[Husker] Question for a quiet list

[Bapi Gupta]

On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, Sean McGrath wrote:

> I have a few friends that believe the Huskers would have been in the BCS
> top ten if we would have beaten T. Tech. My personal opinion tells me we
> would have been close but not in the top ten. Can any of then number
> crunchers here on the list be able to find out the answer? I know Bapi
> is pretty good at figuring out if we would have been or not so I'm
> hoping he can help with this. Thanks all!

I may not be the best person to answer this question.  In my rankings 
(updated later today online), I have Nebraska #11 this week, with Texas 
Tech ranked 4th:

                                       Team                    Opponents

   1. Southern California    348.87   6  0  0  1.000   216.52  18  13   0  0.581
   2. Virginia Tech          333.74   6  0  0  1.000   194.07  18  13   0  0.581
   3. Texas                  327.36   6  0  0  1.000   204.59  16  13   0  0.552
   4. Texas Tech             325.37   6  0  0  1.000   170.46  13   7   0  0.650
   5. Alabama                315.90   6  0  0  1.000   187.93  17  12   0  0.586

   6. Georgia                310.02   6  0  0  1.000   194.80  19  12   0  0.613
   7. Penn State             300.25   6  1  0  0.857   218.93  26  12   0  0.684
   8. Florida State          282.11   5  1  0  0.833   198.83  17  11   0  0.607
   9. Oregon                 275.00   6  1  0  0.857   224.60  18   9   0  0.667
  10. Wisconsin              273.63   6  1  0  0.857   206.95  22  15   0  0.595

  11. Nebraska               272.36   5  1  0  0.833   197.92  17  10   0  0.630
  12. Miami, Florida         271.90   5  1  0  0.833   207.91  15  17   0  0.469
  13. Louisiana State        271.71   4  1  0  0.800   216.41  16  10   0  0.615
  14. U.C.L.A.               267.68   6  0  0  1.000   175.78  14  16   0  0.467
  15. Fresno State           267.49   4  1  0  0.800   178.55  12   9   0  0.571

  16. Ohio State             266.81   4  2  0  0.667   234.00  25   8   0  0.758
  17. West Virginia          263.16   6  1  0  0.857   195.19  21   9   0  0.700
  18. Minnesota              256.40   5  2  0  0.714   221.86  24  16   0  0.600
  19. Florida                254.83   5  2  0  0.714   222.01  20  12   0  0.625
  20. Boston College         253.30   6  1  0  0.857   190.90  17  19   0  0.472


My system does a few things that the other ratings do not that favor 
Nebraska.  The two that come to mind are:

1) I use a combination of margin or victory (1/2) and ratio of total 
points (1/2).  The second component tends to favor defensive teams.  When 
we win 23-14, that's 62% of the total points.  If UCLA wins 62-38, that's 
62% of the points and considered the same.   Most ratings will consider 
UCLA's 24 MOV better than Nebraska's 9 MOV in this case, and in fact, in 
half the component I do, but not all of it.

2) I discount games against inferior opponents in strenght of schedule *as 
long as you beat them*.  So, essentially in my ratings the Maine game is 
not considered very much at all.  In other ratings, Nebraska takes a huge 
hit to SOS because of playing the game.  I stress games against opponents 
of comparable strengths.

We are 5-1 now and our opponents are 17-10 (18-15 if you include their 1-5 
record against NU, which I remove).  That's better than a lot of teams 
rated ahead of us in the national polls.

In my rankings, if you change the outcome of the TT game to Nebraska 
31-27, we'd be 6th with TT coming in 8th.

Bapi