Ratings and Tiers on a Monday Morning...post Labor Day

Here are the current records and ratings as we move in the fall - with three countries in three different parts of their seasons:

Down under, in Australia, the season is over and the Finals start this weekend! Eight of our top nine rated teams are the eight teams in the playoffs, and the ninth place team (Port Adelaide) finished with a flurry to tie for sixth in the ratings, just a game out of contention. Here are the seedings, the games this weekend, and how our Following Football Ratings compare:

1. Hawthorn (85.7), seeded third, travelling to Perth to play on Saturday against...
2. West Coast (84.7), seeded second, in a blockbuster of a Qualifying Final. 
3. Sydney (76.7), seeded fourth, also flying west for a Qualifying Final at Fremantle.
4. Richmond (72.7), seeded fifth, hosting an Elimination Final against North Melbourne.
5. Adelaide (70.8), seeded seventh, travels to Western in the other Elimination Final.
6. Fremantle (62.9), slumping but still seeded first, hosting Sydney in a Qualifying Final.
8. North Melbourne (62.5) goes to Richmond as the eighth seed, and
9. Western Bulldogs (61.7), hosts Adelaide as the sixth seed. 
--> In the Elimination Final, as the name suggests, the loser is eliminated, and the winner goes on. But in the Qualifying Final, the top four teams play each other: the losers plays the winners of the elimination games, and the winners get next week off and play the survivors of those matches for the chance at the title in the Grand Final. That's why being top four is so important in the AFL: that "double chance" has meant that no team from below fourth place has won Grand Finals in twenty years! You can see who's hot and who's struggling right now: as good as Freo was early, they've been ordinary the last two months; while Hawthorn and West Coast are definitively the best teams going right now - and have to play each other right off the bat. It would NOT surprise us to see them meet again in three weeks at the MCG in the last game of the year...

In Canada, we're halfway through the season, and the ratings are lining up more and more with the standings:

1. Hamilton (43.9) leads the East at 7-3.
2. Calgary (40.4) leads the West at 8-2. 
3. Edmonton (34.7) is two games back of Calgary at 6-4.
4. Montreal (30.9) is climbing and hot, even though they're still just 4-6.
5. BC Lions (28.0) moved up with a big win this weekend, passing...
6. Toronto (27.1), who sits in second at 6-4 in the East.
7. Saskatchewan (25.0) finally won a game and sits 1-9, but they've been close all along!
8. Ottawa (21.6) continues to progress, having started the year at 10. (They're 5-4.)
9. Winnipeg (18.9) sits at 3-7, floundering on most fronts.

In the US, of course, we're just getting started! We consider it far too early to rank teams - preseason polls are counterproductive, in our opinion. However, we do take it upon ourselves to group teams into tiers, for prognostication purposes, so we have something we can base our predictions on. So, here are our tiers for the NFL, the FBS, and the FCS, as of September 8th, 2015:

NFL - Tier I: New England, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Denver, Dallas, Philadelphia, Green Bay, Seattle, and Arizona.
Tier II: Buffalo, Miami, Cincinnati, Houston, San Diego, Kansas City, NY Giants, Detroit, Minnesota, Carolina, New Orleans, Atlanta, and St. Louis.
Tier III: NY Jets, Cleveland, Jacksonville, Tennessee, Oakland, Washington, Chicago, Tampa, and San Francisco.

FBS ("Division 1A"): Tier I: Clemson, Florida St, Georgia Tech, Michigan St, Baylor, Oklahoma, UCLA, USC, Utah, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Ole Miss, Louisville, NC St, Wisconsin, Oregon, Miami-FL, TCU, Boise St, Arizona St, Mississippi St, Ohio St, Notre Dame, Alabama, and Texas A&M.
Tier II: Temple, Houston, Navy, Boston College, North Carolina, Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, Northwestern, Kansas St, Louisiana Tech, BYU, Colorado St, Stanford, Florida, South Carolina, Appalachian St, Cincinnati, Maryland, Illinois, Iowa St, Oklahoma St, Texas, Western Kentucky, Northern Illinois, San Diego St, California, Kentucky, Memphis, Duke, Virginia Tech, Minnesota, West Virginia, Marshall, Washington, and Arizona.
Tier III: East Carolina, U Conn, Wake Forest, Pitt, Virginia, Indiana, Penn St, Rutgers, Kansas, Texas Tech, Middle Tennessee, Rice, Southern Miss, UTEP, UTSA, Bowling Green, Toledo, Western Michigan, New Mexico, Utah St, Fresno St, Hawai'i, Nevada, Oregon St, Arkansas St, Texas St, UCF, USF, Syracuse, FIU, Old Dominion, Ohio, U Mass, UNLV, Georgia Southern, Purdue, Central Michigan, Air Force, San Jose St, Vanderbilt, and UL-Lafayette.
Tier IV: SMU, Tulsa, FAU, Army-WP, Akron, Wyoming, New Mexico St, South Alabama, Troy, UL-Monroe, Tulane, Kent St, Georgia St, Idaho, Charlotte, North Texas, Buffalo, Miami-OH, Ball St, Eastern Michigan, Washington St and Colorado.

FCS ("Division 1-AA") - The numbers are designed to line up with the FBS schools - generally, the top tier here matches Tier III in the FBS, so we number these III through VI for now:
Tier III: North Dakota St, Montana, Montana St, Southern Utah, James Madison, Illinois St, South Dakota St, Southern Illinois, Youngstown St, Western Kentucky, Sam Houston St, Idaho St, Northern Arizona, Portland St, New Hampshire, William & Mary, Eastern Illinois, SE Louisiana, Chattanooga, Eastern Washington, Western Illinois and Jacksonville St.
Tier IV: North Dakota, Weber St, Charleston Southern, Towson, Missouri St, South Dakota, Bryant, St Francis-PA, SE Missouri St, Tennessee St, Tennessee Tech, UT-Martin, Drake, Jacksonville, Abilene Christian, Northwestern St-LA, Stephen F Austin, Sacramento St, Wofford, Gardner-Webb, Presbyterian, Dayton, San Diego, Central Arkansas, Furman, Cal Poly SLO, Coastal Carolina, Liberty, Richmond, Villanova, Northern Iowa, and Samford.
Tier V: UC Davis, Delaware, Stony Brook, Duquesne, Sacred Heart, Wagner, Murray St, Campbell, Marist, Morehead St, Stetson, Lamar, McNeese St, Mercer, The Citadel, Western Carolina, Northern Colorado, Albany, Central Connecticut, Monmouth and Maine.
Tier VI: Elon, Rhode Island, Austin Peay, Davidson, Valparaiso, Incarnate Word, Nicholls St, E Tennessee St, Kennesaw St, Robert Morris, Butler, Houston Baptist and VMI.

Also technically in the FCS are the Ivy and Patriot Leagues, but since they choose not to compete in the championships, we've dubbed them the intramural division of 1-AA, and ranked them separately (these rankings still mesh with the FBS and other FCS tiers, however): 
Tier IV: Harvard, Bucknell, Colgate, Fordham, Dartmouth, Yale, and Holy Cross.
Tier V: Brown, Penn, Princeton, Georgetown, Lehigh and Lafayette.
Tier VI: Columbia and Cornell. [Remember, the Ivy League hasn't played a game yet, so these are guesses based on past performance so far.]

Finally, there's the HBC, or the Historically Black Colleges, who also chose not to participate in the championships so they could have one of their own on ESPN! Here are their tiers after one game:
Tier IV: Bethune-Cookman, Morgan St, NC A&T, South Carolina St, Alabama St, Alcorn St, Southern and NC Central.
Tier V: Hampton, Howard, Norfolk St, Jackson St, Mississippi Valley St, Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Delaware St, Texas Southern, Alabama A&M, Grambling St, and Prairie View A&M.
Tier VI: Savannah St and Florida A&M.

Current Ratings and Tiers...

Here's something we haven't posted in awhile, at least not formally... Here are the Following Football ratings system numbers for the AFL and CFL, respectively. (50 is average on the AFL system; 30 is average for the CFL clubs.)

AFL)
Hawthorn (15-6) - 89.1 (set a record rating in their hot streak at 108.1)
West Coast (15-5-1) - 80.1
Adelaide (13-7-1) - 78.7 (at their high for the year, playing their best for the year)
Sydney (15-6) - 76.0
Richmond (14-7) - 72.7
Western (14-7) - 68.3
Fremantle (17-4) - 62.9 (the low rating is very indicative of the way they've played the last month)
Port Adelaide (11-10) - 62.8 (similarly, the Power have played like a finals team recently)
North Melbourne (13-8) - 62.5
Geelong (10-9-2) - 48.2 (the large gap indicates the Cats really didn't belong in finals this year)
Collingwood (10-11) - 43.1 (down from their high of 60.0 before calamity struck)
GWS (11-10) - 40.8 (the last of the "competitive" teams)
St. Kilda (6-14-1) - 27.7 (started the season at 10.8)
Gold Coast (4-16-1) - 24.9 (started at 46.7 before the injuries hit)
Melbourne (6-15) - 20.2
Essendon (5-16) - 19.1 (have dropped over thirty points since round 9)
Brisbane (3-18) - 17.7
Carlton (4-17) - 4.9 (a record low; started the season at 37.5)

CFL)
Hamilton (6-3) - 41.6 (a product of the dominant nature of their victories)
Calgary (7-2) - 40.3 (started the season #1 and has declined from a very high 46 rating since)
Edmonton (6-3) - 34.8
Montreal (4-5) - 33.4 (surprisingly high for a 4-5 team, but their last two wins were impressive)
Toronto (6-3) - 28.9 (surprisingly low for a 6-3 team, but down five points since week 5)
BC Lions (3-5) - 25.5
Saskatchewan (0-9) - 23.5 (indicative of the close losses most games have been)
Ottawa (5-4) - 21.6 (climbed a long way from the sub-10 rating at the end of last year)
Winnipeg (3-6) - 20.4

As for the National Football League and the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision, we use a tiered system, especially at first, to separate groups of teams, refusing to distinguish close differences until a larger body of work allows us to do so more accurately. We strive to start from a neutral perspective for all teams to begin with, but the combination of what we see and hear in pre-season and the recent history of each team does make it almost necessary to break the body up into largish groups - as we mentioned yesterday, we're pretty sure Oklahoma will still be better than Georgia State this year!

So, here are our opening tiers for the NFL, with teams in no particular order:
Tier I: New England, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Green Bay, Seattle, Arizona, Denver, Baltimore, Dallas and Philadelphia.
Tier II: Buffalo, Houston, KC, Carolina, St. Louis, Miami, New Orleans, Detroit, San Diego, Cincinnati, NY Giants, Atlanta and Minnesota.
Tier III: Chicago, Jacksonville, NY Jets, Cleveland, Washington, Oakland, Tampa, Tennessee, and San Francisco.
> Assuming those could be completely wrong is always a good idea - like the CFP committee, we try to start fresh every week and re-evaluate each team on its then-current body of work. If San Francisco kicks the Vikings behind from here to Malaysia, we'll adjust their position accordingly.

And finally, college football starts this weekend! We've divided the 128 FBS teams into four general tiers to start from, but rather than write them all out here, just take last year's final list and draw dividing lines at the quarter marks, about 32 to the tier. That's not a bad estimation of our starting groups! Wednesday, we'll lay out our predictions for the OFFICIAL opening week of the college football season, as well as Round 23 of the AFL season and the eleventh week of the CFL! (If anyone's betting on the last pre-season games of the NFL, when the starters probably won't even play... you deserve whatever you get.) 

Alright, so we're experimenting here...

To be frank, we're not all that satisfied with our ELO rating system, for either Australian Rules Football or for the Canadian brand in the CFL so far this season. It's doing an adequate job of forecasting the outcome of games, but no better than what we can do on our own - and in the CFL, that's saying something!

Sidelight: Here's how unpredictable the CFL has been so far this year. For comparison, we'll start with the footy season...

In the tipping contest AFL.com.au is running, the range of scores from the contestants spans from a low right around 50% correct (flipping a coin) to a high of 77% (we are currently running very close to the top, around 75%). An average score is around 60%. Got all that?

For the CFL contest, there have been eight games played so far. 
NOBODY has gotten all eight right.
Only TWO people (out of 11,000) have gotten SEVEN right.
We have successfully predicted only three out of the eight games so far, worse than fifty-fifty...yet we are in the top-half of the contest (the average score is about 2 1/2 right, out of eight). 
We are still doing better than the professionals, however: BoDog, the official gambling outlet for the CFL, has posted the line for each game and been WRONG 75% choosing the winner. 
Impressively, the CFL.ca writer in charge of predicting games for the league, Jamie Nye, is five for eight so far - WAY above average!
The problem has been the quarterbacks: So many have been knocked out of games that the favorites become the underdogs DURING the game! In four of the games already, starters have left the game for the favorites, leaving the underdogs to rise up and win. Two others were severely altered by substitute QB play, one in either direction (we can't WAIT to see Marshall's Rakeem Cato play again for Montreal!).

So, back to our experiment:

One of the difficulties with taking as your starting point the way a team ended the previous season is that they change so much over the off-season, and your rating can't keep up because you can't know how those changes will work. So we're re-calculating the seasons in various different ways, by hand, and placing more emphasis on the first of the season games and then tapering off to the normal rate of adjustment as the teams settle in. So far, though, while we've created versions that match the more conventional ratings and power rankings, we've not been able to make one which more accurately predicts the games themselves, which was the entire point of reworking the model. 

So, we're still re-working the model. Until then, you'll continue to see the version we've been running. By the way, speaking of that...

CFL - entering Week 3
Hamilton (41.5) - 1-1
Toronto (35.1) - 2-0
Calgary (32.9) - 1-1
Edmonton (30.4) - 0-1
Montreal (29.8) - 1-1
BC Lions (27.4) - 0-1
Saskatchewan (27.0) 0-2
Ottawa (24.4) - 2-0
Winnipeg (21.5) - 1-1

AFL - entering Round 15
Hawthorn (82.8) - 9-4
West Coast (78.5) - 10-3
Sydney (70.0) - 10-3
Fremantle (67.1) - 12-1
Richmond (61.0) - 8-5
Collingwood (60.0) - 8-5
Geelong (57.7) - 6-6-1
Port Adelaide (56.1) - 5-8
Adelaide (52.8) - 7-5-1
North Melbourne (52.2) - 6-7
Western Bulldogs (44.8) - 8-5
GWS Giants (41.7) - 7-6
St. Kilda (36.4) - 5-8
Gold Coast (31.6) - 2-11
Melbourne (30.8) - 4-9
Essendon (30.1) - 4-9
Carlton (26.5) - 3-10
Brisbane (18.9) - 2-11