When predicting win totals of a season, are you counting only the regular season, or are you including the bowl game as well?
There was a deep rabbit hole about this on another thread, and I think it might deserve it's own discussion, if for no other reason then to reach a consensus (or admit that everyone will do whatever they want anyways).
I've always thought that when people predicted an X-win season, the implication was that it included a possible bowl game. So a 10-win season could be 9-3 regular season with a bowl win or 10-2 regular season with a bowl loss.
The primary reason for this is that when looking back on prior seasons, you refer to them as 8-win, 9-win, or 10-win seasons, and each win total has a certain amount of accomplishment to it. A good reference would be our streak of 10-win seasons, which had us getting to that threshold by all manner of combinations of regular season, conference championships, and bowl games. It's basically how we gauge success of past seasons. In that sense, it makes sense to predict future success using the same measurement we use to gauge past success.
The other side states that we have no idea who we would be playing in a bowl or if we even make one, so it's impossible to predict a win or loss.
Is there a standard way or is this destined to be a jumbled semantic mess?
Comments
Retrospectively, I include bowl games, because it is a statement of fact that in a given year, we won X games.
In making predictions, I go only by the known schedule. If I say it's an 8-win season, that's the regular season. Since, as you point out, we have no idea who we'd play in a bowl game, there's no way to predict that. I may offer a prediction of standing within the ACC, because we know a bit about each ACC team and can prognosticate (often very inaccurately) about how things might shake out in a given season.
I think it's always going to be a jumbled semantic mess.
I think when talking at the beginning of a season especially about th expectations of a new coach its regular season scheduled games.
Exactly, and that's where the conversation went down the rabbit hole in the other thread. The point was made that the team won 7 games last year, so they should be able to win 7 this year. However, if Fuente gets this team to 6-6 and then loses a bowl game (which is highly likely considering VT's history), I don't think saying that he did worse than Beamer's last year would be a fair criticism.
Likewise, if he goes 7-5 but loses a bowl, I would still consider that an improvement, because it would mean that we're not wondering about bowl eligibility over Thanksgiving.
something was done here....
Easy math.
6-5 before Thanksgiving.
13th Annual Post-Thanksgiving Bowl Prep Game Win.
See. Easy math.
it's going to be a semantic mess.
If you're looking at a schedule to determine wins pre-season, then you must only include regular season because those are the known games. Bowl games and opponents are unknown. You can look at a schedule and use the opponents' pre-season expectations to project a win or a loss in a game. Without knowing a bowl opponent, it's impossible to predict the result. If you're looking at the talent of a team though and saying "this team has the talent to win 9 games this year," I think that carries a different connotation. By saying that, you are looking at only the team and not their opponents. In general, predicting the results of games where the opponent is unknown is for those in Vegas, but if you're able to do it accurately, let me know this week's lottery numbers too.
I guess the counter-argument to that is that we don't really know how good any of our opponents are. We have no idea how good teams like Notre Dame, Miami, and Pitt are going to be. We have no idea which teams will sustain significant injuries to key players. At least with the bowl game, we're most likely to go against a similarly ranked team. In some ways that's more predictable then marking Miami or Pitt as a tough out when it turns out Kayaa's out for the season and Pitt's offense is dreadful without Tyler Boyd taking pressure off the run-game. Or predicting Syracuse a likely win after Barbers turns them around and starts putting up 600 ypg.
Ultimately, every single game is a crapshoot so might as well build in some margin of error while predicting the total that you'll actually care about at the end of the year.
I guess what it really comes down to is that there isn't a set standard (at least, none that I'm aware of) which dictates how win totals should be predicted. I think at that point it is up to the party who asks the question to set the bounds. If you ask me for my prediction without specifying whether or not to include the bowl game I'm going to have a different answer than a lot of people. The simplest thing would be to ask for peoples' predictions and specify whether or not to include post season games from the outset.
I think this is the best we're going to get.
With a bowl game though, you could be playing a Tulsa or you could be playing Navy or Mississippi State. It's still unpredictable because of the tier structure of the ACC. Your opponents could be a P5 or a G5 opponent. There's a decent difference between the two. Sure, you don't know how your opponent will fare in the regular season, but you at least know who the opponent is and can project a "without external factors such as injuries, weather, or other" result better than you can against an unknown.
But the bowl game is so far after the regular season, we don't know if we're going up against a team keeping their coach or what motivation they might have. Is it a first time bowling team that's damn glad to be there? Is their legendary head coach retiring? Has their current coach been hired away elsewhere, so it's a skeleton interim staff running the show?
Of course, I just assume we're going to lose the bowl game anyway, considering we're something like 5-20 in bowls.
I believe we are 12-17 in bowl games (11-12 in the Beamer era). Although since it was a catch...Beamer should be at 12-11. So we are really a coin flip in bowl games.
The way I justify the official standings is that by all rights, we should have lost that bowl game the following year against Rutgers, so we're still 1-1 over those two years regardless.
Although winning the last couple of years have really skewed the record back to the good side. I just remember getting a t-shirt with a list of all of our bowls (I think it was before one of the Orange Bowls), and most of them were losses.
As to winning more recently, the ACC's new bowl selection system rewards midlevel teams for weak OOC scheduling, letting them count that win over Richmond or Georgia Southern more than a close loss to ECU or Ohio State. The teams that played the weaker schedule get the better bowl tier, and we get to play Tulsa or Cincinnati and win. They really need to only count conference schedule in the bowl tier schedule.
Well, going into those games at 6-6, I don't think we have much room to grumble about our destination. But, I think the Military Bowl against Cincinnati was good for where we were as a program in 2014. It was physically close to a large chunk of our fanbase, and it gave us a matchup that allowed us to be favored.
In 2015, the issue wasn't that the bowls preferred NC State, Louisville, or Duke over us, but they preferred all of them over Pitt. Pitt is a team that can rightfully complain about their bowl last year.
As for your argument about the ACC's bowl selection process....
The two FBS teams that Richmond played the last two years were UVA in 2014 (final score 45-13) and Maryland in 2015 (50-21). Neither of those teams went bowling. Meanwhile, our FCS opponents were W&M (34-9) and Furman (42-3).
As for Georgia Southern, the only ACC games they played over the last two seasons were in 2014, against NC State (7-5, 3-5 regular season) and GT (10-2, 6-2 regular season). Obviously, scheduling is not a factor for GT that year.
VT's record that year was 6-6, 3-5 -- same conference record as NC State. So yes, NC State's 1 point win over Georgia Southern counted more than our 7 point loss to ECU. But NC State went to the St. Petersburg Bowl, which was a guaranteed ACC bowl in 2014, but was listed after the Tier 2 bowls (which starts with the Military Bowl). Meaning that we got a better bowl than NC State.
I appreciate the research. Your facts are correct, and I clearly sited the wrong examples. And I agree, falling to a bowl you can win can be a good thing for a program trying to get back on track. That does not change my opinion the the ACC rewards weak OCC scheduling with their bowl selection process. If we had OOC schedules like many other ACC teams instead of an OSU and ECU, the games would have sucked, but we would not have been 6-6, (Brewer may not have been hurt), and we may have been in a different bowl against someone else, likely a better destination, but may not have won. That is what I was trying to point out. If you play a hard OCC schedule in the ACC and get to a bowl game you are more likely to win it, though it is harder to get there.
It's hard for me to see the OOC bias, because there are tons of factors going into the bowl game selection -- namely profitability, revenue, and matchup. And I don't think any conference is going to implement a rule that bowl selection is based off conference records, when you need the overall record to become eligible.
The main team I see benefiting from a weak OOC schedule is NC State. They have had back to back seasons of 4-0 OOC to go with 3-5 conference records. In 2014, they got the next to the last bowl (Pitt at 6-6 was the last team picked), but that also means that VT, UNC, and Miami at 6-6 all jumped them. In 2015, they somehow managed to jump Pitt to take the last tier 1 slot. But that's because the Belk Bowl is a mid-level bowl and had to weigh the possibilities -- they either take a slightly better Pitt team that might not have a well travelling fanbase, or a relatively local NC State team who will definitely travel due to the proximity.
NC State is clearly benefiting from the 1 game rule, but to an extent on the flip side, so is Pitt. If that rule wasn't in effect, then Pitt would probably just need to look at the last bowl game on the ACC list each year, because obviously, bowl organizers do not like them.
The thing is, UNC had a crap OOC schedule last year. The only decent game they scheduled was the one they lost. But they took care of business in conference, and were still three games ahead of the next closest ACC team in terms of overall record. A tougher OOC schedule, even with two more losses, still would have them taking the Russell Athletic Bowl.
But we can't be playing the "what if" game on Tech's 6-6 season, because that can apply to any of the 12 games they played. What if OT had gone differently last year? What if the team actually showed up to play Pitt?
Past seasons are definitely, to me, the total amount of wins (which includes bowl games if you make one). Future seasons I would still include the bowl game if you are predicting you are going to win 6 or more regular season games you know you are going to a bowl game unless you are unc, Miami, ole miss etc that may face post-season bans. No you don't know who you will be playing, but you are fairly certain you are going to be playing another similarly ranked team at that point. At this point we may know the teams we are playing for the '16 season, but we don't entirely know the make up of those teams, who will step up and taking starting spots, who will get injured, etc etc etc so it's all just a guessing game anyways.
I feel like that season where we needed to win the ACCCG and bowl game to get to 10 wins was kind of cheating to keep the streak going. I mean, I still claim it and brag on it when appropriate, but it would have felt better to win two more games in the regular season.
agree on the acccg as that gave us another potential game to get to the 10, but the bowl game was always a part of that streak.
Not sure what you're trying to say there with the second part. Of the eight seasons with 10-wins, only two required the bowl game to be the 10th win (2008, 2009). In the rest of the seasons, we either lost the bowl game (2004, 2006, 2010) or it was our 11th win (2005, 2007). In 2011, we finished the regular season at 11-1, before we even got to Charlotte.
We still had the ability to win that game. It was a possibility for us to get an additional win because we played the game.
We did NOT have the ability to win the extra game from an ACCCG because there was no such thing prior to it being created.
Just maintain a winning record for me to be happy. If that is 6-6 and a bowl win, I am okay, I would prefer 7-5 or better going into post season.
I predict we will go 1-0 in January of 2017...
Go to Vegas and say you want to bet on a 8 win season and see if they count the bowl game or conference championship. That is the standard in season totals predictions
I predict our win probability distribution will look something like this:
Leg, but This GIF doesn't work without sound
Also; I'll just leave this here...
I am choosing to view the "X" as a roman numeral, so I agree. X win season. Book it
XV
Huh. I must be a nerd because I misread it as "X-Wing" at first....
I'm just going to copy and paste my response that got lost in the rabbit hole:
"Here is a simple solution for everyone up-thread. When you predict our win total for the upcoming season, say whether you mean just the regular season or are including the bowl game. Or give the number of losses as well so we can figure out what you mean. Typing "8-4" or "8-5" instead of "8 wins" would have prevented a whole lot of circular arguing over semantics.
For the record, I think we will go 7-5 (see how clear that is). Of course you include the bowl game when referring to past seasons because it occurred, but I have no idea how you can reasonably predict a bowl win or loss when you have no idea who we will play or if we will even be in one.
Offseason sucks."
TL:DR version: In order to avoid misunderstandings due to semantics, communicate better.
As part of the reason that it went into the rabbit hole I feel obligated to say that I always did predictions based on the games you know are scheduled going into the season. You count the total number of wins at the end of the season but predict off of what you have scheduled if that makes sense. Last thread got out of hand because no one was clear what 8 wins meant haha
So if I understand everything correctly, which I'm sure I do, because I didn't count the bowl game in my prediction last year, the win over Tulsa transfers to this year's prediction!
X-wing seasons? I am all aboard that hype train.