Conference Prestige ratings?

[justinwhitaker11]

Already a thread on this but i think static prestige is a huge problem. They need to fix it b/c it just is stupid not to.

[jello1717]

Quote: Originally Posted by dochalladay32

It only affects recruiting and I doubt it is a make-or-break pitch. If I'm Oklahoma in the Sun Belt, I highly doubt someone turns me down because I'm in the Sun Belt. It's just there to be there, I'm hoping.

It also affects the poll logic which is a very huge deal.

Quote: Originally Posted by dochalladay32

Did anyone actually switch out whole conferences in NCAA 11? Switch the entire ACC with the entire SEC, go undefeated, and see what happens.

I did. I played 12 seasons in my dynasty with the Big10 and Big12 teams swapped out (where the Big10 teams + Nebraska were all in the "Big12"). I had 3 undefeated seasons (including a 37 game winning streak) as 6* Michigan without getting a sniff of a BCS NCG birth.

[dochalladay32]

Then they need to hire some new programmers that have some sort of experience in logic, because they can write a code, but that seems about it. Funny, I'm available!

[mercalnd]

I just checked the polls in the "end of season" video in the retail version thread in an effort to get a sense of the logic and perhaps how it ties in with conference prestige. Yeah it's way too small of a sample but in the absence of better info for the time being:

Coaches poll:

Boise 12-0
OU 11-1
Troy 12-0
Bama 10-3
Penn State 12-1
Texas 10-2
Texas A&M 10-2
VT 11-2
South Carolina 10-3
NC State 11-2
Wisconsin 9-3
Florida 9-3
Michigan State 9-3
Pitt 11-1
Ohio State 9-3
Michigan 10-3
Oregon 10-3
Miami 10-2
Stanford 10-2

Observations: Top three is Mountain West, Big XII and SunBelt. Not sure about a Sun Belt team at #3 but I can live with it since they are undefeated. Why is a 10-3 SEC champ ahead of a 12-1 Big Ten champ? An 11-1 Pitt at #15 behind five 3-loss teams? First PAC-12 team is Oregon aat 10-3 yet ranked #17?

Media poll:
Boise 12-0
Penn State 12-1
OU 11-1
Troy 12-0
Bama 10-3
Texas 10-2
Texas A&M 10-2
NC State 11-2
Wisconsin 9-3
South Carolina 10-3

Observations: This one looks a bit better to me overall although we can only see the top 10 and still no 11-1 Pitt or 10-3 Oregon. Also I wonder how it is that VT was ranked ahead of NC State in the Coaches poll but NC State is ahead in this one when they clearly played each other in the ACC championship game (11-2 records for both).

BCS (The one that really matters)
Boise 12-0
OU 12-1
Penn State 12-1
Troy 12-0
Bama 10-3
Texas 10-2
Texas A&M 10-2
Wisconsin 9-3
South Carolina 10-3
VT 11-2

Obersvations: Again no 11-1 Pitt or PAC-12 team and 11-2 VT only ranked #10. Nice to see a Big XII team (with a loss on top of it) make the NCG game ahead of the SEC and Big Ten champs (though I question whether Bama might have gotten in ahead of OU with 2 losses instead of 3. The biggest complaint I've seen last year was that Big XII teams never got in, even when undefeated.

Tentative conclusions based on this extremely small sample:
I don't think the polls are too strongly tied into conference prestige. At the very least there seems to be some other variables having a big impact and it's not just records either. I remember a few years back you'd often Boise-Tulsa as a NCG game.

I am however a bit worried about 11-1 Pitt being so low (yes the Big East sucks but I would still have expected a one-loss BCS conference team to be in the top 10 given the records of the other teams). I also wonder about the absence of Pac-12 teams in the top 10. Seems to me that a 10-3 Oregon (who we've only seen as #17 in the Coaches poll) would garner a bit more respect.

[He1nousOne1]

Penn State 12-1
Wisconsin 9-3
Michigan State 9-3
Ohio State 9-3
Michigan 10-3

When it comes to the B1G teams I see one glaring issue. The championship game was obviously Penn State vs Michigan and the Michigan loss caused them to fall behind teams that had worse regular season records as Michigan would have ended up 10-2. That makes Conference Championship games suck.

[mercalnd]

Quote: Originally Posted by He1nousOne1

Penn State 12-1 Wisconsin 9-3 Michigan State 9-3 Ohio State 9-3 Michigan 10-3 When it comes to the B1G teams I see one glaring issue. The championship game was obviously Penn State vs Michigan and the Michigan loss caused them to fall behind teams that had worse regular season records as Michigan would have ended up 10-2. That makes Conference Championship games suck.

Yeah I thought that was a little weird too. But all in all these polls don't look as bad as I remember the polls being the last few years. I am worried about the lack of PAC-12 teams though. 10-3 and 10-2 in the PAC-12 seems like it should be worthy of being in or at least near the top 10.

Edit: Tying in to your conclusion about Michigan dropping severely after losing the B1G title game, I went back and looked at the rest of the Coaches top 25 (the only one the video shows entirely). I can find no other PAC-12 team ranked that played 13 games, although Oregon State is ranked with an 8-4 record. This leads me to conclude a few things:

1-Oregon played an unranked South division champ in the PAC-12 title game.
2-The 3 PAC-12 teams that are ranked have 9 losses between them, and are all from the same division, suggesting the teams in the PAC-12 overall have poor records.

Might the game actually be doing a better job with strength of schedule this year and thus ranked PAC-12 teams lower than their record might indicate given that their generally good conference (B+ in NCAA 11) had a down year? One can only hope.

[dochalladay32]

Quote: Originally Posted by mercalnd

Yeah I thought that was a little weird too. But all in all these polls don't look as bad as I remember the polls being the last few years. I am worried about the lack of PAC-12 teams though. 10-3 and 10-2 in the PAC-12 seems like it should be worthy of being in or at least near the top 10.

Maybe we need to see the rest of the conference? If it's loaded with .500 and below teams and Oregon is the only one that stood out, I'd say that's not worth that high a ranking, especially with 3 losses. Bama at 10-3 seems kind of out of place up there.

[mercalnd]

Quote: Originally Posted by dochalladay32

Maybe we need to see the rest of the conference? If it's loaded with .500 and below teams and Oregon is the only one that stood out, I'd say that's not worth that high a ranking, especially with 3 losses. Bama at 10-3 seems kind of out of place up there.

Agreed. See my edit of my previous post for details. If anything, this is yet another indicator that the conference prestige rating is not a driving factor in the poll logic. I doubt the PAC-12 had their conference prestige dropped after adding Utah and CU.

Also note that Bama was only out of place in the Coaches poll. It was positioned more reasonably in the other 2.

The more I dig, the more optimistic I get that the logic is pretty decent this year. Or this particular example might just have been a perfect storm. It is after all just one video with the polls for only one season.