For Fellow Nerds: Projections on all 7,406 Match-ups and How They Were Calculated

The following are the projected NON-CONFERENCE records for all 129 FBS teams assuming they played every other team except those in their conference (a total of 7,406 total non-conference games). The projected conference record is the starting basis for the Method 1 weekly ratings. The following are the basic components of how these are calculated:

1. Projections are just a rough estimate based on returning players and past performance – and will quickly be update each week at Massey Ratings and elsewhere as actual games are played this season.

2. The offensive and defensive ratings at Massey Ratings were used to estimate the average score each team would have if playing all 128 other teams on neutral fields.

3. The Pythagorean Theorem is then applied to a team’s projected average score – meaning that their average points scored and allowed are both taken to the power of 2.73, and then the resultant Points Scored^2.73 is then divided by Points Scored^2.73+Points Allowed^2.73. The resultant records do then need some slight adjustments to yield the records below once all conference games are taken out.

4. The overall winning percentage of the conference is used as a basis for how good it is anticipated the conference will be.

5. The Massey Ratings yield a percent chance of victory for each game each week, which we add up to determine a conferences anticipated record that week (e.g. if a conference has five teams that all have a 20% chance of winning on a given week, then 20% is added five times to give a total estimated 1.0 win in five games, or a 1-4 anticipated schedule). If a conference goes 2-3 in those five games, they have exceeded the anticipated one win, indicating they played better than their anticipated rating and turn their ratings the following week will improve on Massey Ratings.

6. These five steps enable us to rank each conference each week based purely on if teams win or lose each game and the degree of difficulty, yielding a “politically correct” rating. In the early years of the BCS the NCAA had to get rid of victory margins in computer ratings because teams were running up scores to move up in the rankings. 

7. This Method 1 is not only important because it is “politically correct” by not encouraging teams to beat inferior opponents too badly, but it is also important because it measures the actual WIN or LOSS. If we skipped this step and went straight to Method 2, then a team hitting a field goal to provide a final 38-10 win would help the team just as much as hitting a field goal to win a game 21-20. Points that determine wins are obviously much more important than points that simply provide a larger or smaller margin of victory.

8. Method 2 looks at the results of Message 1, but focuses primarily on measuring how many points a conference is better or worse than the FBS average based on the process outlined here.

The following is the projected non-conference record of all 129 FBS teams, grouped by conference and then in best to worse order.

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