How accurate are the preseason Coaches Poll Top 25 rankings? FBSchedules

Iceland12

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Coaches Preseason Top 25 (2012-16)

Teams that were in the preseason Top 25 and still ranked in the Top 25 in the final poll: 62%

Team that started in the Top 25 and weren’t ranked at all by the final poll: 38%

The numbers make a clear case for the Coaches Poll getting it right 55-60% of the time. That’s true for both the Top 10 specifically and then the overall Top 25...

The Coaches’ have been similarly accurate in identifying the top two teams in the preseason, even more crucial in the world of the College Football Playoff.

Only three times since 2012 have one of the eventual top two finishers not been ranked in the Coaches’ preseason Top 10: Clemson in 2015 (started at No. 12, finished No. 2), Florida State in 2013 (started at No. 12, finished No. 1), and Auburn, also in 2013 (started unranked, finished No. 2).

It amounts to a 70% success rate..

While there is a reasonable chance your preseason unranked team will finish in the Top 25, hopes are slashed as the dream gets bigger.

Since 2012, only 10 teams that didn’t begin the year ranked in the Coaches’ poll finished the season ranked in the Top 10. Of these, only three ascended to the Top 4.


http://www.fbschedules.com/2017/08/how-accurate-coaches-poll-preseason-top-25-rankings/
 

I'd be more interested to see the same analysis run for just spots 25, 24, 23, 22, 21 and 20.

I bet it isn't even close to 62%.
 

I'm not sure if this is the best metric. If you just take last year's final top 25 and use that for your preseason top 25, you'll be pretty accurate. But using this, if you pick a team as #1 and they finish #25, that counts as getting it right, but if you pick a team #25, and they finish #26, that counts as getting it wrong. What I would measure is the difference between preseason and final position for each team. If you pick a team #1, but they finish at #11, that's 10 points difference, so you get 10 points against you. If you pick a team #25, and they finish #26, that's only one point.
 




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