All Time Power Rankings

BiggusDickus

Some guy ("DoogPassion206") created this product and has been posting it at Doogman. It's somewhat reality-based, and I thought it would be worth discussing here:

What Is It?
It’s an evaluation of all current FBS programs from 1946 to the present. The result was a series of graphs (which look vaguely familiar to my signature and the Pac-12 schedule posters which I’ve distributed to a number of you guys) that show the ebbs and flows that all 125 programs have experienced over these 67 years (obviously for some, the ebs and flows are more violent than others). I then calculated three separate average ranks in order to get them ordered properly from #1 (Ohio State) to #125 (Georgia State, who is playing their first year of FBS football this year). The three separate ranks are first, a simple avg SRS rank since 1946 (so each year is weighted equally), second a modestly weighted system (2012 = 1.00, 1946 = 0.34) and third a progressively weighted system, where recent years are worth significantly more than those of the 40s and 50s (2012 = 67, 1946 = 1).

Why use SRS?
Because things like W-L records don’t offer a nice apples to apples comparison of programs (conference strength) and things like the AP Poll (aside from being more flawed and less predictive than SRS) only offer an evaluation of a small sliver of the CFB landscape, when I wanted to evaluate the entire landscape (which means the unexciting act of differentiating between mediocre and lower-mediocre, and lower-mediocre and bad). Using a metric like this might be offensive to some Husky fans, as we are probably a more successful program from the trophy case perspective than we are from an overall consistent quality perspective. Some of our conference rivals will appear a little closer to us than we’d like to think they are, but I don’t have a problem with that because I do think things like SRS are a better way to assess overall program quality than a trophy case that can be based on somewhat arbitrary accomplishments (like Florida State beating Northern Illinois in 2012 in a “major bowl”). SRS cuts through all that bullcrap and noise and does a great job of assessing overall program quality, I firmly believe that.

Why start at 1946?
Because unless you want to be evaluating teams based on four game schedules and against opponents that have been long wiped off the map, you have to start somewhere. WWII was a cataclysmic world event that saw several major programs take complete seasons off (such as UW in 1943) and saw dozens of smaller football programs not last through the war. In the past, I’ve used 1960 as a starting point, but that was admittedly arbitrary. Picking a number because it is divisible by 10 is arbitrary, picking one that really is representative of a new era immediately after a major world event is less arbitrary.

The Graphs
In my opinion, the most progressive weighting model is the best. It doesn’t completely ignore what happened way back in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s but it weights those years at only a small fraction of the present day. Each passing year sees its weight increase by 1, so 1946 = 1, 1947 = 2, 1948 = 3, and so on until 2012 = 67. For us Dawg fans, 1991 is weighted 46.

BiggusDickus

IrishDawg22

BiggusDickus said:

Some guy ("DoogPassion206") created this product and has been posting it at Doogman. It's somewhat reality-based, and I thought it would be worth discussing here:

What Is It?
It’s an evaluation of all current FBS programs from 1946 to the present. The result was a series of graphs (which look vaguely familiar to my signature and the Pac-12 schedule posters which I’ve distributed to a number of you guys) that show the ebbs and flows that all 125 programs have experienced over these 67 years (obviously for some, the ebs and flows are more violent than others). I then calculated three separate average ranks in order to get them ordered properly from #1 (Ohio State) to #125 (Georgia State, who is playing their first year of FBS football this year). The three separate ranks are first, a simple avg SRS rank since 1946 (so each year is weighted equally), second a modestly weighted system (2012 = 1.00, 1946 = 0.34) and third a progressively weighted system, where recent years are worth significantly more than those of the 40s and 50s (2012 = 67, 1946 = 1).

Why use SRS?
Because things like W-L records don’t offer a nice apples to apples comparison of programs (conference strength) and things like the AP Poll (aside from being more flawed and less predictive than SRS) only offer an evaluation of a small sliver of the CFB landscape, when I wanted to evaluate the entire landscape (which means the unexciting act of differentiating between mediocre and lower-mediocre, and lower-mediocre and bad). Using a metric like this might be offensive to some Husky fans, as we are probably a more successful program from the trophy case perspective than we are from an overall consistent quality perspective. Some of our conference rivals will appear a little closer to us than we’d like to think they are, but I don’t have a problem with that because I do think things like SRS are a better way to assess overall program quality than a trophy case that can be based on somewhat arbitrary accomplishments (like Florida State beating Northern Illinois in 2012 in a “major bowl”). SRS cuts through all that bullcrap and noise and does a great job of assessing overall program quality, I firmly believe that.

Why start at 1946?
Because unless you want to be evaluating teams based on four game schedules and against opponents that have been long wiped off the map, you have to start somewhere. WWII was a cataclysmic world event that saw several major programs take complete seasons off (such as UW in 1943) and saw dozens of smaller football programs not last through the war. In the past, I’ve used 1960 as a starting point, but that was admittedly arbitrary. Picking a number because it is divisible by 10 is arbitrary, picking one that really is representative of a new era immediately after a major world event is less arbitrary.

The Graphs
In my opinion, the most progressive weighting model is the best. It doesn’t completely ignore what happened way back in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s but it weights those years at only a small fraction of the present day. Each passing year sees its weight increase by 1, so 1946 = 1, 1947 = 2, 1948 = 3, and so on until 2012 = 67. For us Dawg fans, 1991 is weighted 46.

IrishDawg22

BiggusDickus said:

PurpleJ

What have you done for me lately?

[Deleted User]

Shit. Oregon is really fucking close all time. Doog heads are exploding around King County.

Haid_D_Salaami

He lost me at

"Because things like W-L records don’t offer a nice apples to apples comparison of programs"

I like to dig back to the days of leather helmet to make me feel better about my program.....

dnc

DawgPassion's research is legit. He's not much of a doog. I actually think he might be here.

Ducksrule

Stop it. Do you know how hard it is to take a bong hit while humming the theme song from "The Way We Were"?

Mad_Son

DP206 is a good poster.

[Deleted User]

I actually like it. It shows that UW has underachieved the past decade. We don't expect them to be top 10 every year but this graph shows what we are capable of.

It shows that UW should be a top 20 program for a decade with 2-3 top 10 seasons.