Very interesting article here. FiveThirtyEight compiled the rankings of the main group of programs that have been consistently ranked from 1996 to now, and compared preseason rankings to end of year positioning. As you would expect, they found some notable trends.
Article on FiveThirtyEight.com
Shockingly, they found the worst Overhyped offender to be... drumroll... Notre Dame, who has an average preseason ranking of 25th, and 70% of the time, finishes the year worse than expected. Other notable overrated programs include Texas, Florida, Florida State, and Penn State.
Interestingly, the Hokies come out of this appearing to be slightly overrated over the years, with an average preseason ranking of 17th, and missing the mark 60% of the time.
And before anyone asks, Miami is historically overrated as well, with also an average ranking of 17th, and missing the mark 60% of the time. That said, they rank higher on the overrated scale because we beat our mark 35% of the time to their 25%.
Certainly opened my eyes a bit. I wouldn't have guessed we trended toward overhype, but the numbers do speak for themselves, even if the margin for us is fairly small as opposed to others.
Comments
Miami always!!!
USC West and Notre Dame...EVERY DAMN YEAR!!!
I don't think USC W has been overrated every year. Dominant up till 07 I think. After that they were not over-hyped when they got hit with sanctions.
If anything I think USC-E has been.
There was one year they were the preseason number 1 and finished 7-5, but other than that I'd agree that they're not usually overrated. This year I think they're the best team in the country.
I thought VT would be more overhyped tbh. I just think of how many times we started in the AP preseason top 15, but finished around top 20 due to our typical pattern of one regular season loss to a good team, one regular season loss to a bad team, and one bowl loss against a decent team. I suppose that even when we were 'overrated', we finished with 10ish spots of our preseason ranking...
1-5 BCS record will do that
Can't get the page to load here, but I'd imagine the 2001-2003 era (just before Bud made some schematic changes, IIRC) plus the 2009-2012 era (the end of the Frank-'n-Stine offense) would be big contributors as well.
Truth. During the post-BCSNCG Beamer years we had a well deserved reputation of not being able to handle big games. It's one of those infuriating things about talking to other fan bases. It's honestly hard to argue the fact that we strung together a lot of those 10 win seasons at a period when the rest of the conference was pretty well garbage, while losing both our marquee opener and BCS bowl game year in and year out.
Its not that we lost games, its how we lost them. 2003 saw us open hot, get that big win against Miami, and then meltdown against teams we had no business losing to. 2005 saw us reach that national elite status we've always wanted, only to see us not even show up for the Miami game. Turned it around enough to make it to the title game, only to see #5 VT lose to an unranked FSU in a game where we looked incompetent on offense. 2007 saw the humiliation in Baton Rouge. 2010 saw the Boise loss followed by JMU. 2011 saw us get pistol whipped twice by Clemson while being the higher ranked favorite, once at home, the other in the ACC title game, both times with our offense looking incompetent. Then the wheels fell off.
Sure, we won 10 games a year so many times during that stretch, but for the most part, we looked like a team that didn't belong, and we proved it on the field of play.
You just gave a lot of reasons why so many called us the chokies.
You aren't wrong, but I'm still amazed that our wheels falling off never resulted in an overall losing record in any season.
I was going to say this very thing. I'm sure we had earned our ranking most years before our bowl game, then we lost, and tumbled in rankings to lower than our preseason rank.
Notre Dame overrated? Never.
http://collegefootball.ap.org/poll-voter/mitch-vingle
assuming 61 voters, because that's how many first place votes it shows as being cast, Mr. Vingle, who I can only assume is a graduate of South Bend High School, accounted for 23 out of the 65 points awarded by voters to Notre Dame. More than 1/3 (33%) of the total. By comparison, the 25 points his vote awarded Nick Satan accounted for 1.6% of Alabama's 1513. The 9 points he awarded VT accounted for 3.8% of our total. I refuse to wade any further into this (I was going to say 'too far into this', but I'm already way too far into this) but Mr. Vingle,
That's just laughable.
I'm in a big argument on reddit right now that the entire SEC outside of Bama has habitually been over rated.
Good luck with that one.
SEC record vs other conferences since 2000
vs ACC: 83-63
vs B10: 40-26
vs B12: 38-26
vs PAC12: 18-13
Those records are brought down by not dominant early 2000s, where no one would call them the best, and the overall records are still better than any other conference.
Their BCS record was 17-10, for a .630 winning percentage (the ACC was a beautiful .278). And that's with Bama going 3-3.
Yes last year the ACC was a better conference, but over the last decade? SEC was the top easily. Look at any numbers over that period and they'll tell you that.
Who cares what happened since 2000? We're in 2017. Since 2014, the SEC has a 13-19 record against the ACC. At least focus on what has happened since realignment.
I'd say 2010 is a fair mark to start at. That's six years so the average athlete would be out of eligibility, that's when Urban Meyer left Florida, which was one of the big things that made the decade of dominance possible, and that will capture their realignment.
The whole reddit thread got out of control when people confused the issue and thought I was arguing that the decade of dominance timeline wasn't legitimate. They were good then but from about 2010 on, it's really just Bama.
The SEC is 46-28 bowl , 36-31 vs ACC, 18-11 vs B12, 22-12 vs B10, 9-2 vs PAC12 since 2010. That is not just Bama. No other conference has those numbers
Side bar: Where are you getting your data from? I trust it but I want to go tinker with some stuff. You've listed that the SEC has played 141 OoC games in 7 seasons. With 14 teams, the SEC plays 1.44 OoC games per season against P5 since 2010. With 12 teams, the SEC plays 1.68 OoC games per season against P5. I'd be interested to see what other conferences look like and compare some regular season number to number including bowl games.
http://mcubed.net/ncaaf/tvc/index.shtml
They have a lot of cool stuff. If you're looking for P5 games per year you can probably find someone thats' done that work already.
I can't see how to pull just from 2010 on. I need coffee.
What I'm curious to look into (and I'll be trying over the next few days) is schedule comparisons. The SEC is notorious for scheduling their FCS and/or Sun Belt opponent near the end of the season. Florida is famous for not travelling outside of their home state for a true OOC away game since 1990. Some of the few ACC/SEC home-and-home match-ups outside of the usual rivalries I can recall from recent years are LSU and Alabama against Syracuse and Duke.
Of course, we also know that NC State is horrible about their scheduling, and like Duke, they're just trying to get to 6 wins.
I'm not sure exactly if that data will conclude or support anything, but I think it's worth taking a look.
http://www.fbschedules.com/2016/06/which-conference-plays-most-power-fiv...
A little bit of what you are looking for. 25 teams played fewer than 10 P5 opponents in the regular season. The SEC account for 52% of those 25 teams.
Last year was a weak year for the SEC, the rest weren't.
Because the argument was that the SEC has been habitually overrated, which would imply previous to this year. The ACC got credit this year because they absolutely crushed it, but they never have before. Ever. The other two years since your chosen 2014, the ACC was 19-24 regular season against P5 OOC and 8-13 in bowl games. The SEC was 25-18 and 18-7 in bowl games. One year does not make a trend and is a poor indicator of future success.
But still, 16 years? Urban Meyer wasn't even a head coach then. Just to show you how long ago that was.
Use the last 6 years then. Their numbers are still the best of any conference.
You also provided zero statistics to back your claim other than this years bowl record and the phrase echo chamber.
You REALLY didn't like that take, did you?
Because I took that time to review his argument on r/cfb and revolves around cherry picking Mizzou and making poor claims about the SEC not playing OOC while ignoring the year by year records as whole and bowl records before this one season.
Okay, please explain to me why Mizzou or aTm is cherry picking? I'm using them as the only two case studies we have. My argument is the SEC is insular and has protected their ranking by beating each other and not playing ball against the rest of the P5. You interject two new teams that are not SEC teams and it's a great way to expose that the middle of the SEC isn't great. There really is only a top heavy three or four. It's the only conference where a poor team beats a top team and the conference is deep. That happens in the Coastal and we're having a down year.
Because you can't say that they are not playing ball against the rest of P5 when you are given objective OOC and bowl records that show they have been superior. Choosing 2 teams out of 14 is by definition cherry picking when discussing a whole conference.
If you're going to use Mizzou winning the east in 2013 as evidence, why ignore that 2013 SEC was 7-3 in bowl games and 14-8 P5 OOC. That is not insular. That is against the rest of P5.
the real question though is why Missouri is considered "east"
Two of their 7 wins in 2013 were against Rice and Houston. Against the P5 they were 5-3. We are including both Mizzou and Texas A&M in those win totals who beat OK St and Duke respectively. Those are two teams I am identifying as "outsiders" from the SEC. If you take the pre-expansion SEC vs P5 in 2013, they are 3-3. The ACC was 3-4 against P5 teams, two of those wins being BCS games.
So when are they no longer outsiders? That doesn't even make sense. The conference they are in is the conference they are in.
2013 P5 OOC: ACC 7-13, SEC 14-8
SEC 7-4 head to head
Okay, my original position: The SEC was (or still is) considered the best conference in football because they are an echo chamber.
The reason I exclude Texas A&M and Mizzou from the 2013 bowl results is because, at that time, they hadn't had a full 4 years of recruits as an SEC school. This makes their teams still filled with talent from their old conference. It's the closest thing I can think of doing to compare what would happen if the SEC played more outside of their conference. Mizzou and aTm are my "canaries in the coal mine" essentially and test subjects to see what happens if you put an non-SEC into an SEC environment. If the SEC really is better, these new teams should flounder and fail because they are not of sufficient quality to compete. If the SEC is the same as every other conference in America, they will do just fine.
I would consider them full fledged SEC members after 4 or 5 recruiting cycles in the SEC. Their whole team (save a few) should have turned over and they have played in the SEC mindset of scheduling non-P5 opponents to pump up their rankings before heading into conference play.
I have been spoiled by TKP. After reading this I am left feeling like they did not use much maths here, and did not paint a broad picture. Where are the advanced metrics, the statistics explaining the statistics, and the complicated formulas to adjust for player rankings, scheduling, and special uniforms?
I feel like Tennessee, Florida and Georgia have under-performed of late (except when Tebow was at Florida)
FTFY
It almost looks like if you aren't a blue blood of college football.... you aren't going to be over ranked. I know VT is up there, but we are usually over ranked imo
My takeaway is, hey, at least we're on the list. We have consistent high expectations over the last 20 years, and we haven't been the worst at meeting them. Being ranked preseason has more to do with the previous season than the upcoming one (unfortunately, since that bias really does set the ceiling/floor for teams when it comes to bowl or playoff seeding).
However, this analysis is just too simplistic to me. Only 40-50 teams get preseason votes. Only 35-40 teams get postseason votes. That consolidation of opinion means there are automatically 5 or 10 big losers just about every year. And the data set is inherently asymmetric. Anyone who doesn't get preseason votes apparently has no expectations at all, so it's all upside. If you are a consistent top 10 team, it's all downside. So boom teams (like Auburn 2013, from no votes to #2) and bust teams (like Auburn 2014 and 2015, #6 to no votes) kind of break the system. The author acknowledges this...but doesn't really try to account for it.
I think a team like Texas annoys me more than Notre Dame in this case...they have been totally mediocre and keep getting benefit of the doubt. Notre Dame does get more hype than they deserve, but at least they were a 10-win team as recently as 2015, and they always play a tough schedule.
14-0....take that
I mean, VT was pretty terrible at meeting expectations over the years. It's no wonder we were seen as a bit of a joke to the actual top teams during our ACC dominance.
If this were the last 5-10 years, UNC would be on this list.
And LOLUVA remains to be over-hyped. Just when you think expectations cannot get any lower for a team, they manage, to my hysterical LOL delight, under perform year after year. Man, I love college football!