Hawaii, SOS, and BCS - cougarguard.com — unofficial BYU Cougars / LDS sports, football, basketball forum and message board

jay santos · 11-01-2007, 04:10 PM

I'm not too worried about whether or not Hawaii will make a BCS bowl. I think the rankings are pretty fair right now, though I wish they had stronger computer component, and if Hawaii makes it I think it will be probably because they deserve it.

Read my post here

http://cougarguard.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13183

on the fallacy of rating an undefeated team by the worst team they've beaten.

I ran Hawaii's schedule through a probability model I have set up to give probability of going undefeated. They have the toughest part of their schedule left with Fresno, Boise, Nevada, and Washington. I matched up probabilities with them to go undefeated with their entire 12 game schedule with theoretical rankings.

ranking, prob to go undefeated, expected total wins
#1, 83%, 11.8
#5, 74%, 11.7
#10, 50%, 11.4
#15, 40%, 11.2
#20, 30%, 10.9
#25, 21%, 10.7

So the way you can read this is that if Hawaii was truly the 10th best team, they'd have a 50% chance to go undefeated with their schedule this year, with 11.4 expected total wins.

I kinda think Hawaii will lose a game, but if they win out, I'll say they deserve to be in a BCS bowl, and depending on the matchup, they have a decent shot at showing well.

11-01-2007, 04:10 PM	#1
jay santos Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 6,177	Hawaii, SOS, and BCS I'm not too worried about whether or not Hawaii will make a BCS bowl. I think the rankings are pretty fair right now, though I wish they had stronger computer component, and if Hawaii makes it I think it will be probably because they deserve it. Read my post here http://cougarguard.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13183 on the fallacy of rating an undefeated team by the worst team they've beaten. I ran Hawaii's schedule through a probability model I have set up to give probability of going undefeated. They have the toughest part of their schedule left with Fresno, Boise, Nevada, and Washington. I matched up probabilities with them to go undefeated with their entire 12 game schedule with theoretical rankings. ranking, prob to go undefeated, expected total wins #1, 83%, 11.8 #5, 74%, 11.7 #10, 50%, 11.4 #15, 40%, 11.2 #20, 30%, 10.9 #25, 21%, 10.7 So the way you can read this is that if Hawaii was truly the 10th best team, they'd have a 50% chance to go undefeated with their schedule this year, with 11.4 expected total wins. I kinda think Hawaii will lose a game, but if they win out, I'll say they deserve to be in a BCS bowl, and depending on the matchup, they have a decent shot at showing well.