Category Archives: Football
2021 Expected Win Total Machine – Vanderbilt
2021 Expected Win Total Machine – South Carolina
2021 Expected Win Total Machine – Missouri
2021 Expected Win Total Machine – Kentucky
2021 Expected Win Total Machine – Georgia
2021 Expected Win Total Machine – Florida
2021 SEC Projected Records and Standings
In case you missed it last Friday, we’re inviting our readers behind the curtain to participate in the production of this year’s annual preseason football content. For the next week or two, we’ll be giving you an opportunity to weigh in on the projected records and standings for the SEC.
The end goal here is projected standings for each division of the SEC, but we don’t want to just jump to the finish line on the question. Instead, we’ll walk through the schedule for each team and make an educated guess as to the outcome of each game. That gives us each team’s projected record (and also any necessary head-to-head tiebreakers) from which we then determine projected division standings.
Regular readers will recognize the Expected Win Total Machine below. It doesn’t ask for wins and losses, but instead your level of confidence for a win in the form of some number out of 100. Think of it as a percentage (but don’t include a percentage symbol in your answer or the machine will complain). For instance, if you feel really good about Tennessee beating Bowling Green in the season opener, you’ll put something like 90 or 95 in the Bowling Green input field. If you feel really bad about Tennessee’s chances against Alabama, you’ll put something like 5 or 10 next to that game. When you’re finished, hit the submit button, and the machine will spit your projected win total back at you. It will also log your game-by-game entries into our system so we can come up with community numbers we’ll use for the preseason content.
We’ll compile that data into a fan expected win total and include that number in the preseason content. We’ll also convert it into expected wins and losses and use it to come up with projected records for each SEC team and standings for each division.
This is a Vols community, so we’re going to start with Tennessee just to get our feet wet. Here’s how it’s going to work:
Let’s get started. Here’s the link to the first form. We will add the other teams periodically over the next week or so.
If you haven’t weighed in on the Power Rankings yet, you can do that here:
2021 Expected Win Total Machine – Tennessee
Help us write a Vols football preseason publication: 2021 Power Rankings
Yes, 2021 is a Season of Change for the Tennessee Volunteers football program, and we’re turning to face the strange ourselves with this year’s preseason publication. We’re inviting you along for the process, asking for input on several key pieces of content.
First up is our Preseason College Football Power Rankings. We don’t usually publish these in any form, but use them primarily as a building block for much of the rest of the publication. Previews, projected records and standings, the stock watch, and other content depend to some degree on the Power Rankings.
The Power Rankings are compiled first using a formula, and then subjected to human overrides, which is where we (and you) come in.
Here’s the first draft, the formula-only results. It’s a baseline, and now it’s up to us to tell it where it’s wrong.
| 1 | Alabama |
| 2 | Clemson |
| 3 | Oklahoma |
| 4 | Georgia |
| 5 | Ohio State |
| 6 | Texas A&M |
| 7 | Florida |
| 8 | Oregon |
| 9 | Wisconsin |
| 10 | North Carolina |
| 11 | Cincinnati |
| 12 | Notre Dame |
| 13 | Texas |
| 14 | USC |
| 15 | Iowa |
| 16 | Iowa State |
| 17 | Penn State |
| 18 | Washington |
| 19 | BYU |
| 20 | Miami (Florida) |
| 21 | Indiana |
| 22 | Arizona State |
| 23 | Utah |
| 24 | Auburn |
| 25 | Oklahoma State |
| 26 | Coastal Carolina |
| 27 | Northwestern |
| 28 | Virginia Tech |
| 29 | Michigan |
| 30 | Mississippi |
| 31 | Louisiana-Lafayette |
| 32 | Nebraska |
| 33 | Minnesota |
| 34 | UCF |
| 35 | Appalachian State |
| 36 | LSU |
| 37 | West Virginia |
| 38 | TCU |
| 39 | Louisville |
| 40 | Liberty |
| 41 | Pittsburgh |
| 42 | UCLA |
| 43 | Maryland |
| 44 | Purdue |
| 45 | SMU |
| 46 | Tennessee |
| 47 | Buffalo |
| 48 | Kentucky |
| 49 | North Carolina State |
| 50 | Arkansas |
| 51 | Memphis |
| 52 | Boise State |
| 53 | Mississippi State |
| 54 | UAB |
| 55 | Tulsa |
| 56 | Virginia |
| 57 | San Jose State |
| 58 | Tulane |
| 59 | Ball State |
| 60 | Baylor |
| 61 | Missouri |
| 62 | Stanford |
| 63 | Michigan State |
| 64 | San Diego State |
| 65 | Houston |
| 66 | Washington State |
| 67 | Colorado |
| 68 | Georgia Tech |
| 69 | Marshall |
| 70 | Kansas State |
| 71 | Western Michigan |
| 72 | Army |
| 73 | Toledo |
| 74 | Nevada |
| 75 | Troy |
| 76 | Boston College |
| 77 | California |
| 78 | Florida State |
| 79 | Georgia Southern |
| 80 | Wake Forest |
| 81 | Texas Tech |
| 82 | Oregon State |
| 83 | Air Force |
| 84 | South Carolina |
| 85 | Central Michigan |
| 86 | Ohio |
| 87 | Georgia State |
| 88 | Fresno State |
| 89 | Wyoming |
| 90 | UTSA |
| 91 | Illinois |
| 92 | Colorado State |
| 93 | Florida Atlantic |
| 94 | East Carolina |
| 95 | Western Kentucky |
| 96 | Rutgers |
| 97 | Navy |
| 98 | Arizona |
| 99 | Rice |
| 100 | Southern Mississippi |
| 101 | Duke |
| 102 | Kent State |
| 103 | Syracuse |
| 104 | Arkansas State |
| 105 | South Florida |
| 106 | Miami (Ohio) |
| 107 | Eastern Michigan |
| 108 | North Texas |
| 109 | Hawaii |
| 110 | Vanderbilt |
| 111 | Florida International |
| 112 | Temple |
| 113 | Northern Illinois |
| 114 | Kansas |
| 115 | Charlotte |
| 116 | Texas State |
| 117 | South Alabama |
| 118 | UNLV |
| 119 | Louisiana Tech |
| 120 | New Mexico |
| 121 | Middle Tennessee |
| 122 | Akron |
| 123 | Bowling Green |
| 124 | Louisiana-Monroe |
| 125 | Utah State |
| 126 | Massachusetts |
| 127 | UTEP |
| 128 | Old Dominion |
| 129 | New Mexico State |
| 130 | Connecticut |
Don’t let us over-influence you, but here are some of the teams we’re thinking may be ranked too high:
- Texas A&M
- Florida
- Oregon
- Wisconsin
- Texas
- BYU!
- Northwestern!
And here’s a list of teams that are currently looking too low to us:
- Iowa State
- Michigan
- Ole Miss
- Louisiana
- LSU
If you have any opinions, leave them below.