CBS weighted Best in College Sports - UConn #14

[huskypantz]

I like the weights they assign:
300 CFB
200 MBB
100 WBB
100 baseball
100 wildcard sport

A mere mediocre football season would have netted us anywhere from 7-10, as would the inclusion of FH in the wildcard choices. They only include FBS schools in the ranking.

RankSchoolFootballMen's BBWomen's BBBaseballWCTotal
1Stanford198128836468.25541.25
2Michigan State25514650073524
3Louisville180128737350504
4Florida State30020502590485
5Baylor18912873083473
6Oregon207100105083450
7Oklahoma State17150646485434
8South Carolina2400645050404
9LSU184.520645085403.5
9UCLA175.512800100403.5
11Oklahoma220.55025095390.5
12Wisconsin1561660058.5380.5
13Texas A&M16820735064375
14Connecticut0200100073373


http://www.cbssports.com/general/best-in-college-sports

 

[UConnDan97]

I'm never sure how to feel about this type of analysis. The scoring is so random and somewhat ridiculous. Is football 50% more important in weight than men's bball and 3x more important than women's bball? Should women's gymnastics get the same scoring potential as women's bball, but women's field hockey is not eligible for anything? (by the way, we are the national champs in field hockey also). Should we be awarded 0 points out of 100 for a 3-9 football season? Should men's soccer (presumably) only be awarded 73 points for a top 25 ranking and an Elite Eight finish?

All that can be said honestly with an analysis like this is that we are an elite athletic department, and the country recognizes that fact. To draw any more conclusions as to how high up the food chain we are, based on the CBS math, is probably sketchy at best. But hey...I'll take our three national championships and brag like hell about them!!!

 

[huskypantz]

I think it's a decent nonscientific approach to weighting. You could base the weighting on viewer ratings or contracts or some combination of both. Or possibly polling of college sports popularity. It's all just a guess but ultimately it should be weighted and most sports have little import in the bigger picture.

 

[Dooley]

I'll keep saying it until someone does something about it (other than exclude UCONN from the P5 for some foolish reason): UCONN's athletic department is better than AT LEAST 1/4 of those very fortunate grandfathered ADs. Probably more than a 1/4 of 'em.

But yeah...Wake. Ugh.

 

[AZHuskiePop]

There an old saying
"Figures don't lie but liars do figure"
I could easily make UConn numer 1 . But that would be my bias.
Weighted results are really subjective not objective.
This is the type of analysis that has helped kill American Manufacturing.
We once had a small product line(by using product line P&Ls essential weighting ) it was determined to be losing significant money.
We dropped the product only to discover that not one person could be let go.
In essence we gave away over a million dollars annually in incremental business.

 

[UConnDan97]

I think it's a decent nonscientific approach to weighting. You could base the weighting on viewer ratings or contracts or some combination of both. Or possibly polling of college sports popularity. It's all just a guess but ultimately it should be weighted and most sports have little import in the bigger picture.

Well, if it's going to be weighted based on which sports are impacting "the bigger picture", then you might as well only rank football and men's basketball (at about 5 to 1 or worse). In terms of women's basketball; we might be one of the very few schools, if not the only one, that has a multi-million dollar deal for our women's hoops teams. And I highly doubt that the viewership and money values raise an eyebrow for any one of the other sports like baseball, soccer, or hockey, until maybe they hit the playoffs.

So I suppose the bigger question is what CBS is trying to accomplish. If they are trying to accomplish a measurement to figure out which schools have done well in the "money sports", then they have failed by giving weight to the sports that don't really contribute. If they are trying to accomplish a measurement to figure out which schools have done well in all sports, then they have failed by not giving nearly enough weight to the non-monetary sports...

 

[huskypantz]

There an old saying
"Figures don't lie but liars do figure"
I could easily make UConn numer 1 . But that would be my bias.
Weighted results are really subjective not objective.
This is the type of analysis that has helped kill American Manufacturing.
We once had a small product line(by using product line P&Ls essential weighting ) it was determined to be losing significant money.
We dropped the product only to discover that not one person could be let go.
In essence we gave away over a million dollars annually in incremental business.

Non-weighted results are equally unscientific, especially in college athletics.

 

[UConnDan97]

Non-weighted results are equally unscientific, especially in college athletics.

But again, "unscientific" to what end? What is the desired result?

If the desired result is to find the most successful athletic department across all sports, then non-weighted results are actually the ONLY way to be scientific!

If the desired result is to find out how well schools are doing in the money sports, then they should just weigh the sports against the average of dollars that they bring to schools. Then you can heavily weigh football, less heavily weigh basketball, and nearly disregard the rest.

Any "happy medium" of the two objectives is subjective...

 

[huskypantz]

But again, "unscientific" to what end? What is the desired result?

If the desired result is to find the most successful athletic department across all sports, then non-weighted results are actually the ONLY way to be scientific!

If the desired result is to find out how well schools are doing in the money sports, then they should just weigh the sports against the average of dollars that they bring to schools. Then you can heavily weigh football, less heavily weigh basketball, and nearly disregard the rest.

Any "happy medium" of the two objectives is subjective...

The desired result is to identify the top performing athletic departments over the course of the prior school year. You would actually be introducing weighted results by NOT weighting the data. For example, the percentage chance that a school will win the MCB championship is 1 in 320ish. The percentage chance that a school will win the women's water polo championship is 1 in 50ish. Further, schools sponsor different numbers of sports.

 

[UConnDan97]

The desired result is to identify the top performing athletic departments over the course of the prior school year. You would actually be introducing weighted results by NOT weighting the data. For example, the percentage chance that a school will win the MCB championship is 1 in 320ish. The percentage chance that a school will win the women's water polo championship is 1 in 50ish. Further, schools sponsor different numbers of sports.

IF that was the criteria with which they were weighted, then it would be one thing. But you and I both know that it was NOT the way that it was weighted, seeing as the women's bball should therefore be awarded the same amount of points as the men's bball (same amount of teams competing at D1). I would have accepted that type of analysis.

No, that's not what CBS sought to achieve. What it seems to me that they sought to achieve was a semi-statistical analysis of some "surprise" schools performing well in the more notable sports. To the extent that UConn surprised someone by being toward the top of the list, the publicity was good. But the overall health of an athletic department should have included more weight to those sports not named "football", and if that were to happen, UConn would be even higher...

 

[freescooter]

I don't know how they picked the wild cards. Seems a little arbitrary eliminating a traditional womens sport and one where we won a title! Seems like we ought to be a bit higher if you consider we won 3 national championships, not 2 in 2013-14. I'm guessing that there aren't more than a handful of schools that have ever done that in a single year.