ABOUT: Football is fun! We believe in finding relevancy in every televised game to maximize the amount of interest. Since everything is better with a good sauce, we have cooked up some statistical sauce to spice up what may look like a game between two teams that are irrelevant to your favorite team. By calculating data points like common opponents, we can frequently give you a reason why a particular game is relevant to the success of your favorite team. UPDATE: AI has made analysis like this much easier. An update will be coming.
How to get your sauce: First consider the polls, rankings, and standings explained below. This is not in our model because this analysis is subjective. Once you've considered this, select your favorite team and the teams playing in the game you plan to watch. If the model can find relevancy between your favorite team and one of the teams playing, you'll get some sauce. The three tiers of relevancy are listed below. Enjoy the game!
Polling/rankings: If a given team is ahead in polls or conference standings, you may hope they lose. In most cases, you need this team to lose at some point in the season. Strength of schedule is irrelevant if a team finishes ahead of your favorite team in the polls. However, you only hope for this team to lose to the extent that your team can move ahead of them. In other words, lose just enough to move ahead of them and no more. If more difficult games remain on this team's schedule, you may hope they win the current game so that their strength of schedule stays strong. The exception to this may be if your team is in the top 4 of the CFB playoff rankings (since getting into the playoff is the ultimate goal), but there is too much volatility in these rankings during the season, so focusing on what helps your favorite team’s schedule now is most important during the season.
Conference standings: Head to head in-conference teams carry the heaviest weight in the sauce. However, if an in-conference head-to-head team is ahead of your favorite team in conference standings, you need them to lose – just like teams that are ahead in polls/rankings. In-conference head-to-head teams check all the boxes – head-to-head, in-conference, and common opponents.
1st Tier: Teams that play your team head-to-head: If one team is a head-to-head opponent of your favorite team, this is the team you want to win. Conference head-to-head teams get priority over non-conference. For example, if your team has a head-to-head game against both teams playing in a particular game, you will prefer the in-conference team. However, if the non-conference team has a head-to-head matchup with your favorite team, you may have to hold your nose and pull for the non-conference team to boost your favorite team’s strength of schedule. If both teams or neither team is in-conference, you’ll defer to common opponents of those teams.
2nd Tier: Teams in your team’s conference without a head-to-head matchup: There is a stronger impact to strength of schedule with in-conference teams. These teams will naturally have more common opponents with your favorite team, so your team’s strength of schedule will be most impacted by a team from the same conference winning.
3rd Teir: Common opponents: If a game has no polling, conference, or head-to-head schedule correlations, we’ve got to dig a little deeper. To find relevancy between your favorite team and this team, we analyze the schedules of both teams’ opponents and aggregate common opponents. The team with the most common opponents has the biggest impact on your team's strength of schedule. In some cases, there won’t be common opponents. If we went a step further, it would create an overwhelming data set with little relevancy to your favorite team’s strength of schedule. At end of the day, we won’t be able to add relevancy to every game, but football is still fun to watch!