Chaos Rankings

Friday, June 19, 2009

Finding your inner geek

With so much raw data available today in the sports world, the following two things amaze me:
1) Basketball and baseball do so much more with statistics that football.
2) Div. I-A (begrudgingly, FCS) football is the only sport in which championships are set up by numbers (but, thankfully, still settled on the field of play).

I'd love to hear an explanation for why this is. Sure, the 2/3 of the BCS is still provided by human polls. Humans who may or may not actually watch all the games or even case their own votes. Honestly, if you're going to put the fate of the championship in the hands of a formula, why not just put the whole thing in the hands of computers? Or better yet, why not have some playoffs like every other major team sport and settle the matter on the field.

Since that's not going to happen anytime soon, the BCS isn't going anywhere. Which means that I get to keep running my own ranking system. As a result, I've been spending a lot of time reading up on statistics in other sports just to get some ideas and see how the other sports out there handle their data. What's significant and what isn't. How I can improve my own ranking system. Etc. You may have noticed I added a new sidebar section with links to various other stat geek sites. Enjoy.

Football season is slowly creeping up on us, so stay tuned!