Prediction Machine: Three Big 12 Teams Rank Higher Than Oregon
By Brian Spaen
Paul Bessire, creator of The Predictalator over at PredictionMachine.com, plays “the game 50,000 times before it’s actually played.” When it comes to Oregon, nothing surprises in the way of how the Ducks finish in the conference. The overall power rankings, however, look pretty interesting.
The predicted 2012 season feels awfully familiar to the previous year. Oregon finishes at an average of 9.8 wins and 2.2 losses on the year – rounding it out to a 10-2 season. Notably, that second loss comes before the Pac-12 championship game, meaning that the predictor does believe the Ducks will fall another time during the regular season. It’s still good enough for a second-place finish in the conference.
What happens after the regular season? From The Predictalator: “In other BCS Bowls, the Big Ten Championship game winner, Michigan falls to the Pac-12 championship runner-up, Oregon in a Rose Bowl shootout 41-33.”
Fans may be expecting a bit better of a season – but the end result is to get to a national championship or the Rose Bowl as a consolation.
Here are some other key notes from the season:
- Biggest Strength: Explosive Run Offense
- Greatest Weakness: Defensive Turnover
- Most Important Offensive Player: Bryan Bennett
- Most Important Defensive Player: Kiko Alonso
- Breakout Candidate: Arik Armstead
Again, nothing surprising. The defensive isn’t deep which will be a concern all year, and the depth at running back and having all-around playmaker De’Anthony Thomas will light up the scoreboard. Probably the most interesting thing to pick up is the system believing that Bryan Bennett will likely be the starter.
What is surprising is the power rankings. Unlike the preseason polls that both list the Ducks as fifth, The Predictalator’s power rankings calculate Oregon at eighth. Right above them, three straight Big 12 teams are listed from fifth place: Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Texas. Before disagreeing, let’s see how this process is built:
"To build the College Football Power Rankings below, we “played” every team against every other team 50,000 times each and ranked them by overall winning percentage of those games. These Power Rankings are as of (8/13/2012) rosters and projected depth charts."
Does this mean that those Big 12 teams will beat Oregon head-to-head?
"The Predictalator is successful because it best accounts for actual matchups and team’s abilities to exploit opponent’s weaknesses, so the Power Rankings are not necessarily the best way to know who would win between two teams."
Perhaps what jolts these teams ahead of Oregon are their strength of schedule and defense on paper. Like last year, the Big 12 is the deepest conference from top to bottom – this includes the SEC. Adding TCU and West Virginia only strengthens the football side of the conference. All 10 teams last season were listed in the top 15 in strength of schedule, and it won’t be much different this year.
The conference is also widely accepted as a passing league with no defense. If so, then Texas didn’t get near the recognition they should have gotten on defense – they finished 11th in total opponent yards given up with 306.08 per game. West Virginia finished 33rd and Oklahoma 55th. Oregon finished behind all three of them at 67th with 390.07 yards given up per game.
Find out more about The Predictalator here
Brian Spaen is the lead editor for Autzen Zoo, follow the site on Facebook and Twitter. Read his other work on the Iowa State blog, Clones Confidential, and Lacrosse the Web.