FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[AndOne]

Thanks Ex. I appreciate your position, and especially the detailed research presented in support of same.

[Pat Coleman]

Firstdown -- for what it's worth, I don't think the polls converge late in the season. I think the AFCA poll gets more and more off kilter because the coaches only look at record and not strength of schedule. (Literally -- we provide our voters with breakdowns of each team opponent by opponent because we can pull it from our database, but the AFCA doesn't have that.)

Late in the season you're more likely to see something like MIT being ranked 24th or Centre being ranked 16th in the AFCA poll because they do often just promote and promote and promote unbeaten teams regardless of schedule.

However, yes, I do agree that there is movement in the early polls, and that's because playing games provides more information than what we as voters have to go on before, which is prognostications on paper.

[AndOne]

Likewise, I feel if you are good enough to be ranked in whatever position, and you don't play, you haven't done anything to jepordize the ranking. Granted, you don't have a win, but you haven't lost a game and thus, shouldn't lose your position. Otherwise you're being penalized for scheduling rather than for inferior performance.

Your fellow Cardinals fan has already addressed this complaint, Mark:

North Central actually gained points, from 324 to 328, without taking the field.  Their slight drop in the ordinal ranking is more a facet of what happened to teams around them, and not because of some real or imagined slight of the team.

Yes, but I've never really cared how many points NCC or any other team receives in any poll in whatever sport. The only thing that really matters (bottom line if you will) is in what position is the team ranked in the poll. As firstdown rightfully suggests above, it's really a beauty contest.
And #11 is more beautiful than #13 in most people's eyes. 

As a final thought, it's the final poll that really matters. 

[badgerwarhawk]

It's the regional rankings that really matter.   

[Gregory Sager]

Likewise, I feel if you are good enough to be ranked in whatever position, and you don't play, you haven't done anything to jepordize the ranking. Granted, you don't have a win, but you haven't lost a game and thus, shouldn't lose your position. Otherwise you're being penalized for scheduling rather than for inferior performance.

Your fellow Cardinals fan has already addressed this complaint, Mark:

North Central actually gained points, from 324 to 328, without taking the field.  Their slight drop in the ordinal ranking is more a facet of what happened to teams around them, and not because of some real or imagined slight of the team.

Yes, but I've never really cared how many points NCC or any other team receives in any poll in whatever sport. The only thing that really matters (bottom line if you will) is in what position is the team ranked in the poll.

And that's precisely where you went wrong in this discussion.

A team's ordinal ranking is relative to all of the rest of the teams in the poll. As Ex pointed out in lavish detail in his last post, a downward move in a team's ordinal ranking is typically perceived by the layman as that team's having fallen from favor in the eyes of one or more pollsters when, in fact, that isn't necessarily the case at all. And, because the individual ballots are not posted by d3football.com, neither you nor I nor Ex nor anybody other than Pat (and possibly his henchmen on the d3football.com staff) are in a position to ascertain whether said team was the victim of a downballot move or moves by one or more pollsters, or if (as in Ex's scenario) it was simply a ripple effect from upballot moves by other teams that didn't affect the pollster-specific ballot placement(s) of the original team in question. In other words, as Ex pointed out, you can't assume that an insult has been paid to either North Central or John Carroll without having access to more evidence (e.g., the open posting of all of the d3football.com poll ballots).

You say that the ordinal ranking is the only thing that really matters to you. Fine. That's your prerogative. But if that's the case, you can't thereby infer correctly that your Cardinals have been slighted based only upon the ordinal ranking, because you lack the specific evidence to prove it. North Central may simply have been the victim of a statistical accident that involved unrelated teams, as it were. The only way that you can truly determine whether North Central has increased or decreased in favor in the eyes of the pollsters is via the poll points. But, since you don't care about them ... well, let's just say that your indifference to poll points leaves you high and dry as far as your ability to argue about the poll is concerned.

Bottom line: You ought to care about poll points, because they are the surest way to tell how your team is actually perceived in isolation by the pollsters from week to week.

As firstdown rightfully suggests above, it's really a beauty contest.
And #11 is more beautiful than #13 in most people's eyes. 

Of course. But 328 points has a nicer personality than 324 points, and as a married man you should at least be paying lip service to the idea that personality is more important than looks.

[AndOne]

Fortunately, my much better half ranks high in both the personality and looks departments. 
And, indeed, if personality wasn't more important than looks, I would never have gotten a look from the inestimable Mrs. AndOne! 

[Titan Q]

A big loss for IWU's defense...

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/football/iwu-loses-sacks-leader-venhuizen-for-season/article_a9a413e7-c94a-5e10-bcce-11a86635a560.html

[firstdown]

Pat

You are correct.  The polls tend to converge at the top, but the middle and lower numbers tend to  quite different for just the reason you noted.

[Mugsy]

A big loss for IWU's defense...

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/football/iwu-loses-sacks-leader-venhuizen-for-season/article_a9a413e7-c94a-5e10-bcce-11a86635a560.html

That is a significant loss.  The only positive for him is that he has at least one season to come back to.

[matblake]

A big loss for IWU's defense...

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/football/iwu-loses-sacks-leader-venhuizen-for-season/article_a9a413e7-c94a-5e10-bcce-11a86635a560.html

That is a significant loss.  The only positive for him is that he has at least one season to come back to.

Depth is such a big issue in D3. One or two season ending injuries in key positions can really decimate your season. 

[USee]

Tough loss for the Titans. You don't replace that kind of production easily. I always feel bad for the kid because it's a long road back and the disappointment of a lost season is so mentally challenging. This was IWU's best player in my view. They have a lot of talent other than him but losing that one will hurt.

[emma17]

A big loss for IWU's defense...

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/football/iwu-loses-sacks-leader-venhuizen-for-season/article_a9a413e7-c94a-5e10-bcce-11a86635a560.html

Sorry to read this, for the player and the team. 

[USee]

A big loss for IWU's defense...

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/football/iwu-loses-sacks-leader-venhuizen-for-season/article_a9a413e7-c94a-5e10-bcce-11a86635a560.html

Sorry to read this, for the player and the team.

There you go, stirring the pot again. 

[emma17]

USee- I blame this on you.

Ex,
Your post on the rankings was very informative and your example of points being allocated clearly shows how a team can move up or down without any particular intent from the voters as a whole.

When you say the "rankings aren't standings", I'm not sure exactly what you mean.  Are you saying the rankings are only a grade for how a team has done through their last game, as opposed to who you think would win if team #1 played team #2?   

If it's the former than the rest of my post is meaningless.  If it's the later, then there is a part of your post I don't think is as cut and dry as you make it seem.

See, I really disagree this line of thinking (not specific to you, AndOne, but in general).  It's incredibly naive.

The rankings should be compiled by continually comparing the teams' bodies of work against one another.  Not by saying "Eh, they did pretty well this week, I'll just keep them where they are" or "They did badly, I'm moving them down a spot" - it's more dynamic than that!  If they played OK, and other teams around them played better, why are we obligated to keep them in place just because they won? This is the worst kind of trickle-down-from-D1-polls thinking, the idea that the team ranked X stays ranked X until someone ahead of them loses (so they can move up) or until they lose (in which case they will move down).  There's so much more to a result than whether the team "won" or "lost" the game. Rankings aren't standings - the quality of the result matters.

In 2010, Mt Union beat Marietta 28-14 in week 6 I believe it was.  In 2014 UWW beat UW RF in the last minute of the game.  In both cases, Mt and UWW lost first place votes in the following poll.  I think a case can be made that it may also be "incredibly naïve" for a voter to move a first place vote away from Mt or UWW, if in fact the first place vote truly means that voter thinks the #1 ranked team is the best team and the #2 ranked team is the second best team, etc.  Is it likely the voter that moved a #1 vote from Mt to UWW after Mt's unexpectedly close game with Marietta felt the result showed UWW would beat Mt instead of the other way around? 
UWW had 22 first place votes prior to playing UWRF, the following week they had 16.  Did 5 voters feel, based upon UWW's close game with UWRF, that UWW was no longer likely to beat UMHB or Mt?  Even though UWW had beat both teams the year before, and returned a majority of its team? 

I don't think a voter is "obligated" to keep a team in place just because they won", but I do think a voter should subjectively consider, as you infer, the context of the game - and the entire situation. 

[Pat Coleman]

Did 5 voters feel, based upon UWW's close game with UWRF, that UWW was no longer likely to beat UMHB or Mt?

I do think that's the case. What else would it really be?