The AllState Playoff Predictor

[Perd Hapley]

I’ve made some previous references to this, but the next time you see it pop up on ESPN (or anything related to % chance if making the playoff on ESPN because that’s what they use)…..just point and laugh. It’s totally meaningless, and is a completely broken algorithm. Same predictor had FSU at 95% or something last year.

But the most damning evidence is below. You can go onto ESPN’s website and choose any team, and fill out the rest of their schedule and get their final % chance of making it. For UGA, it gives them a 64% chance of making it…..at 9-3, and with a loss to UMASS.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen any predictive model miss something this badly. AllState should stick to the Sugar Bowl and cheating people out of valid hail damage claims. They straight up suck at this.

 

[patdog]

GA is in assuming they win out. Mississippi looks to be either the last team in or 1st team out.

never mind. Reread your post & realize this assumes GA loses. Yeah. No chance they make it with 3 losses.

 

[ZombieKissinger]

I could build a better predictor in 30 minutes with Google sheets

 

[85Bears]

FSU was 95% lock for the playoffs until Jordan Travis suffered a gruesome left ankle injury in week 12, Tate Rodemaker their backup was then injured and FSU started third string freshman Brock Glenn in the ACC championship.

So that’s kind of an anomaly. FSU was a lock with Travis but they weren’t one of the playoff teams with third string freshman Brock Glenn at qb.

 

[Perd Hapley]

FSU was 95% lock for the playoffs until Jordan Travis suffered a gruesome left ankle injury in week 12, Tate Rodemaker their backup was then injured and FSU started third string freshman Brock Glenn in the ACC championship.

So that’s kind of an anomaly. FSU was a lock with Travis but they weren’t one of the playoff teams with third string freshman Brock Glenn at qb.

They were 95% after the Louisville win….mere hours before the selection show. They never changed it to account for the injury. And that part is fine, because that had nothing to do with why they were left out.

This predictor is trash. The above scenario proves it. Nothing it says can be taken seriously….primarily because you can’t write an algorithm to account for human inputs and contingencies based on common sense.

 

[QuaoarsKing]

There just isn't enough data to project what the selection committee will decide, and even if we run this 12-team format for a couple decades and there is credible data, it will still be really hard to put a model together because the committee ultimately just does whatever it wants and makes up a justification after the fact.

In looking over the 4-team brackets over the years, there's inconsistent from year to year in what matters and what doesn't. Conference championships matter, except when they don't. Quality wins mean more than bad losses, except when they don't. Going undefeated matters, except when it doesn't. Your starting QB getting injured can cause you to get left out (2023) or you might jump into the top 4 despite that (2014). Etc. It's all up to the whims of a committee that has their own agenda and biases.

It would be much better to either devise a system that has standings and defined tiebreakers (like every professional sport) or else go with objective and transparent computer rankings.

 

[Perd Hapley]

There just isn't enough data to project what the selection committee will decide, and even if we run this 12-team format for a couple decades and there is credible data, it will still be really hard to put a model together because the committee ultimately just does whatever it wants and makes up a justification after the fact.

In looking over the 4-team brackets over the years, there's inconsistent from year to year in what matters and what doesn't. Conference championships matter, except when they don't. Quality wins mean more than bad losses, except when they don't. Going undefeated matters, except when it doesn't. Your starting QB getting injured can cause you to get left out (2023) or you might jump into the top 4 despite that (2014).

Except for they generally get it right just about every time. SOS has always mattered. And that’s the real reason FSU dropped to 5 last year. Everyone knew they wouldn’t be unbeaten against an SEC or maybe even a Big 12 schedule….with or without Travis.

For some reason, people can look at this perfectly logically with every other sport, like college basketball or baseball, but not in football. Nobody bats an eyelash in the basketball tournament when a 19-10 team from the ACC or B1G gets a higher seed than a 23-7 team from the Horizon league. Nobody bats an eyelash when the SEC gets 5 or 6 regional sites and 3 or 4 national seeds in baseball. But in football, everyone pretends the same rules don’t apply. Talking heads and fans alike can’t get over the “BUT BUT BUT two losses is more than one loss!!!!” mentality. Its bizarre.

 

[85Bears]

Except for they generally get it right just about every time. SOS has always mattered. And that’s the real reason FSU dropped to 5 last year. Everyone knew they wouldn’t be unbeaten against an SEC or maybe even a Big 12 schedule….with or without Travis.

For some reason, people can look at this perfectly logically with every other sport, like college basketball or baseball, but not in football. Nobody bats an eyelash in the basketball tournament when a 19-10 team from the ACC or B1G gets a higher seed than a 23-7 team from the Horizon league. Nobody bats an eyelash when the SEC gets 5 or 6 regional sites and 3 or 4 national seeds in baseball. But in football, everyone pretends the same rules don’t apply. Talking heads and fans alike can’t get over the “BUT BUT BUT two losses is more than one loss!!!!” mentality. Its bizarre.

Perd you seem to be saying FSU was left out last year based on SOS and not their qb injury. I dont think thats reality based.

 

[QuaoarsKing]

Except for they generally get it right just about every time. SOS has always mattered. And that’s the real reason FSU dropped to 5 last year. Everyone knew they wouldn’t be unbeaten against an SEC or maybe even a Big 12 schedule….with or without Travis.

How do you define "get it right" though? It's inherently unprovable whether the bracket was right or not. People used to say things like "The BCS ultimately gets it right every year" despite the near annual controversies, but then in the first year of the 4-team bracket, the #4 team won it all, and only in 4 of the 10 years of the 4-team bracket was the championship game a matchup of #1 and #2.

And it's interesting that you bring up 10-2 vs 11-1 when in the 10 years of the 4-team model, no 2-loss team was ever selected, and only 4 P5 teams with 0 or 1 loss ever got left out (2 of those being TCU and Baylor in the first year when the Big 12 didn't have a conference championship game). It's pretty clear that the committee's thought process was "OK, let's put in the undefeated P5 teams and then select a few 1-loss teams to fill out the bracket" most of the time, except the few times that it wasn't.

 

[patdog]

How do you define "get it right" though? It's inherently unprovable whether the bracket was right or not. People used to say things like "The BCS ultimately gets it right every year" despite the near annual controversies, but then in the first year of the 4-team bracket, the #4 team won it all, and only in 4 of the 10 years of the 4-team bracket was the championship game a matchup of #1 and #2.

And it's interesting that you bring up 10-2 vs 11-1 when in the 10 years of the 4-team model, no 2-loss team was ever selected, and only 4 P5 teams with 0 or 1 loss ever got left out (2 of those being TCU and Baylor in the first year when the Big 12 didn't have a conference championship game). It's pretty clear that the committee's thought process was "OK, let's put in the undefeated P5 teams and then select a few 1-loss teams to fill out the bracket" most of the time, except the few times that it wasn't.

Honestly, other than hoping Mississippi somehow gets screwed, who gives a **** who the last at large team is?

 

[OG Goat Holder]

Perd you seem to be saying FSU was left out last year based on SOS and not their qb injury. I dont think thats reality based.

Yep. They got screwed because it was an easy way for them not to make the hard decision between Alabama and Texas.

None of this really matters, ain’t none of this stuff fair. Everybody gets a degree of luck at times.

 

[Perd Hapley]

Perd you seem to be saying FSU was left out last year based on SOS and not their qb injury. I dont think thats reality based.

Its absolutely reality based. Every single team that made it last year had a much stronger schedule and at least one win that was better than FSU’s best win. Not debatable. They looked at the entire body of work.

Those have consistently been important things to the committee….whether its BCS or CFP.

 

[Perd Hapley]

How do you define "get it right" though? It's inherently unprovable whether the bracket was right or not. People used to say things like "The BCS ultimately gets it right every year" despite the near annual controversies, but then in the first year of the 4-team bracket, the #4 team won it all, and only in 4 of the 10 years of the 4-team bracket was the championship game a matchup of #1 and #2.

Get it right = have valid justification and clear criteria and being able to judge at a micro level, and being able to discern things like strength of schedule, strength of a conference vs. another conference, and so forth.

And it's interesting that you bring up 10-2 vs 11-1 when in the 10 years of the 4-team model, no 2-loss team was ever selected, and only 4 P5 teams with 0 or 1 loss ever got left out (2 of those being TCU and Baylor in the first year when the Big 12 didn't have a conference championship game). It's pretty clear that the committee's thought process was "OK, let's put in the undefeated P5 teams and then select a few 1-loss teams to fill out the bracket" most of the time, except the few times that it wasn't.

10-2 vs. 11-1 is no different than 11-1 vs. 12-0 in principle (or 12-1 vs. 13-0). 12-1 teams made it over 13-0 teams regularly, when the 13-0 teams were from weak leagues.

 

[8dog]

There will never be enough data to
Predict this. It’s human beings that change regularly. They are all going to value different things. Having said that Georgias 10-2 ain’t like anyone else’s 10-2 or even some teams 11-1 and possibly Oregons 12-0

 

[pseudonym]

Its absolutely reality based. Every single team that made it last year had a much stronger schedule and at least one win that was better than FSU’s best win. Not debatable. They looked at the entire body of work.

Those have consistently been important things to the committee….whether its BCS or CFP.

To be fair, the committee dropped them twice:

1-three days after the Travis injury
2-the day after seeing the third string QB lead them to an offensive production of 16 points

They even said that they were evaluating the strength of the team inclusive of injuries.

They absolutely would have been in at 13-0 with a healthy Travis.

 

[dickiedawg]

It would be much better to either devise a system that has standings and defined tiebreakers (like every professional sport) or else go with objective and transparent computer rankings.

It’s not reasonable to compare the professional leagues to college. These are amateurs. ***

 

[The Peeper]

Seems funny to see posters eating up weekly bowl projections, March Madness predictions, etc but crapping on this when there's way fewer teams involved and it's only weeks away instead of 4 months away like March Madness