IdaGriz01
Well-known member
In view of the (largely inconclusive) pissing match about how the Big Sky compares in overall strength to the Missouri Valley, I got to wondering what the numbers show. By extension, we might as well include the Colonial. No one disagrees that NDSU is the dominant power in FCS, with JMU not far behind. Because of NDSU’s big number, Sagarin does rank the MVFC at the top, but the difference is not all that much for the MVFC, BSC, and CAA: 52.8, 50.6, 50.2. (FYI: After that the number drops to 44.5, so there’s quite a large separation from the rest of the FCS.) Also, if you take out the NDSU and JMU “outliners,” the three conference numbers differ by less than 0.8.
But in my mind, the real question concerned the strength of the conferences from top to bottom. That took a bit more work, and I was limited by what I knew how to present here on the forum. So I turned a table into a kind of chart. The columns are (obviously) values for the teams in each conference. I then entered the Sagarin team numbers in descending order, matching up the values as best I could going across. I inserted partly-empty rows whenever there were big differences.
I find the results very, very interesting. The Big Sky has a block of three basically equal teams right at the top, just above a looser block for the MVFC. Then there’s another step down to the CAA. All three conferences have at least one obvious bottom dweller.
Each conference has a distinct pattern, once you set aside the outliers at the top. Except for its cellar-dweller, the CAA more or less clusters in the middle. The MVFC teams spread out more, from their second tier down to their two cellar-dwellers. To me, the BSC is the most interesting: With a couple of exceptions in the middle, the Sky has a block of very good teams at the top and another block of crappy teams near the bottom. In a way, that explains how the unbalanced schedule can cause such big swings in how difficult a given team has it for a season.
But in my mind, the real question concerned the strength of the conferences from top to bottom. That took a bit more work, and I was limited by what I knew how to present here on the forum. So I turned a table into a kind of chart. The columns are (obviously) values for the teams in each conference. I then entered the Sagarin team numbers in descending order, matching up the values as best I could going across. I inserted partly-empty rows whenever there were big differences.
I find the results very, very interesting. The Big Sky has a block of three basically equal teams right at the top, just above a looser block for the MVFC. Then there’s another step down to the CAA. All three conferences have at least one obvious bottom dweller.
Each conference has a distinct pattern, once you set aside the outliers at the top. Except for its cellar-dweller, the CAA more or less clusters in the middle. The MVFC teams spread out more, from their second tier down to their two cellar-dwellers. To me, the BSC is the most interesting: With a couple of exceptions in the middle, the Sky has a block of very good teams at the top and another block of crappy teams near the bottom. In a way, that explains how the unbalanced schedule can cause such big swings in how difficult a given team has it for a season.
Code:
BSC MVFC CAA
75.9 73.0
63.7
63.7
63.7
62.2
59.6 60.2
56.9 56.6
55.5
55.1
53.8 54.6
52.0 52.3
52.1
51.0
50.2
49.3 49.4
47.1
46.6 46.0
45.7
44.5 44.1
43.9
40.8
40.6
39.6
37.0
35.4
35.3
