FEI Week 8: What's With A&M?

by Brian Fremeau

The FEI ratings often challenge conventional wisdom, but few seasons have provided more peculiar results than the 2014 season to date. The top five teams in the current Associated Press poll -- Mississippi State, Florida State, Mississippi, Alabama, and Auburn -- rank 18th, seventh, sixth, 14th, and 11th in this week's FEI ratings. The top five teams according to FEI -- Oregon, Georgia, USC, Arizona, and TCU -- rank sixth, ninth, 20th, 15th, and 10th in the Associated Press poll. I'm not sure about the wisdom part, but FEI is exceptionally unconventional this year.

Consider Texas A&M. Three weeks ago, the Aggies were ranked fifth in FEI. Three weeks later, following losses to three of the top four teams in the country according to conventional wisdom, Texas A&M has fallen to 84th in FEI, behind the likes of Ball State, FIU, Hawaii, and Purdue. That can't be right, can it? There are more than 100 other rating systems in the Massey Consensus and only one other system ranks Texas A&M lower than 36th this week. What in the world is FEI measuring that those systems are not?

On October 4, Texas A&M lost 48-31 to Mississippi State. The score was 48-17 in non-garbage time possessions before the Aggies added two late touchdowns to pull to within 17 points. On October 11, A&M lost 35-20 to Ole Miss. The score was 35-7 in non-garbage possessions before the Aggies added two late touchdowns to pull to within 15 points. On October 18, A&M lost 59-0 to Alabama. The score was 45-0 at the half and 52-0 after one possession in the second half, the end of non-garbage time according to FEI. In total, the Aggies lost three games by a combined final score of 142-51. In non-garbage time, the combined final score of those three games was 135-24.

There have been a total of 391 FBS games played through the first eight weeks of the season, a total of 782 single-game performances (one for each team in each game). Each of Texas A&M's last three games ranks among the bottom 100 single-game unadjusted performances of the year to date according to game efficiency. The list of teams with three or more bottom-100 GE performances to date is not a good one: SMU, Appalachian State, Eastern Michigan, Fresno State, North Texas, Troy, and Texas A&M. The Aggies ranked ninth in overall game efficiency three weeks ago. They rank 79th in overall game efficiency today.

Texas A&M has three losses of 28 points or more in non-garbage time on the books. Only SMU (five), Fresno State (three), and Troy (three) also share that distinction so far in 2014. Last year, 24 teams finished the year with three or more non-garbage time losses of at least 28 points each. The average end-of-year FEI rank of those 24 teams was 105th. Only two -- Washington State (56th) and Iowa State (72nd) -- finished the year ranked among the top 80 teams in the nation.

Yeah, but Texas A&M just played three of the top teams in the country. Losing badly isn't anything to brag about, but shouldn't opponent adjustments soften that blow? From the perspective of FEI, there is not yet enough data to confidently say so. Texas A&M has seven FBS games in the books, and only its opening weekend rout of South Carolina measures as a particularly strong result. The loss to Mississippi State is A&M's second best GFEI of the year, and only the 265th best performance nationally to date.

The Aggies aren't doing any favors for their SEC brethren either. Alabama's win was exceptionally dominant (No. 1 in game efficiency, No. 3 in opponent-adjusted game efficiency for the Crimson Tide), but Mississippi State's win over A&M is only its fourth best GFEI. Ole Miss has had four better GFEI performances than its win over A&M. Strength of schedule in the SEC has taken a hit as well, particularly for those teams that don't face the SEC West gauntlet. Missouri has a grand total of one opponent this year currently ranked in the FEI top 40: Georgia, to whom the Tigers lost at home on October 11 by a final score of 34-0. Missouri has the nation's 81st-ranked schedule according to FEI, ranked alongside the likes of Colorado State (5-1) in terms of overall difficulty.

I introduced the concept of "degree of difficulty" before the season kicked off, a measure by which arguments might be settled over which team records are most deserving of consideration for one of the coveted playoff spots. The degree of difficulty metric is based on the FEI ratings, but instead of measuring efficiency against schedule, it simply measures record against schedule. How difficult would it be for an elite team (two standard deviations better than average) to play a given team's schedule to date and achieve that team's record?

Degree of difficulty is not a substitute for FEI, but it certainly seems more likely that the playoff selection committee will reward "record against schedule" rather than "efficiency against schedule" since the loss column means so much in traditional college football rankings. To date, no team record has been more impressive than Florida State's. Along with the Seminoles, Oregon is the only other team with two victories against current FEI top 25 opponents. Oregon tops FSU (and all other teams) in FEI because those two victories were so dominant whereas Florida State had close calls, but the Seminoles remain undefeated. That is likely to matter more to the committee, and we'll find out next week whether that assumption is true. I'll continue to post the degree of difficulty table from this point forward as part of the weekly FEI column as the number of teams with two or fewer losses continues to dwindle.

FEI 2014 Week 8 Ratings

The Fremeau Efficiency Index (FEI) is a college football rating system based on opponent-adjusted drive efficiency. Nearly 20,000 possessions are contested annually in FBS vs. FBS games. First-half clock-kills and end-of-game garbage drives and scores are filtered out. Game Efficiency (GE) is a function of the starting field position and outcome of non-garbage possessions. Opponent adjustments are calculated with special emphasis placed on quality performances against good teams, win or lose.

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. SOS listed here includes all regular season games scheduled. A multifaceted approach to measuring schedule strength is available here and visualized here.

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 RMW) represent the average total games a team with the given FEI rating should expect to win against the remaining opponents on its schedule.

Offensive FEI (OFEI) is opponent-adjusted offensive efficiency. Defensive FEI (DFEI) is opponent-adjusted defensive efficiency. Special Teams Efficiency (STE) is the composite efficiency of field goal kickoff, punt, and return units. Field Position Advantage (FPA) is the average share of field position value generated by offense, defense, and special teams efficiency.

These ratings are exclusively produced from 2014 game data and are not influenced by preseason projections. Complete ratings and ratings splits for all 128 FBS teams are available here. Supplemental data including points per drive, game splits, and game factors are available as well.