Power Rankings

[fuba3966]

Hey So Money - I enjoy following you on twitter and I've enjoyed reading your answers to all the questions in the forum. I love betting on football. Each year I feel that I learn more and more but to be a self-handicapper (focusing on my own plays) I am curious if you have any recommendations on how to develop a personal set of power rankings or if you utilize a site that you trust for power rankings.

I read Phil Steele's yearly magazines+ I subsricbe to his newsletter (Power Sweeps). Any recommendations of "must-read, in-season" newsletters for football bettors. Thanks for any advice/answers you can provide.

[@So_Money_Sports]

Hey fuba,

I think Steele's magazine is a good place to start for making your pre-season rankings. If you combine that with reading the schools' beat writers, I think you'll have a strong initial foundation. I'm very old-school in making my own power rankings throughout the year in that the "eye test" and tearing apart boxscores are the basis for my rankings.

The reason I don't use other sites' power rankings is that I suspect most of them are more interested in the final scores rather than the components I feel are important (mainstream approach). For example, I don't care if Team A beat Team B by 50. I want to know how the scores occurred, if there were any pre-game factors that contributed to the result, etc.

I always stress to do your own work because only you can accurately determine how much effort you've put into your work and what you've valued. As every season progresses, I am now able to determine what a spread/total should be just based on my power rankings (most of the time its right around the opening number). That is difficult to do and it took me years and years of doing my own work in making my power rankings to get to that point.

There are many different ways to make your power rankings. How I do it is I "grade" games for teams based on the eye test and what I've discovered after breaking down boxscores. I then make my rankings based on who I think deserves the highest scores. Of course, there are always adjustments to be made based on non-tangible factors that you can determine from reading beat writers, future/past situations, etc. I use my power rankings strictly as a basis for making lines and I'll dig deeper into games where I feel my line is significantly different than the books' lines.

[fuba3966]

Hey So Money -

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Each year I am determined to do more and more of my own work and this off-season I will delve into my initial efforts at developing my own power ratings. I appreciate the tips about the "eye" test and studying box scores for in-season analysis, but I am curious about the initial steps someone like me should take in the off-season to prepare for next season.

Here are some of the factors I've been considering:

Returning Starters, strength of O/D-lines, returning qb, coaching stability, schedule difficulty + basic analysis of what transpired this year.

Any helpful tips for how someone would go from having nothing to at least developing an introductory set of personal power ratings is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

Fuba

[@So_Money_Sports]

Hey fuba,

Those are good places to start, they are tangible factors that can be measured fairly accurately. I would challenge you to go deeper. Look at the teams that performed the best previous seasons. What differentiated them? Its tougher to do for college football but for every league I have a "development cycle" where I plug in teams year-after-year on where they should be. The theory behind this is that team sports are cyclical.

1. Bad team gets good draft picks, struggles for a couple of years
2. Is able to challenge for a playoff spot but just falls short.
3. Is finally able to get over the hump and makes the playoffs but hasn't learned how to win yet.
4. Doesn't have any problems making the playoffs but faces some playoff disappointment
5. Small window where team is elite and time is running out.

There are exceptions to this, but for the most part teams fall into these development cycles. Where they fit into my levels, adjusted for tangible factors you mentioned above and my general outlook for the team give me a strong basis for my initial power rankings.