Network Rankings for Week 7

October 6, 2013 by Patrick Rhamey

No dramatic changes this week. Oregon slips a little due to the weakness of their opponents thus far in the season combined with Oklahoma, Florida State, and Miami defeating half-decent teams and their former opponents playing well (at least, better than Oregon's typical opponent so far). Auburn, LSU, and Ohio State pop back into the top ten with a solid victories this weekend.

Top 25 (Explanation; Full Ranking)

1. Georgia
2. Clemson
3. Alabama
4. Oklahoma
5. Florida State
6. Miami
7. Oregon
8. LSU
9. Ohio State
10. Auburn
11. UCLA
12. Missouri
13. Stanford
14. Florida
15. South Carolina
16. Michigan
17. Oregon State*
18. Virginia Tech
19. Baylor
20. Louisville
21. Pittsburgh
22. Maryland
23. Ohio
24. UCF
25. Oklahoma State

Network Rankings for Week 6

September 29, 2013 by Patrick Rhamey

Network Rankings for week 6. Georgia subsumes LSU's win network, launching it to number 1 (only .07 ahead of Clemson).

Top 25 (Explanation; Full Rankings)

1. Georgia
2. Clemson
3. Alabama
4. Oregon
5. Oklahoma
6. Florida State
7. Oregon State*
8. Stanford
9. Miami
10. South Carolina
11. LSU
12. Washington
13. Northern Illinois
14. Florida
15. Pittsburgh
16. Maryland
17. Missouri
18. Louisville
19. Virginia Tech
20. Michigan
21. Houston
Ohio State
23. Utah**
24. Fresno State
UCLA

*FCS losses not included in network.
**Utah's one loss is to Oregon State, which lost to an FCS team.

Network Rankings for Week 5

September 24, 2013 by Patrick Rhamey

Network Rankings for Week 5 - ties beginning to resolve themselves as #1 LSU heads to #7 Georgia.

Top 25 (Explanation; Full Rankings)

1. LSU
2. Clemson
3. Alabama
4. Michigan
5. Oregon State*
6. Louisville
7. Georgia
8. Auburn
9. UCLA
10. UCF
11. Florida State
12. Oregon
13. Oklahoma
14. Miami
15. Maryland
16. Fresno State
17. Georgia Tech
18. Oklahoma State
Stanford
20. Ole Miss
21. Missouri
22. Arizona
Northwestern
24. Washington
25. Minnesota
Texas Tech

* note: FCS teams not included in network, so FCS loss is not included.

First Network Rankings of the 2013 Season

September 15, 2013 by Patrick Rhamey

All FBS teams are now connected in the web of wins and losses after only three weeks (in previous iterations I've done, it took at earliest week 5 for this to happen, so we are interconnected very early this year). The web is shown below. As a reminder, this is not a ranking of who is "best" (which I argue is unmeasurable) but the quality of wins minus the harm of observed losses (further explanation here). With only three games under their belt and no losses, Auburn holds the number 1 spot in these early season rankings, held aloft in large part by Washington State's defeat of USC.

(Note: Losses to FCS teams are not contained within the network, so South Alabama, Oregon State, and many others are not receiving the negative impacts of these losses. Teams that lose to FCS teams tend to lose to FBS teams as well, so this should sort itself out soon enough).

Top 25 (Full Rankings):

1. Auburn
2. Oklahoma
3. Louisville
4. Alabama
5. Oregon
6. Michigan
Central Florida
8. Arizona
9. UCLA
South Alabama
Washington
12. Florida State
Oklahoma State
14. LSU
Maryland
Miami
Northwestern
Ohio State
19. Ohio
Oregon State
21. Clemson
22. Minnesota
Ole Miss
Northern Illinois

2013 State of World Liberty Index

June 9, 2013 by Patrick Rhamey

The State of World Liberty Index was a combination of indices compiled originally in 2006. Since then, I've periodically updated the index. My methodology is similar to the original with the following exceptions: I use only the civil liberties portion of the Freedom House, economic liberty (Fraser/Heritage) is weighted evenly with social liberty, and the Reporters without Borders Press Freedom Scores are of equal weight to each of the Freedom House Civil Liberties sub-components. All changes are done with the purpose of creating the most accurate relative ranking of countries by the degree of liberty (economic and social) enjoyed by the average individual within the polity. Where data is available, territories or colonies (e.g. Hong Kong) are included.

2013 Rankings with Economic and Social Scores .

2013 Freedom by Percentile. Colors represent countries grouped by 20 percentiles, in order of Blue (top 20%), Green (20-40%), Yellow (40-60%), Orange (60-80%), and Red (80-100%).

2013 Changes in Freedom. Blue is an increase in rank >10 and Green >5. Yellow is status quo (change between 5 and -5). Orange is a fall in rank of >5 and Red >10.

2013 Most Free Countries

New Zealand
Switzerland
Hong Kong
Australia
Finland
Canada
Liechtenstein
Denmark
Ireland
Luxembourg

2013 Most Tyrannical States

North Korea
Eritrea
Cuba
Zimbabwe
Syria
Turkmenistan
Myanmar
Democratic Republic of Congo
Equatorial Guinea
Uzbekistan

2013 Greatest Increases in Liberty

Tunisia
Solomon Islands
Philippines
Comoros
Guinea
Liberia
East Timor
Seychelles
Singapore
Armenia

2013 Greatest Increases in Tyranny

Mali
Ecuador
Lesotho
Burkina Faso
Greece
Mozambique
Mauritania
Turkey
Haiti
Guinea-Bissau

Colored maps modified from images at http://www.outline-world-map.com/.

Final 2013 Rankings: Who had the Best Overall Season?

January 8, 2013 by Patrick Rhamey

Disclaimer: I hesitate to provide a final ranking, as the purpose of the ranking was to determine the best teams for the bowls, with emphasis on the national championship. As stated in the pdf explanation, this becomes even more important in a four team playoff. But, in the interest of evaluating the total impressiveness of each team's season, I decided to post a final ranking. However, Alabama is the national champion. Under the BCS rules the top two teams following the regular season, with which this ranking was in agreement, play for the national championship game. Alabama won that game, and what this ranking is saying does not contradict any of the following: Alabama is the national champion, Alabama is the best team in the country, Alabama is much better than Notre Dame, Alabama could defeat any team played more often than not (including Texas A&M). Roll Tide.

I've said it many times but I'll say it again, what this ranking provides is not a prediction of greatness, but an evaluation of the "body of work" (see the pdf explanation for further details). Because prediction is dangerous with so few games in college football, I think this is a better way to decide the top two teams for a national championship (or top four teams in a playoff). The rankings are about who has earned the right to play in the championship. Ranking after the fact is meaningless, because there's no longer anything left to earn through your body of work: a champion has been crowned. So, this final ranking does not trump the results of a championship contest once played, as the AP poll would claim to do if it held a difference of opinion. As discussed below, Alabama's body of work from the season took a blow with the Florida and LSU losses in their bowl games. The SEC is a great conference, and if you like how I've created these rankings because the network more heavily takes into account conference strength, you have to accept the SEC was hurt by these two bowl games. The proper way to interpret this final ranking is that while Alabama is the national champion, and no doubt a much better team than Notre Dame, Notre Dame had overall more difficult wins taking the entire season into account and the Notre Dame loss to Alabama is less destructive than Alabama's loss to A&M. Is Notre Dame better than Alabama? Absolutely not. Did Notre Dame's regular season earn them the right to play in the national championship, despite how badly they were beaten? Absolutely.

Explanation:
Bama defeated Notre Dame, resulting in a very large rise in their win score of 5.4 (and rightly so). However, Florida losing to Louisville (who lost to the likes of Syracuse and Connecticut) and LSU losing to Clemson exploded Alabama's loss score because both teams defeated Texas A&M. Bama's loss score rises from 2.58 to 19.04. For Notre Dame they experience only gains in their win score from teams they beat in the regular season winning their bowl games (BYU and Stanford). Their loss score also obviously rises for the Alabama loss as well as the losses from teams I just mentioned that are hurting Alabama. However, because Notre Dame is 1 step further in the chain of losses from LSU and Florida, they impact Notre Dame's score slightly less.

So when it's all said and done, after the bowl season chaos, Notre Dame and Alabama both become more central to the network of losses. However, because Florida and LSU's debacles are more proximate to Alabama in the web of losses, the National Championship win is not enough to propel the Tide ahead of Notre Dame in their body of work. Because I'm interested in the value of the total body of work in this ranking, Alabama no more gets to jump Notre Dame for the one (very impressive) win anymore than Louisville gets to jump Florida. You can take a closer look at all this by comparing rankings from the last post to rankings in this post to see how each team's win and loss network centrality measures fluctuate from the bowl season.

...and then there's Ohio State. Ohio State is immune from loss network chaos as it has no losses. It also has fewer games, which harm Ohio State in the ranking as they have fewer opportunities to gain points. Note that Ohio State's win score is 49, compared to 56 for Notre Dame, 55 for Alabama, 52 for Georgia, 51 for Oregon, South Carolina and Florida, and 50 for LSU. Hypothetically speaking, if they had been placed in the same situation as Notre Dame and played Alabama, and if they had lost, then they would be ranked below all of these teams. But the absence of detracting losses is enough to propel them to number one in the realm of total body of work.

The chaos of this season is interesting, as I've applied this method to previous seasons (2003, 2010, 2011), and the final ranking is minimally different from the final AP poll and the BCS bowl results. But if we truly believe such cliches as "every game matters" and "it's about a team's body of work", here is the final evaluation of the 2012 season:

Explanation: Rankings Done Justly

Top 25 (Full Rankings):

Ohio State (49.23)
Notre Dame (39.16)
Alabama (36.29)
Georgia (32.19)
Oregon (29.16)
South Carolina (27.99)
Texas A&M (27.94)
Florida (26.28)
LSU (25.6)
Clemson (25.26)
Stanford (24.05)
Kansas State (21)
Oklahoma (19.74)
San Jose State (18.52)
Florida State (17.71)
Texas (17.28)
Louisville (16.71)
Nebraska (16.22)
Northwestern (16.19)
Michigan (15.67)
Baylor (15.36)
Utah State (14.45)
Vanderbilt (14.27)
UCLA (14.08)
Arizona (13.87)

Week 15 Rankings

December 2, 2012 by Patrick Rhamey

BCS Rankings to be released shortly - looks like the Network Ranking will be in agreement on 1-2.

Explanation: A Fair Ranking

Top 25 (Full Rankings):

Notre Dame (54.42)
Alabama (47.35)
Florida (47)
Ohio State (45.96)
LSU (43.62)
Georgia (43.13)
South Carolina (41.97)
Texas A&M (41.55)
Oregon (25.86)
Kansas State (25.81)
Oklahoma (24.63)
Stanford (23.74)
Texas (19.01)
Oregon State (18.11)
Clemson (16.82)
Baylor (16.73)
UCLA (16.28)
Iowa State (16)
TCU (15.77)
San Jose State (15.36)
Nebraska (15.31)
West Virginia (15.29)
Michigan (14.61)
Arizona (14.25)
Mississippi State (13.72)

Week 14 College Football Rankings

November 25, 2012 by Patrick Rhamey

For the remainder of the season I'll be posting Tuesdays on College Football by the Numbers (cfbtn.com) on rankings (both the Network and otherwise),

Explanation

Top 25 (Full Rankings)

Notre Dame (54.12)
Florida (47.05)
Ohio State (45.83)
Alabama (45.33)
Georgia (44.05)
LSU (43.62)
South Carolina (41.97)
Texas A&M (41)
Oregon (25.71)
Kansas State (24.42)
Stanford (23.69)
Oklahoma (23.46)
Nebraska (19.95)
Texas (19.68)
Oregon State (17.97)
Michigan (17.14)
Clemson (16.9)
UCLA (16.39)
TCU (16.28)
Baylor (15.62)
Iowa State (15.45)
San Jose State (15.26)
West Virginia (14.66)
Arizona (14.21)
Mississippi State (13.99)

Convergence in the Rankings

November 20, 2012 by Patrick Rhamey

Write up on the Network Rankings and why all the rankings seem to be converging featured on College Football by the Numbers.

Week 13 College Football Rankings

November 18, 2012 by Patrick Rhamey

The network rankings told us a lot about the inadequacies of speculation dominant in other approaches, as well as the dangers of formal models based on limited and incomparable observations. This ranking has never placed USC, Alabama, Oregon, or Kansas State at #1 (yet) not because it is a predictive genius, but because the evidence was simply never consistent with media hype.

As a comparison going into this week:
BCS: Kansas State #1, Oregon #2
AP Poll: Oregon #1, Kansas State #2
Coaches Poll: Oregon #1, Kansas State #2
Network Rankings: Oregon #5, Kansas State #8

Let's be clear, no one could have predicted what happened on Saturday with Oregon and Kansas State. In the pdf explanation linked below, I am very explicit that the rankings are not intended to make predictions and attempting to predict is the problem with the other approaches. What it does tell us is that rankings based on speculation are dangerous and inaccurate. However, what the Network Rankings show is that based on the evidence going into this weekend, Oregon and Kansas State had not demonstrated they were #1 and #2.

The BCS Rankings released later today will most likely have Notre Dame #1 and Alabama #2, which are what the Network Rankings had last week and this week (Ohio State isn't bowl eligible). The Network Rankings have had Notre Dame #1 or #2 since the first week all the teams in the FBS were connected to one another by wins and losses (Week 7).

Notes:

I've gotten some great question from people about how this all works and I'll keep addressing them. Keep the questions coming. One of the motivations for doing this is the lack of transparency in existing approaches. This ranking is intended to be both conceptually and methodologically simple and clear to anyone interested in college football.
Why do you get extra points just because you've played more games? Shouldn't you standardize the ranking by games played? This is a question sparked by my comment a few weeks back that Ohio State had played one more game than other top ranked teams resulting in a slightly higher ranking, and other teams were likely to catch up after Ohio State's bye week. Methodologically, this isn't inherently a bad idea, and something I've thought about a lot. My answer at the moment, however, is no. The underlying rationale behind the rankings is to base a rank purely upon a team's body of work. The value of the approach is it uses the network of wins and losses between teams in the FBS to determine the relative value of each team's "work". If you've won more games, you've done more work, and your ranking should reflect that additional work scaled by the quality of the teams you defeated (which is in turn determined by their "work", see the pdf). To be clear, the number next to each team is the "average reciprocal distance" across the network of wins minus the network of losses - an indicator of how central a team is in the web of college football victories - or in other words, their total body of work.
Well, what about conference championships? The above answers the conference championship question. If you are in a conference that has a conference championship, and you win it, you should be ranked higher. Why? You've done more work and you've earned it - and that's the point of this exercise. I doubt anyone would say that if you are forced to play one more game than everyone else and that game is against a team like Alabama or Georgia and you win it, that somehow that game shouldn't count.
What about FCS victories or losses? This is also a great question. To my knowledge, all of the rankings essentially ignore FCS games. The conceptual reason is pretty simple, the purpose of the ranking is to determine the best team in the FBS, and so the ranking is limited to FBS games. Alabama doesn't win anything for crushing the Catamounts. So if the goal is to rank FBS teams, this is fine. If a team loses to an FCS team, yes, they should be punished severely, and by ignoring FCS teams we're not capturing that. But in practice, this is rare, and more importantly it is unlikely to effect anything as a team that loses to an FCS team is probably going to lose to a lot of FBS teams in their regular schedule. So, we're alright considering these games irrelevant exhibition activities. That said, I'm not conceptually opposed to an undertaking where the goal is to create a full ranking of all college football teams, where every game, regardless of division, is an interesting piece of evidence. Hypothetically speaking, if we were to do this, I'm sure there are a number of FCS teams that are better than the bottom ranked FBS, and it would be fun to see how that breaks down. But, if we're going to be non-arbitrary, we'd have to go a few steps further. FCS teams schedule I-AA teams, so we'd have to include them under the same logic of including FCS teams because they're scheduled by FBS teams. I-AA teams schedule I-AAA teams, so we'd have to include them as well. Before you know it, we now have hundreds of football teams in our ranking, from Alabama to the Rhodes College Lynx-cats. I think this would be a fun exercise, but unless someone wants to fund this project enough to hire a few people to code all the wins and losses each weekend, I don't have the time on Sundays to do it myself. Time constraints aside, it is extremely unlikely (if not impossible) that it would meaningfully effect the top 25 teams in the FBS.

Explanation: A Simple and Fair Ranking Based on Wins and Losses

Top 25 (Full Rankings)

Each team's value of wins minus value of losses in parentheses.

Notre Dame (51.37)
Ohio State (44.36)
Alabama (44.02)
Florida (43.44)
LSU (41.7)
Georgia (40.25)
Texas A&M (38.83)
South Carolina (37.93)
Mississippi State (31.91)
Oregon (27.33)
Stanford (26.26)
Kansas State (24.85)
Oklahoma (22.88)
Oregon State (22.87)
Texas (20.59)
Nebraska (19.37)
Clemson (18.18)
Michigan (17.97)
UCLA (17.53)
Arizona (17.41)
Rutgers (17.03)
Iowa State (16.77)
Washington (16.21)
San Jose State (14.69)
Baylor (14.58)

Week 12 College Football Rankings

November 12, 2012 by Patrick Rhamey

Worth noting after Bama's defeat at the hands of the Aggies: the Network Rankings provided here, along with only two of the computer rankings, are the only rankings that have not listed Alabama number 1 this season.

Notes:

Why Didn't Alabama Fall?! Well, they did. Look at Alabama's raw score this week (42.98) vs. their raw score last week (43.94). Now look at the others. Notre Dame's score climbed 3.65. Florida increased 3.46. Texas A&M with their tremendous win, jumped 7.47 (remember when you compare rankings that the BCS doesn't include Ohio State, so the BCS and the Network Rankings are in agreement with TAMU at #8). Also remember, that a gain or loss for Bama (or any other team) is not solely because of the game played that week, but also due to how the teams they beat (or lost to) in previous weeks performed in their games.

Why Did Alabama only fall one point when they were defeated by a two loss team?! Well, they fell by more than that. The loss is counting for -2.58 if you open the spreadsheet. Their win score goes up because teams that Alabama beat in previous weeks won. For example, Alabama is getting a little boost this week for Michigan beating Northwestern. Remember, it's the whole season that counts. Alabama losing to A&M doesn't determine their rank by itself any more than their win against LSU last week meant they were number 1. We have to take all the evidence together. Every game counts because every game provides us a glimpse of evidence into each team's relative position.

Oregon?! Kansas State?! As with Bama last week, Oregon, though undefeated, has not provided evidence against sufficiently good teams (aka teams who win) to prove they are number one, or even better than Florida or Alabama. Experts may deem them number 1 because of the "look test", but remember, the "look test" has also crowned so far this season both USC and Alabama #1 . However, both Oregon and K State have perhaps the most difficult portions of their schedules still to come, giving them them plenty of opportunity to provide evidence.

Is there SEC Bias in the BCS?! I've seen a lot of people complaining about an SEC bias online (particularly Clemson fans). The answer is no. Taking Clemson as an example, the loss to Florida State is bad, because Florida State lost to NC State, and NC State looses to just about everyone. It's only one loss, but it hurts. To the contrary, The top SEC teams have only lost to other top SEC teams, meaning their losses are minimally costly. The SEC is just that good. That said, the BCS rankings, while very different than the rankings based on existing evidence presented here, don't appear to be biased against the SEC either (both the Network Rankings and BCS Rankings have 6 SEC teams in the top 10). There is, I believe, a bias in the polls to try and represent the top teams in the main conferences highly where reasonable, so teams like Clemson, Oregon, and Kansas State are getting undue credit at this point in the season despite the poor quality of their wins. Remember, I'm not saying Kansas State or Oregon isn't potentially the best team, they just haven't given as much evidence given the network of wins and losses as Notre Dame, or even the one loss SEC teams.

Explanation: A Simple and Fair Ranking Based on Wins and Losses

Top 25 (Full Rankings)

Each team's win score (value of wins) minus loss score (cost of losses) in parentheses.

Notre Dame (48.27)
Alabama (42.98)
Florida (42.53)
Ohio State (41.96)
Oregon (41.53)
LSU (39.96)
Georgia (39.67)
Kansas State (39.36)
Texas A&M (38.02)
South Carolina (37.09)
Louisiana Tech (32.86)
Oklahoma (32.19)
Mississippi State (28.87)
Stanford (23.33)
Oregon State (21.12)
Texas (18.69)
Texas Tech (17.77)
Nebraska (17.64)
Clemson (16.38)
Michigan (15.76)
UCLA (15.14)
USC (15.08)
Arizona (14.92)
Iowa State (14.49)
Washington (14.29)

Week 11 College Football Rankings

November 4, 2012 by Patrick Rhamey

Notes:

Despite an ugly win by Notre Dame and finally the defeat of a good team by Alabama, Notre Dame maintains a very slight lead. Beating LSU < An Entire Season of Defeating Good Opponents. Remember, because it's the network of wins and losses, how the teams that Notre Dame and Alabama defeat then perform says a lot about their future ranking. There was an exchange by Corso and Herbstriet on Gameday yesterday on this topic. Corso says ND has shown the most evidence and should be #1, Herbstreidt says Alabama wins the "look test". Unfortunately, the "look test" (the same reason Herbstriet believe USC was the number 1 team at the beginning of the season) is the problem. We can't compare "the look" of winning in death valley at night to a cold home game against Pitt anymore than we can compare a game played in Ireland with a game in Tuscaloosa against Western Kentucky. Just count the wins and losses Herbstreit, and it'll work itself out by the end of the season.
Ohio State is higher up because they've played 10 games, while everyone else has played nine. Yes, other than Nebraska and Penn State, they've played a bunch of scrubs. I don't adjust for bye weeks and number of games since it works itself out in the end, but you can take Ohio State in the three spot with a grain of salt because of the one game bonus they're currently getting.
Oregon is slowly inching up. The problem with the USC win is that USC wasn't that amazing to begin with (unlike LSU for Bama). So it's beginning to look like Oregon needs a little help (ND or Bama have to lose).
K State has a bigger Oregon problem than Oregon as the teams in the Big 12 beat up on one another. And so, they hold their place in a distant number 7.
Big loser is inconsistent Arizona - crushed by UCLA.
Big Winner this week is Texas A&M, jumping up the list with a good win against Mississippi State. The Aggies play Bama this Saturday. Here's Bama's chance to prove they're number 1.

Explanation: a fair ranking on the network of wins and losses.

Top 25 (Full Rankings)

Each team's win score (value of wins) minus their loss score (cost of losses) in parentheses.

Notre Dame (44.62)
Alabama (43.94)
Ohio State (40.27)
Florida (39.07)
Oregon (38.27)
LSU (37.47)
Kansas State (36.44)
Georgia (36.39)
Louisville (34.14)
South Carolina (34.11)
Texas A&M (30.55)
Louisiana Tech (30.04)
Oklahoma (29.17)
Mississippi State (26.21)
Stanford (20.83)
Oregon State (20.83)
Tennessee (19.25)
Texas Tech (17.64)
Texas (15.56)
Nebraska (15.43)
Clemson (14.64)
Iowa State (14.04)
West Virginia (13.85)
UCLA (13.81)
Washington (13.5)

Week 10 College Football Rankings

October 29, 2012 by Patrick Rhamey

Note: despite the many upsets this past weekend, they were not predicted by any existing ranking system, further emphasizing the need for a ranking constructed purely on past evidence and not future speculation

Explanation: a fair ranking on the network of wins and losses.

Top 25 (Full Rankings)

Each team's win score (value of wins) minus their loss score (cost of losses) in parentheses.