Ramblings from the Ultimate Sports Sentimentalist

Well, the college football season has come to a close, and it’s time to look back to see how accurate my preseason predictions were compared to the experts.  Overall, this is the fifth season I’ve conducted this full, in-depth analysis of my preseason picks and have had mixed results in doing so.  I ended up being more accurate than the experts in both 2007 and 2009, less accurate in 2008, and about the same in 2010 (see full history here).  This year I had some highlights and lowlights, but overall my predictions were slightly worse than Phil Steele and most other preseason prognosticators.  With that being said, I still had some ingenious predictions which deserve some recognition.

In the preseason, I ranked all teams 1-120 and also took an average of the full 1-120 preseason rankings from several different preseason publications.  Last week, I compared our preseason rankings with each team’s final ranking to figure out if I was more accurate with my preseason picks than the average expert.  Here are the results: the experts’ average picks more accurately predicted the final postseason outcome of 62 teams.  I was more accurate in my analysis of 54 teams and there were four ties between us.  Even though the experts edged me in that competition, we actually tied in total ranking variations for each team.  If you add up the disparity between my preseason rankings and the final rankings below, as well as those from the experts, you will find that we both scored exactly 2,484 points.  It’s unbelievable that such a complex calculation could produce a tied result.  We also tied in the number of teams we predicted exactly right.  The experts correctly picked Purdue to finish 85th in the country, and I correctly pegged New Mexico to finish at # 119.  (Note: I used Pre Snap Read’s Final Top 120 as the final poll used to compare my preseason and postseason predictions).

In this entry, I will display the following results in table format so you can see how each of us did in our evaluations of every single team in the country.  By the way, the so-called experts’ national ranking consists of preseason polls created by cfnscout.com, Lindy’s, the Sporting News, Athlon, Phil Steele, Rivals as well as both the official preseason AP and and Coaches Polls.  The first column on the table is my preseason ranking for each team.  The column entitled “PS” is each team’s postseason final ranking.

Final Outcome:

Teams: Experts win 62-54 (4 ties)

Total Score: Tie: 2,484-2,484

Exactly Right: Tie 1-1