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Right after James Snyder mentioned just how overrated the Auburn Tigers, Oklahoma State Cowboys, and Texas Longhorns were in this season’s first AP Poll, Greg Guglielmo at FiveThirtyEight showed up to quantitatively demonstrate which teams are actually consistently overrated each August.
There’s a full table at the FTE link, which includes even teams “receiving votes” (ranked 26, 27, etc.) in at least 16 polls since 1997. Here are the Big Ten- (and fuck Notre Dame-)relevant teams:
overrated.csv
| Team | Avg PSR | Same | Better | Worse |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team | Avg PSR | Same | Better | Worse |
| Notre Dame Fighting Irish | 25.1 | 10% | 20% | 70% |
| Penn State Nittany Lions | 25.2 | 5% | 25% | 70% |
| Ohio State Buckeyes | 8 | 5% | 30% | 65% |
| Nebraska Cornhuskers | 19.1 | 0% | 35% | 65% |
| Michigan Wolverines | 15 | 10% | 30% | 60% |
| Michigan State Spartans | 22.7 | 20% | 35% | 45% |
| wisconsin badgers | 19.1 | 0% | 55% | 45% |
To their credit, Guglielmo notes, Penn State tends to drop marginally in the rankings if they do, while they vastly exceed expectations if they don’t. I also grudgingly note that wisconsin exceeds expectations over half the time and that Michigan State performs equal to/better than their ranking over half the time.
There’s nothing particularly indicting about these statistics, if that they continue to confirm that people think particularly highly of the Big Ten blue bloods. It’ll be fun to see Michigan State and Nebraska underperform their rankings in this year’s “receiving votes” category, though.
Oh, and fuck Notre Dame.
Poll
Which Big Ten team will fall the farthest from the first to the last AP Poll?
This poll is closed
-
6%
Ohio State
(32 votes) -
29%
Penn State
(138 votes) -
6%
wisconsin
(32 votes) -
38%
Michigan
(181 votes) -
9%
Nebraska
(43 votes) -
9%
Michigan State
(47 votes)