When writing blogs, posting analysis, and the rankings (usually by week 4 each year, but could be sooner), I tend to use terms or acronyms that I assume readers understand. That is not fair to new readers or those that aren’t overly, insanely rabid football fans. Spelling everything out every time is annoying slow and redundant and not that much fun to read. So, I’ve decided to post these definitions. As you read posts, let me know through the comments if a term or acronym isn’t perfectly clear and I’ll make sure to keep this page updated. I’ll try to keep it somewhat organized. First, generally terms around conferences and such followed by GCR (including that term) specific terms and metrics.
Conferences/College Football Idiosyncrocies
FBS – Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-A). These are the 130 teams eligible for Bowl Games played in December and January including the 4-team Playoff. The FBS has an unofficial second subdivision of the Power 5 and Group of 5 conferences.
Power 5 Conferences – these are the “major” football (or any sport for the most part) conferences and the 65 teams include those from the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12, SEC, and Notre Dame. All of these conferences have 2 divisions except for the Big 12.
Group of 5 Conferences – these are the “mid-major” football (or any sport for the most part) conferences and the 65 teams (pure coincidence) include those from the American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt and the other Independent colleges (Army, BYU, Liberty, Massachusetts, and New Mexico St).
FCS – Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-AA). There are 126 teams in 13 conferences (North Dakota is the only current Independent). No FCS school is eligible for a Bowl Game, but there is a 24-team Playoff at the end of each year, seeded, with the top 8 seeds getting a first round bye. 10 of those conferences (99 potential schools) participate – Big Sky, Big South, Colonial, Independent, Missouri Valley, Ohio Valley, Northeast, Pioneer, Patriot, SoCon, and Southland. The Ivy League does not play any post season games while the MEAC and SWAC conferences have a showdown during the Bowl Season.
ACC – Atlantic Coast Conference, made of the Atlantic and the Coastal Divisions, with 14 members.
B10 – or Big 10 – The Big Ten Conference, made of the East and West Divisions, with 14 members. (for those that aren’t aware of the evolution of the conferences, that is not a typo)
B12 – Big 12 Conference, a single conference that plays games in a round-robin format before the top two play for the conference championship, with 10 members.
ND – Notre Dame, the only Power 5 level Independent (meaning not associated formally with a conference although they are part of the ACC for other sports)
Pac 12 – or P12, or Pac-12 – the Pacific 12 Conference, made of the North and South Divisions, with 12 members.
SEC – the Southeastern Conference, made of the East and West Divisions, with 14 members
AAC – or American – the American Athletic Conference, made of the East and West Divisions, with 12 members
CUSA – or C-USA – Conference USA, made of the East and West Divisions, with 14 members
FBS Independents – or Independents – a non-affiliated, although sometimes matched up for games, group of schools that are not associated with any conference
MAC – Mid-American Conference, made of the East and West Divisions, with 12 teams
MTW – or MWC – Mountain West Conference, made of the Mountain and the West Divisions, with 12 teams
Sun – Sun Belt – Sun Belt Conference, made of the East and West Divisions, with 10 teams
BSky – Big Sky Conference, a non-divided conference with 13 members
BSouth – Big South Conference, a non-divided conference with 8 members
CAA – Colonial – Colonial Athletic Association, a non-divided conference with 12 members
FCS Indendent – currently just 1 team, North Dakota, that has no affiliation with any conference
Ivy – Ivy League, a non-divided conference with 8 members
MEAC – Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, a non-divided conference with 9 members
MVFC – or MVC – Missouri Valley Football Conference, a non-divided conference with 10 members
NEC – Northeast Conference, a non-divided conference with 9 members
OVC – Ohio Valley Conference, a non-divided conference with 9 members
PFL – or PL – Pioneer Football League, a non-divided conference with 10 members
Pat – Patriot League, a non-divided conference with 7 members
SWAC – Southwestern Athletic Conference, made of the East and West Divisions, with 10 members
SoCon – Southern Conference, a non-divided conference with 9 members
South – Southland Conference, a non-divided conference with 11 members
GCR terms and acronyms
GCR – Gettys Computer Ranking – my less than creative name for the program
W and L – a team’s cumulative Wins or Losses for the season
PF and PA – Points For (the total number of points scored in the season) and Points Against (the total number of points given up in the season)
SOS, SOS Sc, and SOS Rank – SOS is Strength of Schedule (how good or not are a team’s opponents) SOS Sc is a GCR calculation based on a team’s played opponents’ along with those opponents’ opponents’ level of goodness. SOS Rank from 1-256 compares the SOS Sc for each team with 1 being the most difficult schedule so far. Note: future games do not impact the SOS Sc
Perf Sc and Perf Rank – Perf is short for Performance – how well did a team perform against their played opponents. Did they win or lose and by how much? The GCR answers those questions (along with some other factors) and assigns a value. Perf Rank from 1-256 compares the Perf Sc for each team with 1 being the most dominant performance so far. Note: future games do not impact Perf Sc
Total Sc and Rank – Total Sc is a combination of the SOS Sc and the Perf Sc. The Rank or Overall Rank from 1-256 compares the Total Sc for each team with 1 being the best team, all factors considered. Theoretically, the top 4 FBS teams should be in that Playoff and the top 24 FCS teams (adjusted for non-participating conferences and conference champions) should be in that Playoff.
Pred Record and Pct to Win – the GCR takes into account games played, calculates the Pct to Win (the probability that a given team will win) and uses that combination to Predict the final record. As the season progresses this statistic improves in accuracy because the GCR assumes all teams are, essentially, equal before the season begins. For the first half of the season, the Pred Record should be compared to other similarly ranked teams for meaningful analysis
Best Win, Worst Loss, Top 25 Record – the GCR looks for each team’s wins and finds the team with the best (closest to 1) Rank. Similarly, it looks for each team’s most embarrassing loss. If a team has no wins or no losses, dashes appear. The x-x number in the Top 25 Record column is Wins-Losses against the GCR Top 25 for that week – previous rankings as well as the AP or Coaches Polls are irrelevant for this data. Note: DivII/NAIA is the Best Win column indicates no Division I (FBS or FCS) victory exists for the team. In the Worst Loss column it indicates that the FCS school (no FBS schools play Div II or NAIA teams) was upset by the lower opponent. The GCR does not track Div II or NAIA teams so, quite frankly, it’s easier for me to code it to “DivII/NAIA” than to print the actual team name. I hope no one else cares either. 🙂
Opponent Record – the cumulative wins-losses for teams already played. Note: future games are not included in this metric
Remaining Schedule Rank and Future Opponent Record – the GCR does look forward for these metrics. The Future Opponent Record is the combined wins-losses for all remaining known opponents (note: conference championships and bowl/playoff games are added as soon as the information is known, but not included for most of the season). In a similar fashion, the GCR calculates the SOS Sc and SOS Rank for future known opponents. Note: only the Future SOS Rank is shown.
Off Eff Rate and Def Eff Rate – the Offensive and Defensive Effectiveness Rates are analysis measures that help differentiate teams. Each is scaled to average 100. A score of 100 for the Off Eff Rate means that, on average, a team scores the same number of points per game as its opponents average giving up per game. A score of less than 100 means the offense is worse than average and above 100 means better than average. This allows a truer comparison between 2 teams. For example: if team A averages 25 points per game and team B averages 40 points per game, which is the better offensive team? The answer is “it depends.” If team A’s opponents average giving up 10 points per game and team B’s opponents average giving up 50 points per game, team A is performing better. The same logic and scale are used for the Def Eff Rate – 100 is average. Greater than 100 indicates a team gives up fewer points on average than their opponents normally score.
It’s embarrassing how much of this public knowledge stuff I did not know. To save more embarrassment, I will not detail what I did not know.
Does you algorithm for ranking use the performance score or the performance rank or some combination? I would think that the score would be better raw data, as opposed to the quantized performance rank. Another way to ask that… Is the rank just for interest’s sake itself? Same question for SOS and SOS sc…
Great question, Carl. The Ranks for Performance and SOS are purely for analyis/comparison – I remember back in my college accounting classes that you can never tell anything from one number. ex. a given team’s SOS is 4.75 – is that good or bad? The rank with it gives context. The GCR calculates the Perf Sc and the SOS Sc, and merges them to create the Total Sc. That’s what gives us the overall ranking which we generally do care about a lot more than the piece parts.