Hacking Phil Steele: TO Margin + SOS
Posted by Vince Mullins on June 22, 2008
Phil Steele (right, supporting the Bulldogs) is the dean (dare I say czar) of college football insight and I have anxiously awaited his new yearbooks for years. As I have had time to digest the byzantine complexity and voluminous information contained in his 2008 College Football Preview, I now have a couple tricks up my sleeve on how to unleash some additional value from all his statistical work.
(You might think I have been on vacation, but I have spent the last two months redesigning Fantasy College Blitz and its accompanying forum at Ning. NEVER could have been done with out the help of Derrick Eckhardt and Randy Burgess - much love out to them. Now back to the games…)
First study on my mind was to combine his contrarian turnover margin work (teams better than +10 turnover margin do worse the next year 65% of the time, with teams worse than -10 do better 68% of the time) with his projected strength of schedule (SOS)- a few teams are blessed with the best (or worst) of both worlds.
By adding up the national rank for TO margin (big number good for a turnaround) and the SOS (big number good) you can see where every team stands.
STOCK UP!
Army and Kent State get knighted on both shoulders - the Black Knights were -10 TO margin last year and get the 116th hardest (5th easiest) schedule, while the Golden Flashes can call UNO! by coughing up -11 in 2007 and facing the 111th schedule (10th easiest). Rumors state that Army returns to the wishbone which will cause all kinds of nightmares for opponents, and Kent gets a healthy QB Julian Edelman back at full-strength with the nation’s leading returning rusher Eugene Jarvis.
But what about STOCK DOWN?
Again, two teams will swim against a riptide in LSU and Cincinnati as the reside on the wrnog side of both calculations. The Tigers and Coach Mad Hatter grabbed the National Title by grabbing 20 more turnovers more than their opponents and face the 19th hardest schedule, while the great Bearcat story of 2007 looks to hit a roadblock as they were +16 and now get a vicious non-conference schedule setting them up for a fall.
Some other teams were very close to getting the double on the good way (stock outperform?) New Mexico State and North Texas have SOS in the 90s, and the team we should all root for, Northern Illinois, fits the bill the same way as the campus tries to unite after the Valentine’s Day shooting tragedy.
Check out the whole study on my Google Spreadsheet (I can NEVER get the damn iframe to embed!)
