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Stanford to drop in writers' poll - yvonne - 10-22-2011

local writer will leave the Cardinal off his ballot on the grounds that the opponent is no longer a ranked team.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - washingtonismoney - 10-22-2011

Michigan State--so many quality wins. Obviously.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - Farm93 - 10-22-2011

OK,

We joke about Wilner, but if Stanford is below Oklahoma or Wisconsin then Wilner should be fired.

Wisconsin's first true road game (that alone says a lot), and they lose it.  Meanwhile Stanford has played three different road games.  And we are talking airplanes to vastly different climates, not SEC style drive down the interstate stuff.

Meanwhile Oklahoma lost at home.  They have played a ton of home games too.  They have a semi-quality win vs. Texas.  And a win that looked better at the time vs. Florida State.  But most importantly they have a loss at home.  With so many undefeated teams, it seems crazy to put a team that lost at home above a team that has won every game by 25+ (home or away) and is 7-0 ATS.

Best QB, Best TEs, Great OL, crazy good DL.  Longest winning streak in the country, and an unprecedented stretch of 25+ point wins.  Certainly that squad should be placed ahead of a team that lost at home to an unranked opponent???

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - yvonne - 10-22-2011

Wilner's little games mean nothing. Even the east coast voters who didn't stay up to watch the game will take note of that score. More importantly, Stanford improved its lot on the computers and probably in the minds of the coaches who vote in the polls that matter.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - OutsiderFan - 10-22-2011

Stanford should be #4 in the BCS at minimum. 

Oklahoma State is deserving to be ranked high, and they have played tougher road games than Stanford.  But if Stanford beats USC next week, they should go to #3.  But even if they only stayed at #4, beating Oregon would vault them to #3.

Basically, Oklahoma and Wisconsin losing opens the door for Stanford to play in the BCS Championship game.

Wilner's vote means nothing except as a means to make him look foolish. 





Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - FarmBoy - 10-22-2011

Hard to stay grounded. Five big games (at least) left. But man, it's hard to see us losing another game if we play like we did tonight. The bad weather in Oklahoma only helped our cause as the rest of the country got to see a little bit of the game.

The polls will take care of themselves. The team just needs to keep winning, and preferably dominating, its opponents.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - OutsiderFan - 10-23-2011

Actually, the rest of the country saw the entire game on ABC.  TT-OU started too late for ABC to show it, so they moved it to ESPN2.

Many, many voters got to see Stanford play that wouldn't have seen the team otherwise. 

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - Farm93 - 10-23-2011

(10-22-2011, 10:52 PM)OutsiderFan link Wrote:Stanford should be #4 in the BCS at minimum. 

Oklahoma State is deserving to be ranked high, and they have played tougher road games than Stanford.  But if Stanford beats the University of South Central next week, they should go to #3.  But even if they only stayed at #4, beating Oregon would vault them to #3.

Basically, Oklahoma and Wisconsin losing opens the door for Stanford to play in the BCS Championship game.

Wilner's vote means nothing except as a means to make him look foolish.

Stanford is projected at #4 for the BCS by the ESPN expert.  That's probably right, and hopefully that is close enough.  LSU and Alabama play each other, and Stanford is close enough that the loser should fall well below Stanford.  That leaves Oklahoma State and that SEC game winner.  If those two teams win out then Stanford will not pass either one, but Stanford is next in line.

The BCS stuff all falls apart with a Stanford loss, so hopefully the team will keep winning.

Edit:  Hmmmm, another ESPN expert has Stanford at #6.  Probably a computer thing, and yet it is hard to believe Clemson or Boise State stay ahead of Stanford as the Stanford SOS gets better and better.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - yvonne - 10-23-2011

(10-23-2011, 08:04 AM)Farm93 link Wrote:The BCS stuff all falls apart with a Stanford loss, so hopefully the team will keep winning.

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - FarmBoy - 10-23-2011

Stanford DID drop in the Sagarin. In the component used in the BCS, they are ranked 22 this week, compared to 15 last week. Ouch. And we still haven't played at top 30 team (Washington is 39). USC is #20, but we'll see if that holds after we smash them.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - Farm93 - 10-23-2011

Well this is the problem with beating everyone.  UW would be a top 20 team if UW beat Stanford.  And in Wilner's wacky world, that would be more noteworthy.

Wilner put Stanford at #7.  Thankfully, after last night I think most national writers can understand that Wilner just doesn't get it.  Wilner, once again, picked the other team to cover.  Since Wilner is in love with SEC-style speed, my guess is he will pick SC to cover next week.

Stanford wins in ways that Wilner does not value or understand.  Power, TEs, team defense, great line play, and the best QB in college football. Put it all together and it is just too much for Wilner to appreciate.  Far easier to keep Boise State, Clemson and the like ahead of Stanford.  After all Clemson has the best.....ummm....well...anyway they should be ranked ahead of Stanford.  Yes, yes, they should.

I would care more if Stanford needed hype to get ticket sales up, but the venue is sold out.
I would care more if Stanford needed AP votes to move up in the BCS, but the AP is not part of the BCS formula.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - Farm93 - 10-23-2011

Sagarin's real ranking (PREDICTOR) remained strong.  It was the Elo-Chess that fell so much.  The Pac-12 is just super weak, so Stanford will remain below several teams from the Big 12 and the SEC.  And yet, because those teams must play each other, eventually Stanford will rise as some in the group must lose.

Some of Stanford's upcoming opponents have decent ELO-Chess rankings, so it will be OK in the end.  Ironically, Sagarin's predictor rankings have most of those teams well, well, below Stanford.  So Stanford should be big favorites in all of the games that do not involve Oregon.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - yvonne - 10-23-2011

I'm glad that Wilner has nothing to do with the BCS rankings because if he did, he would do whatever he could to lower it, and yes, he would claim that losses by SEC teams above us were "quality losses" and would continue to rate us lower than them. And yes, when one person rates us lower than the rest of the nation EVERY.SINGLE.WEEK, that person's bias is more than "supposed." As for reading his column, I'm not giving him the page views.

The real joy is in the games, and nothing any writer says is going to take away those 65 points, 613 total yards, and more than 400 yards rushing.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - yvonne - 10-23-2011

It's  not demented, and it's not something I've built. It's based on clear evidence. He has ranked us lower than any other pollster, every single week. Last week, his vote of us at 12 was enough to drop us a slot. Even the announcers mentioned it in the postgame show.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - yvonne - 10-23-2011

You don't have to go to Yellowstone to get a look at Old Faithful:

http://www.pollspeak.com/component/option,com_psreport/Itemid,3/f,/lang,en/o1,/o2,/o3,/o4,/p,36/r,V/s17,/seed,1319393874/t1,/t2,/v,35/w,9/



Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - washingtonismoney - 10-23-2011

I don't think Wilner is purposefully trying to hurt us. I do, however, think he's a putz who inconsistently applies his quality wins/strength-of-schedule emphasis.

His poll two weeks ago, for instance, featured Wisconsin above Stanford. He defended his vote on the basis of the Sagarin strength of schedule ranking for Stanford. Left unmentioned was that Wisconsin's Sagarin strength of schedule rating was worse than Stanford's.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - mark3k - 10-23-2011

A few additional thoughts on the various sources of "rankings" and their inherent shortcomings, IMHO:

The coaches obviously know the game best, but have very little time to play close attention to teams outside of their sphere of relevance, and clearly have their own potential conflicts of interest.

The sportswriters frequently suffer from various combinations of incompetence (e.g., Wilner), bias/agenda (e.g., Wilner) and/or ignorance (which can have many causes, including the fact that many East Coast writers never even watch late West Coast games).

The computers not only suffer from their inability to subjectively adjust for truly fluky plays, the effects of blowout defenses/substitutions (e.g., last minute scores against "prevent" and/or second-string defenses), etc.; but are intentionally handicapped in the BCS system by virtue of ignoring Margin of Victory data... "let's use a system that depends entirely on data, and then take away one of the key pieces of data!"

One could argue that the real pros are the guys who have real money on the line: the Vegas odds-makers (understanding that they are actually paid to try to get even wagers placed on either side of their line, as opposed to predicting the actual final score).

The amazing thing to me about that final (best?) source of judgment, as  that Stanford has consistently bested (and frequently CRUSHED) their lines, and yet we still get the "weak schedule" rap (I'll leave the B.S. in that argument for another day).  If we're playing "weak competition", presumably that's reflected in the spread, and the outcomes seem to suggest that we're considerably "way more better" than that "weak" competition than the (arguably) best analysts out there have believed.  At some point, you have to accept what you're seeing on the field, instead of judging Stanford's wins to be "unimpressive" before they are even played!

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - yvonne - 10-24-2011

Stanford's AP poll list

Week 1
http://www.pollspeak.com/component/option,com_psreport/Itemid,3/lang,en/p,36/p_1,36/r,T/r_1,T/s,17/s_1,17/t1,89/t1_1,89/t2,0/t2_1,0/v,0/v_1,0/w,1/w_1,1/

Week 2
http://www.pollspeak.com/component/option,com_psreport/Itemid,3/lang,en/p,36/p_1,36/r,T/r_1,T/s,17/s_1,17/t1,89/t1_1,89/t2,0/t2_1,0/v,0/v_1,0/w,2/w_1,2/

Week 3
http://www.pollspeak.com/component/option,com_psreport/Itemid,3/lang,en/p,36/p_1,36/r,T/r_1,T/s,17/s_1,17/t1,89/t1_1,89/t2,0/t2_1,0/v,0/v_1,0/w,3/w_1,3/

Week 4
http://www.pollspeak.com/component/option,com_psreport/Itemid,3/lang,en/p,36/p_1,36/r,T/r_1,T/s,17/s_1,17/t1,89/t1_1,89/t2,0/t2_1,0/v,0/v_1,0/w,4/w_1,4/

Week 5
http://www.pollspeak.com/component/option,com_psreport/Itemid,3/lang,en/p,36/p_1,36/r,T/r_1,T/s,17/s_1,17/t1,89/t1_1,89/t2,0/t2_1,0/v,0/v_1,0/w,5/w_1,5/
(lowest of all votes, 9; ave was 5th)

Week 6
http://www.pollspeak.com/component/option,com_psreport/Itemid,3/lang,en/p,36/p_1,36/r,T/r_1,T/s,17/s_1,17/t1,89/t1_1,89/t2,0/t2_1,0/v,0/v_1,0/w,6/w_1,6/
(lowest of all votes, 8; ave. was 6.25)

Week 7
http://www.pollspeak.com/component/option,com_psreport/Itemid,3/lang,en/p,36/p_1,36/r,T/r_1,T/s,17/s_1,17/t1,89/t1_1,89/t2,0/t2_1,0/v,0/v_1,0/w,7/w_1,7/
(Voted us lowest -- in a pack of others, 9th; ave was 6.27)

Week 8
http://www.pollspeak.com/component/option,com_psreport/Itemid,3/lang,en/p,36/p_1,36/r,T/r_1,T/s,17/s_1,17/t1,89/t1_1,89/t2,0/t2_1,0/v,0/v_1,0/w,8/w_1,8/
(voted us lowest, 10th; ave was 6.27)

Week 9
http://www.pollspeak.com/component/option,com_psreport/Itemid,3/lang,en/p,36/p_1,36/r,T/r_1,T/s,17/s_1,17/t1,89/t1_1,89/t2,0/t2_1,0/v,0/v_1,0/w,9/w_1,9/
(voted us lowest, 7th; ave was 4.03)

This is a clear and consistent pattern of not only casting the lowest of all votes for Stanford, but of also voting significantly below the average.

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - jayasena - 10-25-2011

I would think the appropriate peer group for Wilner are the other voters, not the computers. And in that peer group he certainly seems to be an outlier in terms of where he ranks Stanford.

Of course, I've always thought Wilner was just a fairly sophisticated bot that scans sports forums, twitter feed etc. and culls random bits for his own blog/articles rather than a human who creates original content. So maybe Garvin is onto something after all  ;)

Re: Stanford to drop in writers' poll - CowboyIndian - 10-25-2011

The Scripps Legends Poll...made up of retired successful college coaches....has us #3, behind LSU and Alabama.
http://www.legendschannel.com/tag/legends-poll-college-football/