{"id":36621,"date":"2018-12-07T13:10:46","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T20:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=36621"},"modified":"2018-12-10T13:46:43","modified_gmt":"2018-12-10T20:46:43","slug":"uccs-mit-formula-shows-georgia-not-notre-dame-should-be-in-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=36621","title":{"rendered":"UCCS, MIT formula shows Georgia, not Notre Dame, should be in playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1069140522\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 75.084175% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/1069140522?et=hIaR-MnATNdTAhISoxAmJA&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=xnU8AKj1-_Fbk-tnuaC-Uy8Q5SWTikh-5-iLyQIgVAs=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" width=\"594\" height=\"446\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>When the College Football Playoff announced Alabama, Clemson, Notre Dame and Oklahoma as the four teams that will play for a national championship, commentators and fans started to debate if the right four teams were selected. That included Joe Craig, assistant professor of economics, who throughout the season adapted a formula developed for rugby to see how it could be used for American college football.<\/p>\n<p>Based on his algorithm, developed with Niven Wichester, principal research scientist at the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the two agreed with the committee\u2019s selection and seeding of Alabama, Clemson and Oklahoma. But the ranking showed that Georgia, and not Notre Dame, should be in the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/rankings-image.jpeg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-36622\" src=\"http:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/rankings-image-750x518.jpeg\" alt=\"RugbyVision - NCAA football ranking\" width=\"740\" height=\"511\" srcset=\"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/rankings-image-750x518.jpeg 750w, https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/rankings-image-300x207.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/rankings-image-768x531.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/rankings-image-150x104.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/rankings-image.jpeg 881w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith all the money, time and energy that goes into picking the right schools to play in lucrative bowl games, it\u2019s important to see if the experts get it right,\u201d Craig said.<\/p>\n<p>The algorithm ranks teams by assigning rating points based on game scores after adjusting for the strength of the opposing team. Despite winning all the games in 2018, Notre Dame is ranked No. 12 by the algorithm as the Fighting Irish played a relatively weak schedule and they did not dominate lower ranked teams.<\/p>\n<p>For any two teams, differences between ratings points indicate the expected winning margin of the higher-ranked team if they played at a neutral venue, like during the college postseason. According the algorithm, Alabama is expected to beat Oklahoma by 17 points, and Clemson is expected to beat Notre Dame by 15 points in the semifinals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes Notre Dame deserve to be in the playoffs? Their performance against Clemson will go a long way to answer that question,\u201d Winchester said.<\/p>\n<p>The College Football Playoff semifinals take place Dec. 29 with No. 2 Clemson and No. 3 Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl, and No. 1 Alabama and No. 4 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. The national championship will be played Jan. 7 in Santa Clara, California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Joe Craig, assistant professor of economics, has used a formula developed for rugby to see how it could be used for the College Football Playoff selection. <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=36621\" title=\"UCCS, MIT formula shows Georgia, not Notre Dame, should be in playoffs\">(More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":36622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,46],"tags":[53,86,148,302],"class_list":["post-36621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-business","tag-academic-affairs","tag-college-of-letters-arts-and-sciences","tag-department-of-economics","tag-office-of-research"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/rankings-image.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-9wF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36621"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36634,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36621\/revisions\/36634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}