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UW-Madison ECE 539 - Using Clustering to Develop a College Football Ranking System

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Using Clustering toDevelop a CollegeFootball Ranking SystemFall 2005ECE 539 Final ProjectJoseph DetmerJoseph Detmer Page 1 ECE 539AbstractThis project went through the task of creating a college football ranking system based purely on statistics. This data was obtained from two impartial websites. The algorithm (explained in greater detail below) first clusters the data and then places this clustering into an equation where the final rank is resultant from. It was found that a reasonable system was created. Data from our test data was very close to that of polls taken.IntroductionBeing a former soccer player, I have long since been wary to embrace the game of football. The game was back and forth, long, and there was a lot of time between the actual “action.” High school football is not all that entertaining, and Inever really was able to embrace a professional or collegiate team, feeling too distant from any particular team. Then I came to college. Games were much more exciting – the amount and enthusiasm of fans, the athletes were bigger, and the skill of the players very much improved. Not many other things can make thousands of people wake up early on a cool Saturday morning in the fall to go sit in a parking lot grilling brats several hours. While professional football isextremely exciting, college football is not far off, and is held higher by some people. Whether it be an unranked team upsetting a highly ranked opponent, a national title game, or an alma mater is playing the always hated arch-rival, college football entertains millions.At the end of each season, any college football team that has at least 6 wins is eligible for a bowl. Since 1998, a computer system has been in place to determine the top college football teams in the country. The initial purpose of the system was to match “equal” teams up to play in exciting contests for more than just the national championship game. This system brought the top four bowl games together, letting each have a turn for the national title game. These bowls2Joseph Detmer ECE 539initially had been reserved for the champions of the best conferences. This new system allowed a good team from a somewhat weaker conference to play in a big game at the end of the season. Any system created to predict how good a team is or who wins a game will eventually fail. There are too many factors that cannot be taken into account, such as star players being injured, an amazing strategy developed by a coachingstaff, or just a team having an off day. This process of determining who the best is will be done by determining on the average, which team is the best.MotivationThe most difficult question to determine is, how do you qualify how “good” a teamis? Is it their record? Is it how many points they score, total yards of offense they have, or turnovers they create? If one was to look up statistics for college football teams, one could find any kind of stat they would ever want. For example, one could find the rankings of all teams average yardage on 1st down inthe 3rd quarter, if you wanted it. However, such information seems slightly too specific for the question of how “good” a team is. Most experts would agree that a combination of many factors can be combined into a quantitative representation of how good a team is. The BCS system uses several computer models combined with polls to determine its rankings. I will create a system using only a computer model.In this project, it was determined that the data necessary for determining how good a team is would be done by a small subset of general data. These data points will not directly corresponding to inputs to the system. Each data set will first be clustered into several clusters. Data from one year will then create a function from the clustered data. This function will be applied to a second years (2004) data, which will result in a test set. 3Joseph Detmer ECE 539Data CollectionThe first and most difficult part of the project was getting the necessary data. The first thing that was necessary was to decide what statistics are most influential in how good a team was. As above, there are a huge amount of statistics that could be retrieved. Which ones should be chosen? We want a large enough set of data to have good results, but not so large that the statistics become redundant and the data difficult to obtain. The problem was initially broken up into pieces:- Offense- Defense- Special Teams & Turnovers- Record & Strength of ScheduleThese four pieces can more easily be handled than the whole together.Offense:A good offense is integral to how good a team is. If a team is never able to scorepoints, it will never win a game. It is not unusual for defense to score points, but to count on them for the entire point production of a football team would be suicide. So how do we decide how good a team is? Rushing yards have proven to be a very important part of a football team. If a team cannot run the ball consistently, it is difficult to tire a defense. Passing yardage is also extremely important. Passing can produce quick points, or keep the ball in your possessionlate in the game. However, a balanced attack is truly the key to a good offense. While teams that have either a solid running game or solid passing game can sometimes be effective, a team with both is much better. Having a good rushing game and a good passing game keeps the defense guessing what will come next. Finally, we must remember that yards mean nothing if a team does not score. Offensive scoring is therefore an integral part. This leaves us with 4 data4Joseph Detmer ECE 539sets for offense:- Rushing yardage- Passing yardage- Total Offensive yardage- Offensive ScoringDefenseThe saying is “Offense wins games, Defense wins championships”. But how do we determine how good a defense is. Most would say the exact opposite of determining how good an offense is. Therefore for likewise reasons as in the offense section, our data sets for defense are:- Rushing yardage allowed- Passing yardage allowed- Total yardage allowed- Total Defensive points allowedSpecial Teams & TurnoversWhile offense and defense are a huge part of football, a lot of the time, games come down to special teams. If neither team can produce any yards on offense, the team with better field position will more likely win. I was hoping to find a statistic for average starting field position. However after a


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UW-Madison ECE 539 - Using Clustering to Develop a College Football Ranking System

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