David Ranks the Big 12 in 2015

Last year I tried my hand at predicting the Big 12 football season based on a ranking formula I was developing. The results were unimpressive. Last year's predictions relied too heavily on the previous year's performance, and as a result teams like TCU and West Virginia, who had rocky seasons in 2013, were massively underrated. This year, not only has my entire rating formula been reworked, but I've put a lot more into the preseason ranking formula as well. You can read all about the rankings, and view the rankings for all 128 FBS teams, on my site, blanalytics.com. For RCT's purposes, I'll be focusing on only the Big 12.

Just to give you a brief overview of what "PSR" (Predicted Success Rating) is, it's a formula composed of statistical areas that have correlated the highest with winning percentage over the past three seasons. In essence, it's designed to tell you how good a team is a doing the things that winning football teams do. To rank the teams this preseason, I took last year's performance and applied a formula that takes into account last year's performance, recruiting ratings over the past four years, performance over the last three years, and returning starters (including returning starters at key positions). The rating numbers should give you a general idea of where my metric places the team compared to average (every PSR rating is adjusted so that a 100 rating is the average FBS team), and what their trajectory appears to be from last year's results. Overall, my model sees the conference on an upswing in 2015, but it also had several Big 12 teams ranked a bit lower last year than other models. Without further ado, let's look at the numbers:

Questions? Comments? Feel free to email me at penhawkrct@gmail.com, or tweet at me @bl_analytics