Date of Award
2014
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Natural Sciences
First Advisor
McDonald, Patrick
Keywords
Football, Ranking Systems, Bowl Championship Series
Area of Concentration
Applied Mathematics
Abstract
Ranking college football teams is a difficult task, due to the large number of teams and relatively short schedule. Many ranking systems exist, but few publish their methodology. Even fewer contain any evaluation of the predictive accuracy of their rankings. This thesis develops three regression-based ranking systems and tests them for predictive accuracy against the six computer components of the Bowl Championship Series rankings, which were used to decide college football's national champion from 1998-2013. Two of the methods perform favorably compared to the BCS computer rankings, beating or tying all six. These relatively strong results, along with the scarcity of other such analyses within the literature, indicate that further research in this area could be fruitful.
Recommended Citation
Saunders, Kyle, "PREDICTIVE RANKING SYSTEMS FOR AMERICAN COLLEGE FOOTBALL" (2014). Theses & ETDs. 4841.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/4841