College Football Champion Index Week 2 from Sharp “Tusk” Williams and Hog Database

With the first two or three weeks of the College Football season usually being a display of teams playing “practice games before the real ones” and “let’s get paid early so we’ll have money for expenses to play for the rest of the season,” we always see outlandish mismatches and performances. The way this index is created, the question becomes for the first few weeks, “Who stuffed themselves the most with a smorgasbord of stat dishes laid out before them?” If a team is not performing well against lesser opponents in facets of the game, it is reflected in this index and doesn’t go away unless the team improves. Taking it to the extreme, with losses being another part of the College Football Champion Index, some traditional powerhouses are already virtually eliminated from BCS Championship contention.

College Football Champion Index Week 2

Sort as you like.

All Division I schools have now turned in stats meaning the Index expands from 111 to 120 teams this week. As explained below, a team’s stats are cumulative and taken from the NCAA’s official stats ending on the previous Saturday. The result is that a few teams such as Texas A&M have two weeks worth of stats reflected below.

The top nod for Week 2 of the College Football Champion Index goes to the Falcons of Bowling Green who have made the most of their games against the University of Idaho and Morgan St. in route to the best performance so far. Going to Idaho and winning 32-15 in Week 1 followed by a 58-13 thrashing of Morgan St. In both games, Bowling Green turned in consistent all-around performances and nearly met the standards set by BCS Champions in all categories for both weeks. Give them credit as no one else has done as well for Weeks 1 and 2. While the Falcons may ride two more weeks against Wyoming and Miami of Ohio, they face West Virginia, Toledo (which gave Ohio St. all it wanted), and Temple in the following weeks. They are sure to test some of the premises of this Index and challenge the initial decision not to add a strength of schedule rating toward the end of the year as many have strongly suggested.

Although we will remain open to the suggestion, consider this. Since Week 1’s post, the 2010 season was put through the same formula and method used here. The College Football Champion Index produced 20 and 21 of the Top 25 in the BCS Final, AP Top 25 and the USA Today Polls. The CFCI’s Elimination Index picked 8 of the Final AP Top 10 and 9 of the Final USA Today Top 10. The different teams were common to the Index and the Polls but were arranged differently within each poll. The point is that regardless of apparent strengths of schedules or claimed bias which are implicit in the polls, the CFCI produced very similar results when all teams were placed through the same mathematical calculation. While much more study is needed and it’s way too early to declare this effort a success, the results are initially encouraging.

Michigan State did well in Week 1 with a victory over Youngstown St. 28-6 but followed with a 44-0 drubbing of Florida Atlantic in East Lansing. Next Saturday they go to South Bend to play the shakin-my-head Irish. It won’t be long though before the Spartans face Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nebraska back to back to back to back. Needless to say, that stretch will propel Michigan State to the top or leave them eliminated from Championship competition.

It’s really difficult to ignore the third team, Florida. Urban Meyer didn’t leave the cupboard bare of talent and probably couldn’t if he ran off a few four or five star prospects because others would take their places. The Gators took both Florida Atlantic and UAB on death rolls to the bottom sinking them with an 80-3 margin. In all likelihood Florida will improve its position for the next two weeks as the Gators face Tennessee and Kentucky before taking on Alabama, LSU and Auburn in succession.

At No. 4 are the Wisconsin Badgers who feasted on UNLV 51-17 before blanking PAC 10/12/14/16 opponent Oregon St. 35-0. Facing Nebraska in a couple of weeks, the Badgers hit the harder part of their schedule later in the season and figure to remain at the top for a while.

University of Central Florida’s top performance level continues to earn the Knights a place at No. 5. In Week 2 UCF shut down Boston College 30-3 showing over 2 weeks the slightest of weaknesses in the ability to get a first down passing the ball and in making sacks.

The marquee (or maybe “Marquis”) matchup of Week 1 in college football was LSU and Oregon, and the Tigers cooked the Ducks Peking-style winning 40-27. Last week in the Tigers’ home opener against Northwestern St. they raced to a 49-3 victory over the Demons. Despite having the University of Oregon as one of their opponents, LSU turns in the sixth best performance for this early season. However, the Tigers can’t rest long as they travel to Starkville on five days rest to face Mississippi State and then go to Morgantown to face West Virginia in Week 4.

At No. 7 the Temple Owls preyed on the team with one of the worst performances in the College Football Champion Index, the Akron Zips, 41-3. Temple’s presence in the Top 10 of the Performance Index may not last long as the Owls face Penn St., Maryland and Toledo in the coming weeks.

The University of Illinois Fighting Illini hunted the Red Wolves of Arkansas State and then had fun stringing up the Jackrabbits of South Dakota St. to a No. 8 College Football Champion Performance Ranking. The tougher part of Illinios’ schedule comes late in the season.

With a 34-31 win over the University of Indiana, the Virginia Cavaliers tenuously hold on to the No. 9 spot despite a heavy deduction for scoring defense while elsewhere statistically they turned in an effort which overall may be characterized as just short of a BCS Champion-style performance.  Over the next two weeks, Virginia faces North Carolina and Southern Miss.  They will face the bulk of their ACC schedule in the last half of the year.

Rounding out the Top 10 is the University of Ohio Bobcats who have played New Mexico State and Garner-Webb. They face Marshall and Rutgers in their next two games.

Arkansas Razorbacks

The Arkansas Razorbacks and the Alabama Crimson Tide show up as the College Football Champion Index’s No. 11  and No. 12 teams separated by the absolute slimmest of margins, 0.001 points.  The Hogs score of .927 barely bests the Tide at .926. However, the 1000 lbs. Crimson elephant sitting in the room is the difference between Missouri St. and New Mexico versus Kent St. and Penn St. Both teams’ Week 1 performances were examined at the link.

Category by category here are how the Hogs and the Tide compare. Both are ever so slightly behind BCS Champion pace for Rushing First Downs while both exceed the passing first downs expected. As you might expect, Alabama exceeds them while Arkansas greatly exceeds them. The Razorbacks’ defense is permitting an average of 5 points per game while the Crimson Tide’s averages 9 point per game and both exceed the Scoring Defense standard. As a component of Total Defense, Alabama is allowing only 49 yards on the ground and 122 through the air while Arkansas has given up an average of 90 yards per game rushing and 140 passing. In terms of the Index, both teams collect the total points allotted for Total Defense. For Passing Efficiency Defense, quarterbacks have averaged a pitiful 60 rating against the Tide while opposing QBs have found their average rating of 100 against the Hogs. The Razorbacks have a slight deduction for Passing Efficiency Defense.

Moving on to scoring offense, over the last 11 years, BCS Champions have averaged 39 points per game for the entire season. Arkansas has exceeded that number while Alabama is just shy of that average. The biggest deduction for Alabama comes from Offensive Passing Efficiency. For the season Alabama quarterbacks are averaging 114 passer rating which is significantly below BCS Champion standards. Although Phil Sims turned in an abysmal performance in Week 1 which hurts Alabama’s overall passer rating, against Penn State, starting quarterback A. J. McCarron turned in a well-below BCS Champion average of 116 rating for the Penn State game alone. The Razorbacks’ current passing efficiency rating is 176 which more than exceeds BCS Champion standards.

Neither team is lighting up the board with the ability to sack the quarterback. Alabama has recorded 4 sacks on the season while Arkansas has 2. Both have deductions in this area. Likewise their turnover margins could be better as well. Alabama’s margin is -.5 and Arkansas’ is -1. Neither are up to standard.

For the last stats considered, we switch back over to the offensive side of the ball. By converting 10 of 21 third-down attempts, the Razorbacks make the grade. Alabama has made the same number of third-downs attempts made but has done so on 27 attempts which weighs down their Index score. On the ground the Tide averages 190 rushing yards per game while the Hogs are close behind with 181. Both are just a shade below where they need to be. To complete the offensive picture, Arkansas has averaged 369 yards through the air while Alabama almost makes the BCS Champion standard with 237 yards per game passing.

The matchup shapes up as Alabama’s good, serviceable offense versus Arkansas’ good, serviceable defense and Alabama’s elite defense versus Arkansas’ elite offense.

Arkansas Razorbacks v. Troy Trojans

Troy played Clemson in Week 1 and had a Week 2 bye.  Relative to Clemson, the Trojans lost 43-19 at Clemson, and one week later Clemson followed with a poor victory over Wofford.  If Clemson is 24 points better than Troy,  we’ve got news for you all.  Clemson’s performances cause the cold calculations of the CFCI to rank the Tigers  No. 100 of 120 in the College Football Champion Index.  To add insult to injury Troy’s bye week cost the the Trojans in those areas where there are weekly expectations.  The reality is that in terms of BCS Champion performance standards, the Troy Trojans rank No. 109 of 120 in Week 2.

Troy’s offensive production comes from passing the ball about 55% of the time.  While their offense produces passing yardage and is in the Top 40 of NCAA D-I schools in yards, it’s offensive passing efficiency ranks 90th.  While their rushing yardage per game is fine for most schools, the Trojans have made only 5 first downs running the ball in their first game while harvesting 14 through the air.

Troy ranks 90th defensively in passing yards allowed while ranking a pathetic 111th  in passing efficiency defense. It serves little point to go much further with the stats.

Arkansas and the receiving corps for the second week in a row put this game away through the air.  After that, it’s difficult to know what Coach Petrino will do.   With any luck, the coaching staff will anticipate that this will be put away earlier and then spend a good portion of the game making sure that no starter gets hurt and that Alabama sees a tape full of things which they’ll waste time preparing for.

College Football Championship Index Prior Weeks

Week 1

An Explanation of the Index

The College Football Champion Index is brought to you exclusively from Hog Database.

At the urging of friends, fans and interested readers, posts which study the performance standards of BCS Champions are now the bases for a manageable, weekly NCAA Division I-A “College Football Champion Index” focused solely on a team’s cumulative performances compared to the standards of a composite BCS Champion. Study tells us that teams which seem to have outrageous numbers and even a decent won-loss records will have critical deficits which expose them to a loss (or losses) as a season progresses whether the opponent is formidable or an also-ran conference rival. While it might be said that in the real world both the cream and the scum rise to the top, the composite BCS Champion serves as a clear, unbiased means of separating those worthy to compete for the BCS Championship from those who are pretenders. In the end, performance and wins are the only things that matter for the College Football Champion.

The impetus to create the College Football Champion Index is a culmination of many different interests. Whether actually published or not, Hog Database’s statistical charts encompass more than 125 data sets detailing many aspects of college football, the Arkansas Razorbacks or the Southeast Conference. Double that number for those which are in our possession but not on the Hog Database server. By sitting as a bunch of 1s and 0s on a computer, the information is of little consequence to anyone and certainly doesn’t make college football fans more knowledgeable which is our ultimate goal. With the College Football Champion Index we bring fans a real comparison of their teams as against those BCS Champions which performed without excuses. That progress needs to be reflected in an unbiased manner somewhere. It is time to make this information functional.

How the Index is Created

Performance Standards of BCS Champions and Evaluating the Hogs’ Chances for a BCS Championship study characteristics of BCS Champions, and their end analyses found that BCS Champions are very closely similar in certain respects while in other aspects they vary greatly. The numbers tell us that of all statistical categories, BCS Champions are consistently best at Total First Downs per Season not only in terms of their average performance as a group but also in closeness of the performance ranges from best to worst. Just about any D-I football team would be delighted to have the worst performance in the set of BCS Champions’ Total First Downs by Season. As we examine various categories, ten which most exemplify the characteristics of BCS Champions create a “composite BCS Champion.” The statistical categories are arranged in order from the most consistent to the merely consistent:

1. Total First Downs by Season

2. Scoring Defense

3. Total Defense

4. Pass Efficiency Defense

5. Scoring Offense

6. Passing Efficiency

7. Turnover Margin

8. Sacks by Season

9. 3rd Down Percentage Offense

10. Total Offense

Each of the categories are weighted according to the average overall composite rankings of BCS Champions for each category with due consideration for the breadth of the range of those rankings. Total First Downs by Season has not only the highest average ranking for BCS Champions, it also has the narrowest range of all season rankings for any category which describes BCS Champions. The exact method of weighing the BCS categories will not be revealed. In order to head off any allegations of bias toward the University of Arkansas’ style of play or against any other team’s style of play, a very limited disclosure of the significance of two categories is revealed further in this post. The actual on-the-field values of the composite champion and each individual school for that category are compared and then weighted. If a team meets or exceeds all of criteria of the composite BCS Champion, the sum total of all individual categories would add to an ideal 1 point. Similar to batting averages in baseball, each team’s performance score is expressed as a three-digit decimal number.

However, the ability of a team to be the BCS Champion depends equally on wins and losses, actually losses to be more precise. Over the last 11 years, only LSU became an improbable BCS Champion with 2 losses. In addition to the Performance Index comes the Elimination Index. Upon a team’s 3rd loss the Performance Index will continue to be calculated; however, the Elimination Index will discount the Performance Index for the first two losses and then read ELIMINATED upon the third loss. As a measure of surprise, some teams’ performances despite their won-loss records may mathematically eliminate them at some point in the season from any reasonable consideration for the BCS Championship.

If you study the posts above, you will find “total” categories as well as the rush and pass subcategories ranked in the same compilation. The “total” categories are Total First Downs by Season, Total Defense, and Total Offense. For the purposes of College Football Champion Index only the “total” categories are indentified in the weekly evaluation. However, after the category was assigned a weight as a whole, that value was then further divided in terms of the relative importance of rush and pass to the category. Ultimately the subcategories combine together to make the “total” category. Said another way, the “total categories” are not directly used; the subcategories are. “Total First Downs by Season” is comprised of “Total First Downs by Rushing” and “Total First Downs By Passing” with each being weighted to produce the “Total First Downs by Season.”

With regard to “Totals by Season” categories, they are compared on a straight-line 14-game season for the BCS Champion although not all conferences have had a Championship Game over the last 11 years.

For this Index, Third Down Percentage Offense makes no distinction in how a 1st Down is accomplished, whether by rush or pass.

Anticipating a few different questions, they will attempt to be addressed here. The College Football Champion Index does not encompass a strength of schedule rating which is admittedly important. However, the BCS Champions over the last 11 years have come from the SEC, Big 12, PAC10, and Big East with most of those schedules coming from the SEC. In order to reach the BCS Championship Game, each team played a BCS Conference Schedule, frequently played a Conference Championship Game, and won BCS National Championship Game. The debate could go on about whether any team scheduled three or four games per year with the Sisters of the Poor, but the only added benefit that any BCS Champion may have received is the incremental increase in stats for three or four games per year. Regardless of any particular strength of schedule, the College Football Champion Performance Index objectively assesses on-the-field performance and will save significant time for anyone interested in evaluating how good a teams numbers are against an objective standard. Combined with your own assessment of strength of schedule the College Football Champion Performance Index serves as a handy starting point by aggregating a tremendous amount of information. As the season progresses into the later weeks, nagging problems with teams will manifest themselves in the College Football Champion Performance Index, so use caution if you decide to discount them heavily based upon strength of schedule in the second half of the season. With all of that said, a strength of schedule rating is strongly urged by some whose opinions I respect. IF one is employed at all, it will not be added until the last 3-4 games of the season when relative team strengths are better assessed.

It is important to note that gaudy stats do not produce any more than a set level of points. Those extreme areas of performance in any game may influence other areas, such as 10 sacks having an impact on Scoring Defense or Total Defense, but the “spill over” effect must manifest itself in those particular categories. 10 sacks just short of line of scrimmage would not greatly influence anything other than sacks. On the other hand, because the College Football Champion Performance Index considers the body of work for BCS Champions over an entire year, teams in the College Football Champion Index do receive the benefit of numbers from one week to potentially shore up numbers for the next week. Some will consider that the carry forward of stats masks weakness of the following week which leads back to strength of schedule. It is a completely understandable argument, but BCS Champions will have had similar variations in each of their schedules. It is anticipated that over the course of the year, the wheat will be separated from the chaff.

Some will ask about margin of victory. Being an aficionado of Jeff Sagarin’s Predictor Ratings which consider margin of victory as opposed to Sagarin’s politically correct ELO_CHESS ratings, which are used for the BCS Poll and artificially remove margin of victory, not having a specific margin of victory seems like an omission. Although margin of victory is not explicitly included, depending upon your point of view, it’s not included at all or at the other extreme, it’s absolutely required. Scoring Defense and Scoring Offense were weighted on each’s individual place in the grand scheme and necessarily imply that any team’s defense should allow only so many points while the offense produces so many points. A margin is required, but the margin required has a defined range. A team which wins 45-35 will almost completely fail the Scoring Defense standard.

For the sake of disclosure as noted above, passing subcategories for Total First Downs and for Total Offense provide any team no more than .068 points out of a theoretical 1.000 point, or no more than 6.8% of the total. Passing Efficiency is its own separate category which applies to every team regardless of their offensive strategy.

One final matter before the Index is revealed. The Index will use Official NCAA Statistics as they are published online. Team schedules may create anomalies from week to week which will be corrected through the next week’s Index. Although the rest of the college football world ended Week 1 of 2011 at the end of the day on Monday, September 5, 2011, the NCAA statistics are only used through September 3, 2011. Teams such as Texas A&M and SMU will be listed for Week 2 utilizing two games, assuming that neither has another game scheduled for Sunday or Monday of next week. Keep in mind that the Index is cumulative each week so the fact that a performance number remains the same from week to week.  When that happens a team may slip in the College Football Champion Index during a bye week based on the calculation’s expectation of new numbers for yearly stats.  The harsh reality is that teams improve performance on the field, not on the sidelines.  (If the lettering is small for you, you may be able to hold down the Ctrl button and press the + on your number pad to increase the size. Many browsers also have zoom settings which will magnify the lettering. )

How CFCI Compares to Previous Years’ Final Standings

2010 CFCI vs. BCS Final vs. AP Top 25 Final vs. USA Today Final