Ramblings from the Ultimate Sports Sentimentalist

Over the next several weeks, I will post my 5^th annual college football preview guide on this blog for your enjoyment.  If you have read my blog before, you know that I am an avid college football fan who posts weekly blog entries about my insights and analysis throughout the season.  I also write a weekly picks of the week entry as well as one for upsets to watch out for.  Furthermore, I am the coordinator for the new College Football Researchers Association poll, which was re-started two years ago after a lengthy hiatus.

Let me start out by explaining the different entries that will be published for this guide.  First of all, there will be an entry for each conference which gives the predictive ranks for all the teams as well as a brief written analysis for each.  I will also post entries for my predicted surprise teams, predicted disappointment teams, a full ranking of all 120 teams, and predicted bowl matchups.       

As with all preview guides, the measure of success is both the analysis it provides and the accuracy in which it predicts.  As far as my analysis goes, I will try to keep things succinct by only offering a few sentence description of each team.  You can consider it sort of a Cliff’s Notes of larger, more in-depth previews.  In regard to my accuracy, I can say truthfully that I have been more accurate with my predictions than any of the other eleven major preview publications (Phil Steele, Athlon, Lindy’s, Sporting News, GamePlan, Jim Feist, Street & Smith, Sports Illustrated, ATS Consultants, and Blue Ribbon).  The basis for this bold conclusion is the comparison of my preseason picks with postseason results using a numerical scoring system that was created by Chris Stassen in 1993.  This Stassen Survey as it is called looks at the predicted conference finishing position for each team and then compares that with their actual postseason conference rank.  The difference between those ranks (doesn’t matter if you overrated or underrated a particular team) is then recorded for each team and added together.  For example, I predicted Michigan to finish 9^th last year in the Big 10 and Phil Steele had them at 6.  They ended up finishing 10^th so my score would now be 1 (10 minus 9) and Phil’s would be 4 (10 minus 6).  You then continue this process for all teams.  Phil Steele always brags about the accuracy of his predictions so you will see that I am directly challenging him below by applying the Stassen Survey to both me and Phil’s picks over the last three years.  I broke down the results by conference so you can see who was the winner in each league and by how many points they won.    

2007

2008

2009

2010

Not only did I beat Phil in 2007 and 2009, but I also beat the # 1 overall guide both of those seasons.  The most accurate publication according to the Stassen Survey in 2007 was Athlon with a score of 135.  I scored a 132.  Likewise, I scored a 131 in 2009 while the top magazine, Sports Illustrated scored a 133.  Now that you understand how the scoring system works, you will realize Phil’s claim to have “the most accurate magazine preseason magazine the last 11 years” is somewhat misleading.  What he needs to say is that it is the most accurate “over the past 11 years”.  He isn’t the most accurate every year, but over the course of 11 years he does have the lowest combined score. However, since I began playing this game three years ago, my overall Stassen score is better than Phil’s (by a score of 411 to 423). 

There is also another system that you can use to compare different sets of preseason predictions.  The way to do that is just to look at each team and see which prognosticator was most accurate.  You then get one point for having the more accurate projection for a particular team.  I also used this system to compare myself with Phil over the past 3 years, and here are the results I came up with:

As you can see, I have once again beaten Phil two out of the last 4 years and beat him by a grand total of 5 picks during that time period.  Based on this analysis, I have no reservations claiming that I am one the most accurate college football prognosticators in the country.  I hope that gives you reason to read this guide as it is published throughout the next few weeks.