"I get a kick out of these. I could put out a list that would have about as much stock."
"Personally, I don't get why Hamilton gets so much love in these rankings, I get that they are the best in the East but I think 4 out of 5 teams in the West are better than they are."
"Ultimately who cares?"
That's just a little bit of the feedback that my CFL ratings have earned via this thread on the RiderFans.com forum. But I want you guys to know I hear you! And if it weren't for the need for a forum moderator to confirm my account, I'd be typing up this reply on your forum instead.
Let me kick off by explaining how the ratings are generated.
The ratings come solely from the scores of the games. The goal is to reduce the difference between expected and actual results. To do so, I have one cell in Excel that adds up the squares of those differences. I use a plugin called Solver to find automatically a rating for each team which achieves the smallest sum possible, given results of games played.
Since we're only looking at game results, we're not taking into account some of the context surrounding any of the teams, unless that context becomes quantifiable.
Was your team's ownership recently transferred to the CFL?
Has your team not won a single Grey Cup since 1990?
Did your team just lose its starting quarterback for the rest of the year due to injury?
Unless that shows on the field, specifically in the final difference in scores, it won't show up in the ratings.
I almost always note in my blog posts when I expect things could go differently from how my ratings predict they will. That's why it's very important to read the posts for more than just the images that accompany them.
Now, something else important to note is that the ratings are not weighted for recent results. That means that the Hamilton Tiger-Cats' week 2 50-point win in Toronto is just as important to their rating as their 1-point win over the Lions in week 9. That's why the Ti-Cats are falling much more steadily than one might expect.
But here's some good news. I did a test run of a new system that weighs recent games more heavily than early games.
The bad news, for Rider fans, is that the Tiger-Cats still come out ahead in the new system. The good news? The Roughriders are rated significantly better with the weighted system. With this in mind, I'd say they're in good shape to take the top seed in the West, which puts them in a great position to contend for a Grey Cup championship.
I'm not going to switch completely over to a new system for my ratings before this season ends, but I'll be keeping an eye on how well this weighted system works for predicting things, and maybe I'll completely switch over to it for 2020.
In the meantime, be sure to leave any thoughts in the comments here, and don't forget to subscribe if you think you'll enjoy keeping track of the CFL this year with me.
"Personally, I don't get why Hamilton gets so much love in these rankings, I get that they are the best in the East but I think 4 out of 5 teams in the West are better than they are."
"Ultimately who cares?"
That's just a little bit of the feedback that my CFL ratings have earned via this thread on the RiderFans.com forum. But I want you guys to know I hear you! And if it weren't for the need for a forum moderator to confirm my account, I'd be typing up this reply on your forum instead.
Let me kick off by explaining how the ratings are generated.
The ratings come solely from the scores of the games. The goal is to reduce the difference between expected and actual results. To do so, I have one cell in Excel that adds up the squares of those differences. I use a plugin called Solver to find automatically a rating for each team which achieves the smallest sum possible, given results of games played.
Since we're only looking at game results, we're not taking into account some of the context surrounding any of the teams, unless that context becomes quantifiable.
Was your team's ownership recently transferred to the CFL?
Has your team not won a single Grey Cup since 1990?
Did your team just lose its starting quarterback for the rest of the year due to injury?
Unless that shows on the field, specifically in the final difference in scores, it won't show up in the ratings.
I almost always note in my blog posts when I expect things could go differently from how my ratings predict they will. That's why it's very important to read the posts for more than just the images that accompany them.
Now, something else important to note is that the ratings are not weighted for recent results. That means that the Hamilton Tiger-Cats' week 2 50-point win in Toronto is just as important to their rating as their 1-point win over the Lions in week 9. That's why the Ti-Cats are falling much more steadily than one might expect.
But here's some good news. I did a test run of a new system that weighs recent games more heavily than early games.
The bad news, for Rider fans, is that the Tiger-Cats still come out ahead in the new system. The good news? The Roughriders are rated significantly better with the weighted system. With this in mind, I'd say they're in good shape to take the top seed in the West, which puts them in a great position to contend for a Grey Cup championship.
I'm not going to switch completely over to a new system for my ratings before this season ends, but I'll be keeping an eye on how well this weighted system works for predicting things, and maybe I'll completely switch over to it for 2020.
In the meantime, be sure to leave any thoughts in the comments here, and don't forget to subscribe if you think you'll enjoy keeping track of the CFL this year with me.
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