In addition to my weekly Sagarin thread, I'm going to post updates to Tech's Elo as the season progresses. 538 has a college football Elo system, but it's P5 heavy, doesn't cover teams before the current era, and you can't (yet) pull any teams history at random. All teams begin at 1000 and gain points based on wins and losses. 1000 is considered mediocre, 1500+ are generally the blue bloods. Sub-500 is atrocious (ULL 638, ULM 368), sub-100 should be given the death penalty (Texas State 70, UTEP 20, Kansas -172). Bowl games aren't worth any more but they do give you a chance to get (or lose) extra points. FCS teams don't count. You also regress 25% each season (to mimic players leaving and generally to model regression to the mean).
Its main use is to compare the total history of two teams in a single number. For example, by my numbers (and also 538's, I think), last year's Alabama team was the best team ever.
The current Top 5 are:
1 Alabama 2423 2 Ohio St. 2243 3 Clemson (SC) 2159 4 Oklahoma 2116 5 Wisconsin 2097
Fun fact: our biggest upset win was Fresneck in 2008: 536 vs 1272. Our most recent Top 10 all time win was 2011 Nevada: 877 vs 1477. We are pretty starved at this point for a big time win.
Our conference mates stand as follows:
42 Louisiana Tech 1223 47 Western Kentucky 1190 64 Florida Atlantic 990 67 Middle Tennessee St. 962 78 Southern Mississippi 855 84 Texas-San Antonio 798 85 Alabama-Birmingham 795 91 Old Dominion (VA) 740 97 Florida International 635 106 North Texas 539 124 Rice (TX) 247 125 North Carolina-Charlotte 195 129 Texas-El Paso 20
We were very close to breaking our all-time record (1392) in 2016 before the predictable late-season collapse. Also predictably, the game that would have broken the record was the Rivalry in Dixie against a 5-6 USM team. What a world.
This season is precarious because we have a very real chance of losing our top spot in the conference. Thankfully WKU is predicted to be down this year, but FAU definitely has an outside shot at gaining enough if we lose enough.
Elo is not *super* useful for game predictions because it is more of a tracker/historical record. It's very heavily weighted towards a team's history, not necessarily how they are recently. It's still interesting to take a look at.
opp elo w% South Alabama 517 97% Southern U. 100% Louisiana St. 1654 4% North Texas 539 97% Alabama-Birmingham 795 95% Texas-San Antonio 798 87% Texas-El Paso 20 100% Florida Atlantic 990 68% Mississippi St. 1406 16% Rice (TX) 247 100% Southern Mississippi 855 82% Western Kentucky 1190 68%
This gives us 10-2, largely because FAU's success has not quite been able to pull them out of the basement Elo-wise. As I stated in the Sagarin thread, I think that 9-3 is the minimum acceptable record for this team. Let's see how we do!