2008 Seasons in Review; A Duck is a Duck, Unless It's a Drake

This is the second instalment of our CLEAN OLD FASHION HATE SPECTACULAR. Today we look at, and compare how Tech and Georgia did this season.

UGA is a big time football factory school. It plays in the SEC, the best football conference in the country. It was a preseason #1. It’s 8 and 2, while the lowly technical college, Georgia Tech, is 7-3 in the weaker ACC, surely Georgia has had the more impressive season. Not so fast my friend. Let’s take a look at the seasons Georgia and Georgia Tech actually had, and not what we think they had.

Most of the analysis will be based on Jeff Sagarin’s computer ratings. Computer ratings are not then alpha and omega of football ratings, but they are objective. This makes it easier to distinguish outliers that may not necessarily reflect what happens on the football field. I find that Sagarin’s ratings, which use a combination of margin of victory and strength of schedule, are the most useful.

Let us start by taking a look at the two conferences. Sagarin and most of the computer poles ranks the ACC ahead of SEC, even though the ACC doesn’t have any marquee teams. While the SEC has Florida and Alabama, the ACC has a slew of solid football teams, and quantity has a quality all its own.

The chat below ranks all the SEC and ACC teams according to Sagarin ratings. The difference between each team is shown by a black band that is scaled to show the difference; the bigger the difference between two teams, the broader the band. ACC teams are shown in beautiful old gold, and the SEC is shown in barn yard red.

The chart shows that the ACC/SEC can be broken into five categories

1 – Florida and Alabama

The ACC doesn’t have any teams that can hold a candle to these two national championship contenders, but a league is more than its leaders.

2- Georgia, Florida State, Boston College, Georgia Tech, Ole Miss, Clemson, UNC, Virginia Tech, Miami, South Carolina, LSU, and Wake.

Now the ACC is beginning to show its strength. Eight of the twelve teams in this category are from the ACC, and South Carolina and LSU barely make the cut. Clemson seems like an odd fit here. It will be interesting to see what they do against the Gamecocks this weekend.

3-Vanderbilt, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Duke, NC State

This is a frisky bunch with some big wins and some bad losses. Collectively these teams have beaten Ole Miss, North Carolina, Cal, Navy, Georgia Tech, and Louisville, but lost to Middle Tennessee State, UConn, Mississippi State, and South Florida. These are the average but dangerous teams that give a conference spice. Four of these schools are from the ACC. Those who are good at math know what the other two groups are going to look like

4-Auburn, Tennessee, and Arkansas

The bowlless bottom of the SEC; these three teams are dragging the SEC down, and look at the spread between these teams. Each one is significantly worse than the one that precedes it, but that’s not the end of it.

5-Mississippi State

Starkville is in a category all its own when it comes to stinking the joint out.

That’s how the ACC has a better ranking than the SEC. Two good teams, and four terrible teams. The ACC on the other hand is a tightly packed bunch of very good to good teams. The ACC has been beating each other up over the course of the season while a few good SEC teams have been stomping a lot of bad teams

Now let’s look at each teams strength of schedule. Much like comparing the ACC and SEC, Tech has a higher ranked strength of schedule than Georgia despite not playing any national championship contenders. In the following chart the black bars play the same role as they did in the previous table, only I’ve displayed Tech’s schedule on the left and Georgia’s on the right. Wins are highlighted in green and losses in grey.

Georgia’s Schedule is stronger at the top and bottom, but the big thick middle of Tech’s schedule out paces UGA. Sure Georgia played two great teams, but they were destroyed by them. Tech, on the other hand, beat four teams (Florida State, at Boston College, at Clemson, Miami) that are better than LSU, the best team Georgia beat. Tech also lost at UNC and at Virginia Tech, who are also better than LSU.

How would Georgia due against a bunch of good but not great teams week after week? It’s hard to say. And how would Tech do against a really Great team? Again, its hard to say.

We can do more with Sagarin Rankings. The difference in Sagarin ranking between two teams represents the point difference if the two teams where to play on a neutral field. By adding or subtracting three points for home field advantage we can project how a team was expected to do. We can then subtract that number from the actual point difference and determine how well a team played against an opponent. This allows us to see if a team played up or down to its potential.

A good example of this is the Georgia Tech / Gardner-Webb game. Tech won by three, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Sagarin projected them to win by 38 points. By subtracting the projected results from the real results and then ranking the games from highest to lowest the Gardner-Webb game comes out as far and away the worst team Tech played all year. Granted they were playing it with a third string quarterback. In this case the black bars represent how much better a teams performance in that game was over the next game on the list.

The Worst game played by UGA was against Florida. Its one thing to say you played a tougher team, but it only matters if you were competitive. Georgia’s second worst game was against Alabama. Tech on the other hand, racked up some impressive games against Duke, Miami, and Mississippi State. Playing a bad team is impressive when you beat the crap out of them. Miami, and Boston College for that matter, are pretty good teams, and Tech played them well.

It’s safe to say that the two teams performed about the same over the course of the season. Georgia does have the best game on the chart. In retrospect Georgia’s win over a solid Chippewas team looks really good and it combined with the Gardner-Webb game are the difference in the teams Sagarin ratings.

Finally, let’s look at how the teams are trending over the course of the season. Which team is peaking as Clean old Fashion Hate nears. The chart below shows the games for each team in order. Games in which Tech or Georgia failed to beat Sagarin’s project spread are red. Games in which they beat the spread are highlighted green.

Both teams under performed against their season opener, but some of this needs to be chalked up to Georgia and Georgia Tech playing reserves in the second half.

Tech peaked against Mississippi and Duke, but injuries began to pile up, and they were up and down during the second half of season. Tech started a third string quarterback against Gardner-Webb and was playing practice squad players against UNC. The Virginia Tech game was a close game, and Tech just missed the mark, so it’s hard to call that a bad game.

Georgia on the other hand shows a clear pattern of a late season swoon. Over their last 7 games Georgia failed to beat the Sagarin projection six times, and they weren’t even close in most cases.

All of this is a long complicated way of saying Tech faced a schedule loaded with solid teams with a few breaks that they more or less held their own against, while Georgia whooped up on a softer schedule and failed in its tough tests. Which is more impressive can be argued, but Georgia has shown a steady down ward trend over the second half of the season, while Tech finished strong against a top 25 Miami team.