will never be a perfect method of ranking and selecting teams for the playoffs.
I've been tracking the performance of Sagarin over the past few weeks. Specifically how his predicted outcomes coincide with the actual outcomes of games each week. I'll release several statistics and observations after the end of the season, but right now I can say this... Sagarin has correctly predicted the straight up winner of games in about 75-81% of the match ups. I suspect Massey would be in the same general ballpark. Further, Sagarin's predicted point differentials compared to the actual point differentials across all DI games has been very close overall: An average of 0.3 points off last week and only 0.2 points off this week.

My initial take is that across all games in DI football, Sagarin's predictions are actually pretty fair. But there is also a high degree of variability in results for individual games and match ups. (i.e. the "any given Saturday" effect)