by Brian Fremeau

In the infinite wisdom of the college football playoff selection committee, the stage is set for the first-ever Final Four FEI national championship bracket. No. 1 Auburn will face No. 4 Oregon in Glendale, Arizona, on January 10. No. 2 Virginia Tech will face No. 3 Stanford in Miami, Florida, on January 3. New Year's Madness is about to begin.

Actually, no major upsets disrupted the BCS title game picture over the weekend, and little changed in this week's FEI rankings. There was a slight shuffling in rank order, but the top teams played as expected (or better) in their final regular season tests. Auburn throttled South Carolina, Oregon rolled over Oregon State, Oklahoma held down Nebraska, and Virginia Tech topped Florida State. We were anticipating the possibility of system-crashing chaos over the final weeks of the season, but chalk ultimately won out.

Boise State and TCU won't have a national title shot this year, and college football fans will forge ahead as they have always done. FEI doesn't think that the Broncos or Horned Frogs measure up particularly well with the elite power conference teams in 2010, but that doesn't mean they couldn't compete if given the chance. But as Boise State, TCU, Utah, Auburn, Cincinnati, and others have experienced in the past, the opportunity to earn a BCS championship game berth and access to the exclusive two-team playoff is only partly within a team's own control. Win every game on your schedule, then hope that two other teams don't impress voters and computers even more.

The most startling team at the top of the FEI final regular season ratings is Virginia Tech. Back when the Hokies lost consecutive games in less than five days to open the season, it appeared that they were on their way to a nightmare season. Eleven consecutive victories later, they hold the nation's fourth-longest winning streak -- and dominated most of those games along the way. I won't rehash the conversation about my decision to not include FCS games in my ratings data here, but I do realize that my original hypothesis about Virginia Tech needs to be re-examined.

I was convinced that, over the course of the season, the Hokies other 12 games would provide more than enough data to mitigate the missing FCS data. When Appalachian State defeated Michigan in 2007, the Wolverines' 9-3 record in its other 12 games confirmed our end-of-year suspicions about both teams. It was an historic upset at the time of the game, but it was more of a garden-variety upset in retrospect. Appalachian State was likely the equivalent of a top 75 or top 60 FBS team that season. An upset of a team ranked around 20th is certainly an upset, but not one that merits bewilderment.

But this season, the Virginia Tech resume outside of the loss to James Madison is very impressive. Meanwhile, James Madison proceeded to lose five conference games in FCS play. Kenneth Massey runs one of the BCS computer models and publishes rankings of college football teams in all divisions. He ranks Virginia Tech No. 9 overall and James Madison No. 104 overall out of 720 teams, FBS through NAIA. He also publishes a "least likely results" metric to identify the on-the-field outcomes that most conflict with the ratings. JMU over Virginia Tech ranks first, an order of magnitude more unlikely than other recent FBS upsets.

There's obviously something to be said for the unique circumstances that led to the James Madison game outcome -- short turnaround, weather, psyche. But did lowly JMU knock off the second-best team in the nation? Was this a Chaminade over Virginia, a once-in-a-generation result? Because I discard the FCS data, FEI probably overrates the Hokies a bit. I ran a test of the FEI formula and plugged in a loss for Virginia Tech to a team equivalent to the No. 120 team to see how it might affect the ratings for Virginia Tech and every other team. Surprisingly, that one result did not affect Virginia Tech's opponents or disrupt the overall ratings for everyone besides the Hokies. It did drop Virginia Tech to No. 8.

I am not comfortable plugging in a single, arbitrary rating for every FCS team, but I am comfortable revising my hypothesis about the Hokies. Virginia Tech was a unique circumstance and is likely not the second-best team in college football. But the Hokies are likely one of the 10 best teams in college football, and somehow, a Top 10 team suffered an extraordinarily unlikely upset at the beginning of the year. Virginia Tech will face its toughest opponent of the season against Stanford in the bowl game, but regardless of that outcome, it's clear they had one hell of a year. From hell and back, in fact.

FEI Drive Summary Breakdowns

Previous drive summary breakdowns:

• Week 10: LSU 24, Alabama 21
• Week 12: Utah 34, San Diego State 31
• Week 12: Stanford 38, California 0
• Week 13: Nevada 34, Boise State 31

The FEI system "watches" each game as a series of alternating possession and breaks down the scoreboard value of each possession to the offensive, defensive, and special teams units that contributed to that value.

In the drive summary breakdown tables below, the white fields represent basic box score drive data. The yellow fields represent the component values that contribute to each team's scoring, according to FEI efficiency metrics. Offensive drive value (ODV) is the scoring value produced (or forfeited) by the offense in the given drive, including the value of driving into field goal range. Field goal value (FGV) is the value produced (or forfeited) by the field goal unit on attempts. Extra point value (XPV) is the value produced by the point-after unit touchdown drives, including two-point attempts. Field position value (FPV) is the expected score value of the drive based on starting field position alone. The gray fields represent the component values of FPV. Automatic field position value (Auto) is unearned drive value based on national average score expectations from possession alone. Punt or kickoff return value (Ret) is the value above or below average produced from the kick return that initiated the drive. The remaining value (Seq) is produced from the sequence of defensive and special teams events that preceded the drive.

The total score values include only non-garbage possessions and are the only data that is included in the weekly FEI ratings. When applicable, garbage possession data is provided as a reference, including first-half clock-kill possessions. The start of garbage time at the end of a game is calculated retroactively from the game's conclusion as a function of the score margin and the remaining possessions to be played.

There weren't any special requests for drive summary breakdowns this week, and to be honest, I had a hard time identifying any particular games I really wanted to see broken down. But I thought it might be interesting to show the differences between two games, and the Conference USA championship and Big 12 championship were good candidates.

Conference USA Championship: Central Florida vs. SMU

Big 12 Championship: Oklahoma vs. Nebraska

An average football game may have 24 total possessions, 12 for each team. But in the first half of the Conference USA championship game, SMU had the ball only three times. At the conclusion of the 16th game possession, Central Florida took over and took a knee to kill the final 10 seconds of the game. At the conclusion of the 16th possession of the Big 12 championship game, 1:58 was left in the first half and 10 more points would be scored.

None of the offenses in either game produced much scoring value. The key difference in possession value between the two games was simply automatic drive value created by the pace of each game. An average offense against an average defense would be expected to score more than twice as much in the Big 12 championship game as the Conference USA championship game based on starting field position alone. Pace of the game matters, and these games are a good example of why.

Three and Out

Previous drive stat splits and team resumes:

• Week 3: Three-and-outs, Available Yards, and Explosive Drives
• Week 4: Reaching the Red Zone, Methodical Drives, and Late and Close Efficiency
• Week 5: Converting 10+ Yard Drives Into Scores, Points Per Possession, and Scoring After Three-and-outs
• Week 6: Yards Per TD Drive, Playing With 2- or 3-Score Lead, Third Downs Per First Down Series
• Week 7: FEI Team Resumes for South Carolina, Arizona State, and Utah
• Week 8: FEI Team Resumes for Oregon, Wisconsin, and Georgia
• Week 9: FEI Team Resumes for Iowa, Miami, and Baylor
• Week 10: FEI Team Resumes for Arkansas, Michigan State, and Texas
• Week 11: FEI Team Resumes for Pittsburgh, Texas A&M, and San Diego State
• Week 12: FEI Team Resumes for Mississippi State, Nevada, and Florida International
• Week 13: FEI Team Resumes for Stanford, Ohio State, and TCU

In the tables below, the Game Efficiency, Offensive FEI, Defensive FEI, and "Game" FEI (GFEI) for each team in each game is provided. The ranking of those individual unit and game performances is also provided. Note that there have been 682 FBS vs. FBS game played to date, meaning that there have been 1,364 individual game performances for each category.

The opponent FEI ranking is also provided, as well as a general relevance factor (Rel) for the particular GFEI, OFEI, and DFEI results for that team in that game. As stated in the FEI principles, my system rewards playing well against good teams, win or lose, and punishes losing to poor teams more harshly than it rewards defeating poor teams. In the formula, the relevance factor is partly a function of the relative ratings of the two teams. Across all games, the least relevant results receive about one-eighth as much weight as the most relevant results. For simplicity, I've generalized the relevance data here into three equally distributed categories, High, Med, and Low.

Another comparison is due to Oregon and Auburn, your BCS championship game participants 32 days from now. Based on the last 14 weeks, these are clearly two of the best teams in the country, and it ought to be a pretty competitive game. Lining up the resumes helps clarify FEI's very high opinion of the Tigers and raises a few initial questions about the matchup in January.

FEI clearly loves the Tigers. Oregon's vaunted offense hasn't dominated possessions quite as prolifically as Auburn's has, but the biggest disparities between the two teams comes from opponent adjustments. According to FEI, Oregon faced only three top 60 defenses, and none since the October 2 game against Stanford. Auburn's offense has faced nine top 60 defenses. Defensively, the Tigers have faced five top 30 offenses, while the Ducks have faced only two. Auburn has played its best opponent-adjusted football on both sides of the ball this season in its last two weeks.

The 15-13 California game is the only real albatross on Oregon's resume, but with a low relevance rating, it isn't dragging down the Ducks FEI too dramatically. Overall, though, the Ducks really have only looked like the nation's best team once this year, and it was more than two months ago. Auburn may not cruise in the BCS Championship, but its past performances suggest it is capable to controlling the game.

As Bill Connelly mentioned yesterday, we are debating about whether or not Miami (Ohio) is the worst conference champion of all time, the worst bowl participant of all time, the worst nine-win team of all time, etc. FEI really doesn't think much of the Redhawks' resume, as you can see. According to the mean wins formula, a team of their caliber would be expected to win only 4.6 games to date. They went 6-0 in games decided by a single score, and four of those games came against opponents ranked No. 93 or worse. Based on drive efficiency and average luck, they probably should have won only three of those six games. Good for them for defying the odds, and good luck to them in trying to keep that streak alive.

If you have a suggestion for an FEI team resume, drive summary breakdown, infographic, or other data you'd like to see, drop me a line on Twitter (@bcfremeau) or in the comment section here. I'm happy to answer data inquiries and provide team tables for bloggers interested in investigating the data themselves.

FEI Week 14 Top 25

The principles of the Fremeau Efficiency Index (FEI) can be found here. FEI rewards playing well against good teams, win or lose, and punishes losing to poor teams more harshly than it rewards defeating poor teams. FEI is drive-based, not play-by-play based, and it is specifically engineered to measure the college game.

FEI is the opponent-adjusted value of Game Efficiency (GE), a measurement of the success rate of a team scoring and preventing opponent scoring throughout the non-garbage-time possessions of a game. FEI represents a team's efficiency value over average. Strength of Schedule (SOS) is calculated as the likelihood that an elite team (two standard deviations above average) would win every game on the given team's schedule to date. SOS listed here does not include future games scheduled.

Mean Wins (FBS MW) represent the average total games a team with the given FEI rating should expect to win against its complete schedule of FBS opponents. Remaining Mean Wins (FBS RW) represent the average expected team wins for games scheduled but not yet played. Bowl games are included in this week's data.

Offensive FEI (OFEI) and Defensive FEI (DFEI) are the opponent-adjusted ratings of all non-garbage-time drives from scrimmage. Field Position Advantage (FPA) is the share of the value of total starting field position for the season earned by each team against its opponents. Field Goal Efficiency (FGE) is the point value per field goal attempt earned by the field goal unit.

Only games between FBS teams are considered in the FEI calculations. The FEI ratings published here are a function of the results of games played through December 4.

FEI ratings for all 120 FBS teams are listed in the stats page section of FootballOutsiders.com. Click here for current ratings; the pull-down menu in the stats section directs you to 2007 through 2009 ratings. There are also now separate pages for offensive and defensive FEI ratings for 2010.

Posted by: Brian Fremeau on 08 Dec 2010

7 comments, Last at 12 Jan 2011, 11:32am by TV_Pete