Asbury Computer College Football Rankings: 2010 Preseason

So, in this third year of maintaining these rankings, I have added some code to come up with preseason rankings. this is in addition to last year having rankings during the season as well as score predicting code, which also I expect to be improved this year. In 2009, I picked the winner correctly on 76.4% of the games involving top 25 ranked teams, which is .5% higher than the official Vegas odds, but my program was on the winning side of the spread only 47.5% of the time.

By the end of 2009, my rankings were within +/- 2 places of the AP rankings for the top 16. The first exception was that my #17 team was Oklahoma, who did not appear in the final AP rankings.

Anyway, here are my computer's preseason rankings, based largely on last year's results, recruiting rankings, and some subjective adjustments for offseason activities and major personnel changes.

Rank	Team	Points	AP rank	AP-end 2009
1	Alabama	111.02	1	1
2	Florida	102.52	4	3
3	Texas	99.79	5	2
4	Oregon	96.30	11	11
5	Cincinnati	87.64	26	8
6	Virginia Tech	80.66	10	10
7	OhioState	77.53	2	5
8	Oklahoma	73.34	7	n/a
9	BYU	73.21	34	12
10	Wyoming	71.24	n/a	n/a
11	Houston	70.51	30	n/a
12	LSU	70.42	21	17
13	Georgia Tech	69.63	16	13
14	Boise State	69.37	3	4
15	Utah	69.04	28	18
16	Penn State	68.17	19	9
17	Miami	67.67	13	19
18	Stanford	67.17	27	n/a
19	Nebraska	65.30	8	14
20	Southern Cal	65.29	14	22
21	Iowa	64.99	9	7
22	Clemson	64.90	36	24
23	Central Michigan	64.86	44	23
24	Missouri	63.41	33	n/a
25	Auburn	63.34	22	n/a

Well, for the most part, I have the same teams in the rankings as the voters do, except Wyoming. How did they get in there? Apparently they have the 27th best 2010 recruiting class while the 2006 freshman class which is not basically gone ranked 99th. At this point that is weighted rather heavily. A few games into the seaon and that won't be part of teh equation any more.

Saving Money by Going to Bars

With so much available on line for free now days, including almost all of the TV shows that I watch – Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Castle, The Office – I’m thinking it might be a good idea to sell my televisions and cancel my cable tv service. That would save like $400 per year plus whatever I can get for my 2 TV’s. It just means I’ll have to go to WOW or Kipper’s or some sports bar to watch sporting events that I might care to see live. I mean, I have to eat some time, so it might as well be during the GT football game at a restaurant I don’t dislike.

 

And I’ll save more than $400 per year by drinking water instead of beer every time I go to a bar or pretty much any time I think about it. Yes, I’m gonna sit at a bar alone on a Saturday night watching college football while drinking water. I doubt that’ll happen but it’s a good idea in theory. Actually a few days ago I ordered a beer on tap and the bartender recommended that I don’t get beer because it wasn’t very good that particular day or the refrigeration wasn’t cooling adequately or something. So, I got a coke instead, which in many places costs about the same as a beer. That is if you get the really cheap beers, which I don’t do. The Purple Haze and Strong Bow and Killian’s that I like are significantly more than Coors and PBR and other similarly bad beers.

 

Really, would any of this actually affect my life much at all? No, not really. My TV rarely gets any use anyway. Even when I rent a DVD, I usually just watch it on my computer. I’m sure my guests might not like the no cable and no alcohol in my house, especially since I’ve been known to have a big screen TV and an ample supply of alcohol.

 

A side benefit of this is I might become a regular at one or more of the local bars and actually make a friend with someone who doesn’t work with me or play bridge. In all the time I have spent in bars over the past few years, there is only 1 person that I have met at a bar and actually made contact with again afterward. If you don’t know the story behind that, you really should.