Understanding College Football Massey Ratings: A Comprehensive Guide
College football rankings play a crucial role in determining the best teams, influencing playoff selections, and informing predictions. Among the numerous ranking systems available, the Massey Ratings stand out as a comprehensive, data-driven approach to evaluating team performance. This article delves into the intricacies of Massey Ratings, exploring their methodology, strengths, and how they compare to other ranking systems. On3 partners with Kenneth Massey, the creator of the widely respected Massey Ratings, to provide fans, athletes, and coaches with in-depth, objective insights into team performance across multiple sports.
What are Massey Ratings?
Massey Ratings are a system used to rank sports teams based on their performance throughout the season. These ratings offer an objective and analytical approach to sports rankings.
The Methodology Behind Massey Ratings
The Massey Ratings model is built upon a foundation of data analysis and statistical modeling. Here's a breakdown of its key components:
- Data Inputs: The model considers the score, location (home or away), and date of each game played during the season.
- Win Probability: Each game's score is translated into a probability that the winning team is indeed the better team. A narrow victory, such as 27-24, might translate to a 58% probability, while a blowout of 45-14 could indicate a 98% probability.
- Iterative Calculation: The model simultaneously calculates ratings and strength of schedule. A team’s performance is evaluated relative to the quality of its opponents. The model derives most of its information from games between teams of similar strength.
- Equilibrium: The model creates a “force” that pushes the winning team above the losing team, adjusting ratings to reach an equilibrium. The model is designed to maximize the retrospective probability of the observed game results.
Key Features of the Massey Ratings Model
- Objective and Anonymous: The model treats all teams equally and anonymously, without regard for name brands or affiliations.
- Emphasis on Wins: A team’s rating reflects the impressiveness of its resume, giving more credit to wins regardless of dominance.
- No Penalization for Low-Scoring Games: The model does not penalize teams with lower-scoring games.
- Holistic Evaluation: While head-to-head results are important, the model considers the entire season’s performance, or “body of work,” when determining rankings.
- Dynamic Adjustment: Early-season ratings require about five games per team to become accurate. To produce reasonable early-season ratings, the model incorporates results from the previous two seasons as starting points.
Advantages of Using Massey Ratings
- Comprehensive: Massey Ratings consider a wide range of factors, including game scores, locations, and dates, to provide a comprehensive assessment of team performance.
- Objective: The model is free from human bias and subjective opinions, ensuring that rankings are based solely on data.
- Analytical: Massey Ratings offer an analytical approach to sports rankings, providing insights into team strengths and weaknesses.
- Predictive Power: While designed to measure past performance, Massey Ratings can also be used to predict future outcomes.
How Massey Ratings Differ from Other Ranking Systems
Many different college football ranking systems exist. Ken Massey compiles over a hundred of them on his site. Here's how Massey Ratings compare to some other popular systems:
1. College Football Playoff (CFP) Rankings
The College Football Playoff committee consists of 13 people with backgrounds in college athletics. This committee meets every week starting in late October until the season ends in early December.
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Massey Ratings: An objective, data-driven system that considers the entire season's performance.
CFP Rankings: Subjective rankings based on the opinions of committee members, considering factors such as team performance, strength of schedule, and head-to-head results. College football provides only 12 or 13 games each season to evaluate a team.
2. AP and Coaches Polls
The preseason AP and Coaches polls have remarkable predictive power, even during Bowl season. The humans of AP and Coaches have no games upon which to base their ballots. The remarkable predictive power of preseason human polls most likely comes from the wisdom of crowds.
Massey Ratings: Based on data and statistical analysis.
AP and Coaches Polls: Human polls based on the opinions of sports writers and coaches.
Read also: Comprehensive Ranking: Women's College Basketball
3. Win Percentage
Win percentage is hardly better than flipping a coin for each bowl game.
Massey Ratings: Considers strength of schedule and margin of victory.
Win Percentage: Only considers the fraction of games won.
4. Colley Matrix
The Colley Matrix does better than win percentage but not nearly as good as raw margin of victory.
Massey Ratings: Considers strength of schedule and margin of victory.
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Colley Matrix: A mathematical ranking system based on win-loss records.
5. Raw Margin of Victory
Massey Ratings: Considers strength of schedule and other factors.
Raw Margin of Victory: Only considers the point differential in games. Margin of victory doesn’t get discussed as much as strength of schedule. This lack of attention may have resulted from the old Bowl Championship Series.
6. Simple Rating System
Massey Ratings: Considers strength of schedule and margin of victory.
Simple Rating System: A ranking system based on point differential and strength of schedule.
7. The Power Rank
Massey Ratings: A comprehensive, data-driven system that considers various factors.
The Power Rank: A method developed based on research in statistical physics.
8. Sagarin Ratings
Massey Ratings: A comprehensive, data-driven system that considers various factors.
Sagarin Ratings: A computer ranking system that uses a complex formula to evaluate teams.
9. ESPN Football Power Index (FPI)
ESPN’s analytics group has developed college football rankings based the idea of expected points added (EPA), or the notion that each play of a game has a point value. Expected points added (EPA) is the points gained or lost from a play. ESPN uses EPA in college football for their FPI rankings, numbers meant to make predictions looking forward.
Massey Ratings: Focus on wins, strength of schedule, and margin of victory.
ESPN FPI: Uses expected points added (EPA) to evaluate teams.
10. S&P+
Bill Connelly, SB Nation’s college football analytics guru, writes a preview for each and every FBS team.
Massey Ratings: Focus on wins, strength of schedule, and margin of victory.
S&P+: A college football ranking system that considers success rate, explosiveness, and other factors.
11. Fremeau Efficiency Index (FEI)
Brian Fremeau uses points per possession to evaluate teams in football. Accounting for starting field position is important.
Massey Ratings: Focus on wins, strength of schedule, and margin of victory.
FEI: A college football ranking system that uses points per possession to evaluate teams.
Factors Considered by Massey Ratings
- Win/Loss Record: Winning is the most important thing, the more you win, the higher you will rank.
- Strength of Schedule: It takes into account strength of schedule to rank teams. The Massey Ratings provide exactly that incentive. Rather than simply ranking teams by straight record, Massey takes strength of schedule into consideration when ranking teams.
- Margin of Victory: Margin of victory becomes exponentially less and less of a factor the larger the margin becomes. The impact of margin of victory fades out very quickly after 30 points, and by the time you get to about 40 points, margin of victory is basically irrelevant. Winning by 40 and winning by 100 is treated roughly the same in Massey.
- Location and Date of the Game: Each team gets a “home advantage” rating based on how they perform at home as opposed to on the road, and teams that win, perform well, or schedule games in tough road environments get a small bump based on that game’s location.
- Previous Year’s Results: Preseason ratings are typically derived as a weighted average of previous years’ final ratings. As the current season progresses, their effect gets damped out completely. The only purpose preseason ratings serve is to provide a reasonable starting point for the computer.
Factors Not Considered by Massey Ratings
- Performances in Previous Seasons: By the time your team has played a few games this year, how you performed in seasons past ceases to matter to Massey.
- Subjective Talent Assessments:
- Tier Designations: Massey doesn’t acknowledge them in any way. Massey knows that quite often a great Tier II team is better than an average Tier I team.
Kenneth Massey: The Statistician Behind the Ratings
Kenneth Massey is an American sports statistician known for his development of a methodology for ranking and rating sports teams in a variety of sports. His ratings have been a part of the Bowl Championship Series since the 1999 season. Massey resides in a high neighborhood of Jefferson City, TN with his wife, a native of Sibiu, Romania.
Massey first got the idea to do sports ratings as an undergraduate at Bluefield College. He developed various rating models at that time, and presented his work in the form of an honors project. While doing graduate work in mathematics at Virginia Tech, Massey was invited by Roy Kramer, then commissioner of the Southeastern Conference and president of the Bowl Championship Series, to submit his ratings for inclusion in the BCS ranking formula.
Massey Ratings in Other Sports
Massey Ratings have been applied to women’s football since 2003. The WFA is the only league that currently utilizes these Massey Ratings for playoff purposes.
Criticisms and Misconceptions
Not surprisingly, every time a team doesn’t receive the ranking in the Massey Ratings that they feel they deserve, a few outspoken critics pop up out of the woodwork to blast the system. It never fails. I’m not opposed to such criticisms in principle, but what I do object to is that most of the time, these complaints are rooted in ignorance and a lack of understanding of what the Massey Ratings do (and do not) represent.
There are some teams that incorrectly believe blowing out their opponents will help them in the Massey Ratings. By and large, that doesn’t work.
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