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Posted
5 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

The SEC agreed to this, but the thing is that it’s a total fiction to equate 9 SEC games with 9 Big XII or ACC games, no matter the opponents. It’s a polite fiction. And frankly, it was a demand that never should have been agreed to. It’s a clear competitive edge to those quasi-power conferences stocked up with refugees from the G5 and the castoffs of the PAC.

Tech’s schedule is close to the bottom half of all FBS teams. The teams you’re whinging about played much harder schedules, no matter how many conference games are on the schedule. Putting the little (c) after games against the likes of Okie Light doesn’t legitimize them somehow and make them quality wins.  
 

You’re griping about Samford when your non-con was Kent, Arkie-Pine Bluff, and Oregon State. You scheduled zero P4 teams non-con and every SEC team did at least one, including bottom-barrel teams going undefeated against “quality” Big XII teams. STFU with your “nine conference games” bullshit. 

It's also a fiction to equate 9 games in the SEC with 9 other games in the SEC.  As of now Texas A&M has played five conference teams with a losing record.  (Best conf opps have been Missouri and LSU).  Add Sanford UTSA and Utah State.  They are lucky we have rebounded or they would be heading into the Texas bowl having played nobody yet of course locked up a berth in the conference championship game. 

 

The big two conferences have only themselves to blame if that's a problem. They poached the best teams from the other conferences. They bloated the playoffs so there 10-2 teams could have extra Mulligans.  So I don't want to hear from an engineer that hates his own system.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Crockett said:

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Not possible.  If Michigan finishes with two losses then they must have beaten Ohio State and knocked the Buckeyes out of the conference championship game.  H-H tiebreakers are SC > UM > OSU.  likewise if Trojans are 10-2 then they beat the Ducks, so SC is in the ccg against IU.

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Posted (edited)
28 minutes ago, notre dame joe said:

It's also a fiction to equate 9 games in the SEC with 9 other games in the SEC.  As of now Texas A&M has played five conference teams with a losing record.  (Best conf opps have been Missouri and LSU).  Add Sanford UTSA and Utah State.  They are lucky we have rebounded or they would be heading into the Texas bowl having played nobody yet of course locked up a berth in the conference championship game. 

The big two conferences have only themselves to blame if that's a problem. They poached the best teams from the other conferences. They bloated the playoffs so there 10-2 teams could have extra Mulligans.  So I don't want to hear from an engineer that hates his own system.

About half of the top 10 SoS's are SEC teams.  And A&M is one of those or just outside depending on where you look.

I agree that we are here largely because the top 2 conferences stacked talent.  I think where we differ is that I understand that those conferences will take their ball and go home within a decade if we don't get some sort of reasonable scheduling OR playoff selection consideration.

Edited by JBJ
Posted
6 minutes ago, JBJ said:

7 of the top 10 SoS's are SEC teams.  And A&M is one of those.

I agree that we are here largely because the top 2 conferences stacked talent.  I think where we differ is that I understand that those conferences will take their ball and go home within a decade if we don't get some sort of reasonable scheduling OR playoff selection.

Yeah, but it's kind of an incestuous metric, is it not?  You have to rank teams first in order to establish a SOS.  When you use SOS to rank those same teams, you're essentially ranking teams in order to rank teams - it's circular.

There's also a lot of selective transitive property being applied...they apply when it helps their argument, and they dismiss it when it doesn't.

 

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Posted
1 hour ago, notre dame joe said:

Not possible.  If Michigan finishes with two losses then they must have beaten Ohio State and knocked the Buckeyes out of the conference championship game.  H-H tiebreakers are SC > UM > OSU.  likewise if Trojans are 10-2 then they beat the Ducks, so SC is in the ccg against IU.

Good catch. 

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Uncle Nate said:

Yeah, but it's kind of an incestuous metric, is it not?  You have to rank teams first in order to establish a SOS.  When you use SOS to rank those same teams, you're essentially ranking teams in order to rank teams - it's circular.

There's also a lot of selective transitive property being applied...they apply when it helps their argument, and they dismiss it when it doesn't.

I agree on these two points, but models do a decent job of churning all the data and spitting out estimates that are pretty close to reality.  The more quality non-conference games that we get the more reliable it becomes to do this.  However, having done this a number of years, bowls just don't majorly change what the model thinks about teams or conferences, even though that's when half of the good games happen.

The issue with SOS specifically is that there are several different methods trying to measure different things that all call themselves SOS.  When people colloquially use it, they are trying to answer, "How difficult is it (or how good a team do you need to be) to play through a schedule and make the playoff?"  Not all models are even trying to answer that in their SOS rankings, though. (And people will cherry-pick.)

Posted (edited)

Also, (too late to edit): The correct word is relational- not circular - because it's not starting from a place that gets it back to that same place.  It iterates between teams that have played until it produces an acceptable outcome.  I can clear my model and start with Okie State preseason as the greatest team of all time and all the SEC teams occupying the lowest places, but it'll work back to the exact same place that it is right now.

Edited by JBJ
Posted
1 hour ago, Uncle Nate said:

Yeah, but it's kind of an incestuous metric, is it not?  You have to rank teams first in order to establish a SOS.  When you use SOS to rank those same teams, you're essentially ranking teams in order to rank teams - it's circular.

There's also a lot of selective transitive property being applied...they apply when it helps their argument, and they dismiss it when it doesn't.

 

 

1 hour ago, JBJ said:

About half of the top 10 SoS's are SEC teams.  And A&M is one of those or just outside depending on where you look.

I agree that we are here largely because the top 2 conferences stacked talent.  I think where we differ is that I understand that those conferences will take their ball and go home within a decade if we don't get some sort of reasonable scheduling OR playoff selection consideration.

The SEC is very polarized this year, I think your game vs UF wa the only draw drop upset.  Models like the Colley Matrix reward playing teams that won 20 and 3 games and don't reward a slee of 7-5 teams in the middle.  

That is Oregon's problem right now, they have played a large block of .500 teams and lost to Indiana.  Beating USC and Washington will help although those teams will finish with three or four losses.

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Posted

It's the opposite, though. SEC has a lot of parity and a lot of capable teams.  It's like a generationally strong bottom of the conference this year.

I'll post some stuff from the model later tonight because you are thinking of it completely wrong.

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Posted (edited)

image.png.cd6964f07dda6e93d516ae0827199a20.png

This chart does a really good job of showing the relative strength and parity of each conference.  Vertical is a power rating.  Horizontal is meaningless, it just spreads out each conference evenly with a little jitter to avoid overlaps.  You can see Ohio State in the top left to Oklahoma State in the bottom right.

The bold black lines are how I generally group teams to give a brief look at resume.  Above the first black line are contenders. Obviously one team is favored when they play each other but it's not generally considered an upset to lose against these teams.  I guess it's the "good loss" category.  For reference, the teams just above this line in each conference are Miami, Utah, Oregon, and Oklahoma.

The lower bold black line is basically the Mendoza line of college football.  Teams above are upset watch teams, and below the black line generally have no chance.  Dangerous teams who are not good losses, but still possible upsets.  This year it just happens to be exactly the top 40 teams.  For reference, the teams just above this line in each conference - teams with the slightest chance to upset a contender - are Cincy, Virginia, Nebraska, and Florida.  And just below - teams just outside reach of an upset - are Arizona State (who actually did beat Tech this year), Clemson, Northwestern.

For SOS, a good quick comparison is to look with is how many teams there are in each group to play:
Texas: 4+5 (#1 SOS in my model when actually calculated out)
Notre Dame: 2+3 (#34 SOS)
TxTech: 1+1 (#50 SOS)

So for the SEC: this is the first year I've ever seen (going back over 20 years) an entire conference above the Mendoza line.  In fact, I believe in the "no bad teams" B12 year that 4 teams were still below this line.  Which means, for this one year, the SEC is exactly what the pundits have been wishing it were for 2 decades: a conference where a single bad game on any Saturday of the season actually does sink the boat.

Edited by JBJ
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Posted

Meh.  That's why the playoffs matter.

SOS is an indicator, but it's also endemic of shit people "think."  I mean talking up the lower performers in the SEC definitely helps A&M on paper; but what does the eye test tell you?

Posted
On 11/17/2025 at 4:13 PM, Hagbard Celine said:

 

4 hours ago, JBJ said:

image.png.cd6964f07dda6e93d516ae0827199a20.png

This chart does a really good job of showing the relative strength and parity of each conference.  Vertical is a power rating.  Horizontal is meaningless, it just spreads out each conference evenly with a little jitter to avoid overlaps.  You can see Ohio State in the top left to Oklahoma State in the bottom right.

The bold black lines are how I generally group teams to give a brief look at resume.  Above the first black line are contenders. Obviously one team is favored when they play each other but it's not generally considered an upset to lose against these teams.  I guess it's the "good loss" category.  For reference, the teams just above this line in each conference are Miami, Utah, Oregon, and Oklahoma.

The lower bold black line is basically the Mendoza line of college football.  Teams above are upset watch teams, and below the black line generally have no chance.  Dangerous teams who are not good losses, but still possible upsets.  This year it just happens to be exactly the top 40 teams.  For reference, the teams just above this line in each conference - teams with the slightest chance to upset a contender - are Cincy, Virginia, Nebraska, and Florida.  And just below - teams just outside reach of an upset - are Arizona State (who actually did beat Tech this year), Clemson, Northwestern.

For SOS, a good quick comparison is to look with is how many teams there are in each group to play:
Texas: 4+5 (#1 SOS in my model when actually calculated out)
Notre Dame: 2+3 (#34 SOS)
TxTech: 1+1 (#50 SOS)

So for the SEC: this is the first year I've ever seen (going back over 20 years) an entire conference above the Mendoza line.  In fact, I believe in the "no bad teams" B12 year that 4 teams were still below this line.  Which means, for this one year, the SEC is exactly what the pundits have been wishing it were for 2 decades: a conference where a single bad game on any Saturday of the season actually does sink the boat.

If that was the case then the SEC would be an upset prone conference with quite a few OOC wins from the lower ranks.  Neither is true. 

Posted (edited)

You mean like the SEC performance in the 2025 NCAA basketball tourney?  I mean yeah, flood the zone, and some shit's gonna get through.

or maybe you meant the sheer dominance the SEC displayed in the inaugural 12 team football playoff.

Edited by Iceman
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Posted
7 hours ago, notre dame joe said:

If that was the case then the SEC would be an upset prone conference with quite a few OOC wins from the lower ranks.  Neither is true. 

We do see that.  Every below 0.500 team has one of these wins except Arkansas and Kentucky.

USCe over VT, Kentucky; Auburn over Baylor; Miss State over Arizona State; Florida over Texas.

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Posted
13 hours ago, Iceman said:

Meh.  That's why the playoffs matter.

SOS is an indicator, but it's also endemic of shit people "think."  I mean talking up the lower performers in the SEC definitely helps A&M on paper; but what does the eye test tell you?

Playoffs are a bracket to determine a champion, not to measure SOS or determine which conference is stronger.

The metrics— Sagarin, Massey, JBL’s own— have worked preseason ranking out of the formula by this point in the season, their SOS rankings reflect what was on the field. 

Posted
6 hours ago, JBJ said:

We do see that.  Every below 0.500 team has one of these wins except Arkansas and Kentucky.

USCe over VT, Kentucky; Auburn over Baylor; Miss State over Arizona State; Florida over Texas.

I'll give you ASU and UT.  VT is 3-8 and Baylor is fringe .500.  So, two upsets among the bottom 5?  And IIRC Texas A&M played and beat the entire bottom 5.

 

I would guess that this year is worse for your Mendoza line.  In the recent era the top SECw teams visiting the SECe teams like @USCe, UK, was the danger zone.  Spurrier even beat Saban once at USCe. 

Posted
5 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Playoffs are a bracket to determine a champion, not to measure SOS or determine which conference is stronger.

The metrics— Sagarin, Massey, JBL’s own— have worked preseason ranking out of the formula by this point in the season, their SOS rankings reflect what was on the field. 

Trust the science. 
 

"We built the science"

 

come the fuck on...

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