How do they calculate Strength of Record ????

Nov 6, 2017, 3:54 PM

I've searched a fair amount and can't find out exactly how they calculate it. All I can find is the philosophical definition of what it claims to assess - namely - "the chance of an average Top-25 team having the team’s record or better, given the opponents the team has played (and where they played) to date." This sounds nice in vague terms, but it's really tells you nothing about what the metric actually is, and about whether it's calculations in fact achieve that aim or not.

What is an "average top 25" team mean? Are we to assume some hypothetical team ranked 12.5 out of 25? And if so, what does THAT matter? I mean, a harder schedule for a bad team will also be harder for a good team, so that aspect seems irrelevant. Who cares how hard an elite teams schedule would be for a mediocre team? OF COURSE it will be easier for an elite team to accomplish "x' standards as compared to a mediocre team shooting for those same standards. I'm probably missing something in the wording there (or, they haven't communicated it in the wording), but in any event, it seems to be inserting some big hypotheticals/assumptions about (a) what an "average" top 25 team even IS, (b) how to assess what said, hypothetical, average team would do; and (C)what relevance it has to the process of simply comparing actual accomplishments of actual teams that DID play their schedule.

As such I've tried to find the nuts and bolts of the metric, but can't. Anybody know? It gets a lot of pub in the CFP discussions towards the end of the season, and it SOUNDS good since it purports so assess how good a teams accomplishments really are - but what's really in it?

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How do they calculate Strength of Record ????

We won't get the details

Wow . . . I didn't know that. That's terrible**

naught goes into naught naught times***

Note: The CFP Committee does not use ESPN's Metrics

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