Sunday, January 30, 2011

M-P's Super Bowl

It all comes down to this. For the teams, for M-P, for all rankings. All year M-P has loved the Packers, and while the Steelers may have closed out the regular season second in week 17’s ranking (GB was fourth), the Pack hold claim to the highest average rank and highest average points over the course of the regular season. What sets the relationship between GB and M-P apart, however, is in comparison to other ranking systems. Here we’ll take a look at how M-P treated the Super Bowl combatants over the course of the season relative to how Covers.com (stats based) and ESPN (voter based) did. Although not discounted by M-P in the slightest, PIT was the darling of Covers.com and ESPN more so than M-P. Interestingly, though, M-P liked GB overwhelmingly more than the other systems.

We’ll toot our own horn second, and first take a look at PIT.



Covers.com clearly had a thing for the Steelers all season. PIT was Covers’ highest rank team on average, had the lowest variance in rank over the course of the season, and had the highest average point total (note that Covers.com ranks teams on the opposite scale as M-P). Likewise, ESPN had PIT ranked highest on average over the course of the season and the Steeler’s had the fourth lowest rank variance in the Power Ranking system of the monopolist of sport’s news.



Not to be outdone, M-P liked PIT, too, but perhaps not as much. At the end of the regular season, the Steeler’s had the third highest avg rank (4.8), third highest average points (4.4), and were top 10 in lowest rank variance. In fact, M-P liked PIT more and more each week as the team quickly accumulated points, but the team had to earn M-P’s respect. For instance, despite a Week 1 OT win over Atlanta that impressed ESPN and Covers.com (to say nothing of the prior success or high expectations bias those two systems may or may not have had for PIT, or more accurately the “surprise” reflected in those systems of the success of PIT in the absence of Big Ben), M-P scoffed at PIT’s low scoring efficiency (a highly weighted factor) of 15 points on 354 net yards, and over reliance on the run (a low weighted factor – PIT won on a 50 yard Mendenhall run in OT). However, as the team improved over the course of the season, M-P duly took notice.



As for the Packers, M-P was never far off the trail while ESPN and Covers jumped off the bandwagon fast and early. The Packers arrival in the Super Bowl is great validation for the team M-P ranked highest on average and to which M-P awarded, on average, the most points. Instead of my words, let the figures speak for themselves.









2 comments:

  1. That's some steady picking there.
    Where can I find your final week 17 rankings of all teams? I'd be interested to see what MP thought of many teams across the league.

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  2. Thanks, SKOHR. You can find each of the weekly rankings on the "Past Weeks" tab.

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