Around the Nation board

[art76]

Not sure where this belonged

Part 2: As I shared over in the Pool C Board at the beginning of the play-offs, (and earlier in this thread) here are the updated brackets using the D3 Top 25 rankings. As some of you may be reading this notion for the first (or second) time, let me explain by saying I simply put the corresponding number in front of all teams that received votes as well. If a team was unranked and received no votes, this year it got a ranking of 42, as the last team receiving a vote was pegged at 41.  So here's what we have left:

1 vs. 5 - Whitewater vs. Wartburg

11 vs. 10 - Widener vs. Linfield

4 vs. 9 - Wesley vs. Hobart

3 vs. 6 - Mount Union vs. John Carroll

I'd wager that the rankings would have changed after the past two weeks' performances, but as that doesn't happen, it is what it is.

Going a step further and simply reassigning the rankings top to bottom from 1 to 8, we get these pairings left:

1 vs. 4

8 vs. 7

3 vs. 6

2 vs. 5

As Pat mentioned in the Podcast, I agree with him in that I also think the only "mis-ranked" match-up is the Linfield vs. Widener game. But because there are no updates done during the playoffs so this is what we have.

If I were to rank the remaining 8 teams, here's how I would rank them:

1. Whitewater
2. Wesley
3. Mount Union
4. Wartburg
5. Linfield
6. John Carroll
7. Hobart
8. Widener

Which gives us these pairings:

1 vs. 4

5 vs. 8

2 vs. 7

3 vs. 6

I hope there are others who follow D3 Football that also find this all fun to ponder and not taking ourselves too seriously.

Enjoy!

[gordonmann]

No real place for this, but I wanted to share this.

It's a pretty cool looking map for the best college football teams in each state, regardless of division. A bunch of D3s make the list, some more surprising than others:

* Connecticut: Trinity
* Delaware: Wesley
* Illinois: North Central
* Iowa: Wartburg
* Maryland: Johns Hopkins
* New Jersey: Rowan
* New York: Ithaca
* Ohio: Mount Union (1st overall)
* Oregon: Linfield
* Rhode Island: Salve Regina
* Texas: Mary Hardin-Baylor
* Virginia: Christopher Newport
* Vermont: Middlebury
* Wisconsin: UW-Whitewater (2nd overall)

[pg04]

A couple of the "winners" have been shared on various boards. It's not surprising given the Criteria that Mount and Whitewater are first and second overall. On other boards there are complaints that such measures are meaningless, which may be true, but I think it's interesting to analyze from different perspectives.

[jknezek]

I wish they had called it something else. UMU is NOT, and will probably never be, the BEST college football team in Ohio. Ohio State would pulverize them, as would many other teams in the state. I will absolutely agree they are the MOST SUCCESSFUL among their peers. The same could be said for all the DIII teams on this list.

It's just sloppy writing. And as someone who long ago earned a degree in print journalism, that bothers me.

[Pat Coleman]

Consider the source.

[tigerFanAlso2]

CNU best program in Virginia ? HSC has better winning % past 5 years and past 10 years. Have played them head to head 3 times and have won two of those. Reality is Virginia does not have a very good college football team, period(on a national basis) so who really cares about the list anyway. Picking CNU as the states best is laughable and I'm not at all suggesting HSC should have been selected. I guess if I had to pick one it would be VaTech and no other school/program would be a close second. U of Richmond probably 2nd since they have won a National Championship. Who cares, I can't even believe I'm responding.

[Bombers798891]

No real place for this, but I wanted to share this.

It's a pretty cool looking map for the best college football teams in each state, regardless of division. A bunch of D3s make the list, some more surprising than others:

* Connecticut: Trinity
* Delaware: Wesley
* Illinois: North Central
* Iowa: Wartburg
* Maryland: Johns Hopkins
* New Jersey: Rowan
* New York: Ithaca
* Ohio: Mount Union (1st overall)
* Oregon: Linfield
* Rhode Island: Salve Regina
* Texas: Mary Hardin-Baylor
* Virginia: Christopher Newport
* Vermont: Middlebury
* Wisconsin: UW-Whitewater (2nd overall)

I got a kick out of it for what it was worth: A fun piece of conversation/bragging to then forget about. The methodology is inherently flawed, but it's ultimately just something fun

[bleedpurple]

Quick question for the guys on top of the national stuff.  What is the ranking of the conference Mount Union plays in? I know the OAC is ranked fourth.  But  Mount doesn't play Mount. And as the Kickoff one liner under the OAC says: "Really would be lower if not for the force of nature known as Mount Union." 

The OAC was 2-6 this weekend against UW-O, Cortland State, Buffalo State, Bluffton, Waynesberg, Wittenberg, Defiance, and Denison.   Their losses were by an average of 16.67 points per game.  BW did beat Defiance 42-0 and Muskingum beat Waynesberg 17-16.

So just where would that group of teams (OAC minus Mount) rank in the conference rankings?

[HansenRatings]

Quick question for the guys on top of the national stuff.  What is the ranking of the conference Mount Union plays in? I know the OAC is ranked fourth.  But  Mount doesn't play Mount. And as the Kickoff one liner under the OAC says: "Really would be lower if not for the force of nature known as Mount Union." 

The OAC was 2-6 this weekend against UW-O, Cortland State, Buffalo State, Bluffton, Waynesberg, Wittenberg, Defiance, and Denison.   Their losses were by an average of 16.67 points per game.  BW did beat Defiance 42-0 and Muskingum beat Waynesberg 17-16.

So just where would that group of teams (OAC minus Mount) rank in the conference rankings?

On my site, my model has the OAC as the 5th best conference (the CCIW ranks ahead of them, otherwise it's the same conferences ahead of them as in Kickoff). If I exclude Mount Union from their conference rating calculation, they would drop down to 8th, below the ASC, NWC, and IIAC (my model thinks the IIAC is consistently better than the folks running d3football think they are).

There's obviously more than one way to rank conferences, and my site is far from the only computer rating site out there for DIII, but it still gives you some idea. If you go back through the historical Top 25 rankings on d3football or by the AFCA, the OAC still consistently has their #2 or #3 teams ranked, while most other conferences struggle to get even their best team into the Top 25.

[crufootball]

Quick question for the guys on top of the national stuff.  What is the ranking of the conference Mount Union plays in? I know the OAC is ranked fourth.  But  Mount doesn't play Mount. And as the Kickoff one liner under the OAC says: "Really would be lower if not for the force of nature known as Mount Union." 

The OAC was 2-6 this weekend against UW-O, Cortland State, Buffalo State, Bluffton, Waynesberg, Wittenberg, Defiance, and Denison.   Their losses were by an average of 16.67 points per game.  BW did beat Defiance 42-0 and Muskingum beat Waynesberg 17-16.

So just where would that group of teams (OAC minus Mount) rank in the conference rankings?

On my site, my model has the OAC as the 5th best conference (the CCIW ranks ahead of them, otherwise it's the same conferences ahead of them as in Kickoff). If I exclude Mount Union from their conference rating calculation, they would drop down to 8th, below the ASC, NWC, and IIAC (my model thinks the IIAC is consistently better than the folks running d3football think they are).

There's obviously more than one way to rank conferences, and my site is far from the only computer rating site out there for DIII, but it still gives you some idea. If you go back through the historical Top 25 rankings on d3football or by the AFCA, the OAC still consistently has their #2 or #3 teams ranked, while most other conferences struggle to get even their best team into the Top 25.

Would it be too much to ask to see how all of your Top 10 conferences would fair if you took out their best team? Being from Texas its hard for me to truly get a feel for how good the ASC really is since even when we get 2 teams into the playoffs we usually play each other. 

[HansenRatings]

Quick question for the guys on top of the national stuff.  What is the ranking of the conference Mount Union plays in? I know the OAC is ranked fourth.  But  Mount doesn't play Mount. And as the Kickoff one liner under the OAC says: "Really would be lower if not for the force of nature known as Mount Union." 

The OAC was 2-6 this weekend against UW-O, Cortland State, Buffalo State, Bluffton, Waynesberg, Wittenberg, Defiance, and Denison.   Their losses were by an average of 16.67 points per game.  BW did beat Defiance 42-0 and Muskingum beat Waynesberg 17-16.

So just where would that group of teams (OAC minus Mount) rank in the conference rankings?

On my site, my model has the OAC as the 5th best conference (the CCIW ranks ahead of them, otherwise it's the same conferences ahead of them as in Kickoff). If I exclude Mount Union from their conference rating calculation, they would drop down to 8th, below the ASC, NWC, and IIAC (my model thinks the IIAC is consistently better than the folks running d3football think they are).

There's obviously more than one way to rank conferences, and my site is far from the only computer rating site out there for DIII, but it still gives you some idea. If you go back through the historical Top 25 rankings on d3football or by the AFCA, the OAC still consistently has their #2 or #3 teams ranked, while most other conferences struggle to get even their best team into the Top 25.

Would it be too much to ask to see how all of your Top 10 conferences would fair if you took out their best team? Being from Texas its hard for me to truly get a feel for how good the ASC really is since even when we get 2 teams into the playoffs we usually play each other.

No problem at all. Conference rankings from this season with & without best team are below:

Conference	Kickoff Rank	W/ Best Team	W/O Best Team
WIAC	1	1	1
CCIW	7	2	2
MIAC	2	3	3
E8	5	4	4
OAC	4	5	6
NWC	3	6	8
IIAC	11	7	5
ASC	8	8	9
CC	9	9	10
SCAC	17	10	12
PAC	12	11	7

You can probably ignore the ranking for the SCAC--with only four members, it's average rating can be a little misleading.

The results are somewhat as I expected. Conferences with only one elite team go down, while conference without an elite team and a little more balance go up.

What frustrates you as a fan trying to compare the ASC to the nation is also frustrating to me in trying to build a good computer model--there's not enough national competition from the DIII island. In a lot of models, I think they can overfit the few non-conference results from the Texas and West Coast schools, leading to wildly variable ratings from year to year. It's my belief that a conference's average strength relative to the nation doesn't vary too much yearly, and I tried to build a model that accounts for that without "putting my finger on the dial" to make the model match my personal biases.

[bleedpurple]

Quick question for the guys on top of the national stuff.  What is the ranking of the conference Mount Union plays in? I know the OAC is ranked fourth.  But  Mount doesn't play Mount. And as the Kickoff one liner under the OAC says: "Really would be lower if not for the force of nature known as Mount Union." 

The OAC was 2-6 this weekend against UW-O, Cortland State, Buffalo State, Bluffton, Waynesberg, Wittenberg, Defiance, and Denison.   Their losses were by an average of 16.67 points per game.  BW did beat Defiance 42-0 and Muskingum beat Waynesberg 17-16.

So just where would that group of teams (OAC minus Mount) rank in the conference rankings?

On my site, my model has the OAC as the 5th best conference (the CCIW ranks ahead of them, otherwise it's the same conferences ahead of them as in Kickoff). If I exclude Mount Union from their conference rating calculation, they would drop down to 8th, below the ASC, NWC, and IIAC (my model thinks the IIAC is consistently better than the folks running d3football think they are).

There's obviously more than one way to rank conferences, and my site is far from the only computer rating site out there for DIII, but it still gives you some idea. If you go back through the historical Top 25 rankings on d3football or by the AFCA, the OAC still consistently has their #2 or #3 teams ranked, while most other conferences struggle to get even their best team into the Top 25.

Would it be too much to ask to see how all of your Top 10 conferences would fair if you took out their best team? Being from Texas its hard for me to truly get a feel for how good the ASC really is since even when we get 2 teams into the playoffs we usually play each other.

No problem at all. Conference rankings from this season with & without best team are below:

Conference	Kickoff Rank	W/ Best Team	W/O Best Team
WIAC	1	1	1
CCIW	7	2	2
MIAC	2	3	3
E8	5	4	4
OAC	4	5	6
NWC	3	6	8
IIAC	11	7	5
ASC	8	8	9
CC	9	9	10
SCAC	17	10	12
PAC	12	11	7

You can probably ignore the ranking for the SCAC--with only four members, it's average rating can be a little misleading.

The results are somewhat as I expected. Conferences with only one elite team go down, while conference without an elite team and a little more balance go up.
poo
What frustrates you as a fan trying to compare the ASC to the nation is also frustrating to me in trying to build a good computer model--there's not enough national competition from the DIII island. In a lot of models, I think they can overfit the few non-conference results from the Texas and West Coast schools, leading to wildly variable ratings from year to year. It's my belief that a conference's average strength relative to the nation doesn't vary too much yearly, and I tried to build a model that accounts for that without "putting my finger on the dial" to make the model match my personal biases.

This is interesting. Thanks again for working this out for us.  One of the things I like about your model is the predictive value in the likelihood of teams regressing (or progressing ) to their mean. Of course, it is problematic for any model when a team or conference has an unusual year.  And maybe it's just me but it looks like the OAC minus Mount is unusually poor this year.

[ITH radio]

Thanks to Adam Turer for joining us on our show. He appears at the 37:30 mark:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ith/2016/10/03/in-the-huddlle--liberty-league-football-talk-show

[Ralph Turner]

Play of the week is interesting.

... and a left-handed wide receiver threw the 2 point conversion...

http://www.d3football.com/awards/playoftheweek/2017/week5

[middpantherpride]

[url]streetsmartsports.org/2017/10/20/cut-stephen-hauschka-the-journey-of-being-cut-from-the-middlebury-college-soccer-team-to-nfl-placekicker//url]

From Middlebury to Super Bowl Champ... d3 nation baby