Seriously?
Well at least the Trojans got more than one first place vote.
1. Ohio State (35)
2. Notre Dame (10)
3. Texas (8)
4. Auburn (3)
5. West Virginia (6)
6. USC (3)
7. Florida
8. Louisiana State
9. California
10. Oklahoma
If this irks any of you Trojan fans, take comfort in Sagarin’s ratings. He uses MIT math (no offense to Denny Green’s Harrisburgh math) to rate USC #1 and the Irish #17.
Ohio State Starts Season as No. 1 Team [LA Times]
Don’t worry some of these teams won’t be in the top 10 after the first week.
On what math should Trojan fans take comfort? The Sagarin rating is 100% useless in the preseason because its formula relies on games actually being played to generate ratings. His system is admittedly ineffective during the first few weeks of the season. In describing the ELO-CHESS calculation (the only thing that his preseason ranking is based on), the Sagarin page on usatoday.com says this:
“For the first few weeks of the season, the starting ratings (based soley on ELO-CHESS…my comment) have weight in the process(BAYESIAN), but once the teams are all CONNECTED, then the starting ratings are no longer used and all teams are started equal and the ELO-CHESS is then done in an UNBIASED manner from that point on.”
“In ELO-CHESS, only winning and losing matters;…”
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