I have a nifty little program that I use (for entertainment purposes only) against the spread that has the winning percentages of teams based on the line, for example teams that are between even and minus one win 56 percent of the time and teams even to plus one win 44 percent of the time. I used the Sagarin rankings to determine what the line would be for the remainder of each teams schedule. So based on that I have a probability of each team winning their remaining games. Given we know what teams are ranked now we can determine the probability of each team “running the table”. Now this does not factor in the Conference championship game since we do not know the opponent yet….but we can determine based on the conference rankings right now the probability of the conference championship games. Of course this is probability and one game can throw it all out of whack but it is an interesting statistical exercise since I deal with numbers all the time and have the program…..BCS computer rankings and strength of schedule and point differential all factor in and this is a general figure for this exercise…… So strictly based on the numbers…….there are some intriguing possibilities…. Florida has a 36.19% chance of running the table, and Alabama has a 9.16% chance. The only team close to having a decent shot in the SEC at running the table is Ole Miss at 3.66%. We know that these teams are in different sides of the SEC so we can reasonably determine that there is a very good probability of Florida or Alabama playing in the NC game based on who wins the conference CG…..so one side has a fairly high probability. The other side is interesting…….Boise State has a 47.36% chance of winning the remainder of their games…does that get them in the NC game…who knows and one loss again throws a lot out of whack……the other two teams that have higher probabilities although not high but are high enough to possibly make it into consideration are Houston at 6.02% and Iowa at 4.33%. Now here is where it gets interesting for Miami homers such as myself…Virginia Tech has a 14.9% chance of winning out. Now VT beat Miami and is on the same side of the ACC. Miami has a 7.39% chance of winning out, however IF they were to beat Oklahoma then their probability goes to 16.9% chance of winning out. So what if they both win out as does Ga. Tech (other than VT)which also has a high relative probability of winning out at 5.87%. Based on the three having high probabilities of winning out, their Strength of schedule is going to be very high in the computer rankings and the ELO Chess predictor for BCS purposes has Miami at 10 despite the polls having them much lower. This is very odd and would completely throw the BCS into a tizzy. It is all very early, speculative and just numbers based on historical figures but it does give some interesting possibilities. My take the NC game will be based on 4-6 key games and Boise State winning out. Oklahoma/Miami, Texas/Oklahoma, the SEC championship game, Iowa/Ohio State, Georgia Tech/Virginia Tech and Texas/Okie State. So based on probability I predict the NC game to be Florida/Alabama winner versus Virginia Tech….but there is the possibility that Miami could not play in their conference championship game and have a high enough SOS and ELO Chess number to actually play in the NC game. Here are the probabilities of winning out as of today based on the Sagarin rankings (lines) and the percentage of the team in the defined line winning the game…so point differential and a defined SOS are not factored in: Boise State 47.36% Florida 36.19% Virginia Tech 14.98% Alabama 9.16% Texas 8.47% Miami 7.39% Houston 6.02% Georgia Tech 5.87% Iowa 4.43% Ohio St. 3.97% USC 3.77% Ole Miss 3.66% BYU 3.42% Penn State 3.35% Oklahoma 2.89% TCU 2.83% Cincinnatti 1.98% Notre Dame 1.47% Cal 1.39% Oregon 1.33% North Carolina 0.79% Missouri 0.78% Kansas 0.66% Georgia 0.63% Oklahoma State 0.54% LSU 0.38% Nebraska 0.37% Michigan 0.36% Auburn 0.25% South Carolina 0.24% FSU 0.17% UCLA 0.09% Just for fun, it has some interesting possibilities and I have the program and toooo much time on my hands tonight.........................
