Strength of roster verses outcomes.

Schnoodler · #1 11-23-2009, 03:35 PM

Well it's time. The Big Ten season is over, the final records are in. Now it's time to compare the teams performance against the strength of their rosters. Why do I do this? Because it's useful when analyzing how a coach is doing. Is he taking average recruits and winning, or is he taking great recruits and losing. Just how have they faired given the talent on their rosters?

For those not following along, I have (and others too) created a formula using rivals rr values and four classes to develop a strength of roster number. It does not factor in such things as transfers, or departures, just using straight reported recruits on the rivals site. For instance some highly ranked recruits never show, and some redshirt thus throwing off the accuracy of the numbers. However, the numbers continue to be quite predictive and so usefull. I weight the classes by seniority, thus the senior class is weighted more highly than a freshman class as the senior class will impact on field results more. Hopefully we all know that.

The degree to which each class should be weighted could be argued but to be honest when I played around with it it made little difference as long as they were weighted. If the sample size were increased say to the entire FBS a more precise weighting would be more critical. So far in my Big Ten analysis it hasn't created a situation that would change the ranking order so I'm sticking with it the way it is. Feel free to come up with your own. I don't use the rivals team rankings as it creates too much disparity, although that would probably work as well and be simpler. Using number tricks to creat a tighter number range would probably work just as well. I create my own using their rr values instead.

so here they are:

OSU.....86......E
Mich.....83......-7
PSU......76.....E
Ill.........69.....-5
Wisc.....62.....E
MSU.....60.....E
Iowa.....58.....+5
Minn......57....E
Purd......51.....+2
NW.......44.....+6
Ind.......39.....E

So from this the coaching winners are Iowa, northwestern and to a smaller extent Purdue.
The coaching losers are Illinois and Michigan. All other teams finished right where expected.

thailleagle · #2 11-23-2009, 03:38 PM

I'm shocked anybody thought Michigan was gonna be *THAT* much better then last year.......

RedPoo · #3 11-23-2009, 03:40 PM

Top-notch work...very illuminating, I think.

Do you do something similar to this projecting for next season, around signing day? And, since I'm just going to assume you have nothing but free time, a speculative one tomorrow?

Schnoodler · #4 11-23-2009, 03:49 PM

Yeah, I will once the final rivals list is out. There are definitely trends that are continuing. It will be interesting.

Michigan is interesting. Remember though not only did dickrod change everything he had some key departures/transfers. But still I highly doubt there is anyone in all of college football doing less with what he's got.

NewEngland_Gold · #5 11-23-2009, 03:53 PM

Nice work.

Significant that HCing horsepower...esp NW/Iowa...can play that big a role in final W/L results. It's not all about recruited talent based on your work.

Also interesting that the Gs defeated NW in their house and only lost to the Hawks by 12 in Iowa City.

Despite the poor O results, with some intelligent remedial coaching on the O side, the Gs might be a lot closer to a major step-up than most of us anticipate.