Power Rankings Question

[Dutycat]

OK, a few sweeping generalizations...not universal truisms.

POLLS (Associated Press, Coaching) generally take into consideration the record of a team for the entire season, and are generally faithful to a win-loss record given a comparable schedule. They are susceptible to personal bias, politics, network money, and laziness.

BETTING LINE is the "put your money where your mouth is", turn off the political correctness and sympathy for sentimental favorites. Sounds good, but it is tough to get a stacked ranking like a poll except in some "likelihood to win the tournament" structure which is often driven more by betting volume than prognostication.

COMPUTER RANKINGS are some programmer's favorite statistical algorithm of which are the best teams ranked or head to head. These models are often more explanatory than predictive. These rankings are unbiased, but rarely have a good sample size of quality competition until well into the conference season. Few alter their methodology to account for improvement in recent games.

I thought the POWER RANKINGS were supposed to reflect the eyeball test. They were supposed to answer the question "Who is the best right now?" regardless of their record. Who is HOT. I think they started off that way, but contributors fatigued of defending their picks and now these rankings are little better than the AP and Coaches Polls. They are now boring leftovers. Thoughts?

But maybe I am wrong...

 

[Jkwo]

I like your breakdowns, although, I'd say that your betting line definition is more true in an indirect way - at the end of the day, all of 'em are driven by betting, cuz you want equal action on both sides. So you try to remove emotion from the initial line of course, because your financial security takes priority over other biases, and then it shifts from there.

Anyways, I think the line is really ambiguous with some of the rankings - everybody has their own personal way that they justify what they have, and many ballots are filled out thoughtlessly the night before they're due - if you think most the people in each poll has watched half the teams in the top 40 or so, prepare to be disappointed.

I do think it's good to be explicit like you say - do we really need both a coach's poll and an AP poll? What if one decided to focus on resumes (the writers would probably be better here), while the other explicitly told its voters to power rank based on today, and publicized that fact (the coaches would probably be better here)?