LSU's remaining class for 2009: projections

What is the rivals, crazy, gorilla math formula for team rankings again? Is it only the first 22 players? I forget.

 

its pretty easy to remember

H * ( n / ( n + m ) ) + L * ( m / ( n + m ) )


So, let's look at this in its most general form. The total points is the sum of H times something and L times something. Leave the somethings alone for a moment. What are H and L?

H = potential High score = 250 for every five-star, 140 for every four-star, 75 for every three-star, 20 for every two-star and 10 for every one-star

L = potential Low score = 18 for every five-star, 12 for every four- star, 8 for every three-star, 3 for every two-star and 1 for every one-star

WE ONLY LOOK AT THE TOP 20 SIGNEES for this part. We end up with two numbers, a High and a Low. A team's final score is going to be between these two numbers. I'll use Team Z for an example:

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EXAMPLE: Team Z (2 five-stars, 17 four-stars, 8 three-stars, 2 two- stars). Team Z's top 20 recruits then are 2 five-stars, 17 four-stars, and 1 three-star, which gives them an H of 2955 and an L of 248.

Z's score will be somewhere between 2955 and 248.
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OK, now how do we figure out where in this range the final score is?
Time to look at the other two elements of the formula:

( n / ( n + m ) ) and ( m / ( n + m ) )

The variable m is just a constant. We happen to use 50, but it doesn't matter. Changing it just changes the "spread" of the numbers...I picked 50 because it gave us nice-looking numbers without changing the actual places of the teams.

The variable n is the important one. This is the one that changes.

This is where the math gets a little more complex. Notice that as n gets higher and higher, then the expression on the left approaches 1 and the expression on the right approaches 0. As n gets lower and lower, the opposite occurs: the expression on the left approaches 0 and the expression on the right approaches 1.

So, shorthand: AS N GETS HIGHER, A TEAM'S SCORE APPROACHES ITS H. AS N GETS LOWER A TEAM'S SCORE APPROACHES ITS L.

When I try to explain this to people on the boards (which I don't do any more) I didn't want to just reveal the formula, so I asked users to envision a scale, on one end is a high number and on the other end is a low number. And a slider that slides between them, pointing to the actual number somewhere in between.

OK, so what goes into calculating n? Here's where all the factors come in that are just lifted from the old formula. The variable n starts out as 0. And then we add:

--Ten points for every commit in the Rivals100 from 1 to 10, nine points for every commit in the Rivals100 from 11 to 20, and so on down to one point for every commit in the Rivals100 from 91-100.
--The same for every commit in the Rivals100 Juco and the Rivals100 Preps, only we only go down to the top 50 on those two lists, not the entire 100.
--24 points for every commit that is the Number 1 player at an official Rivals Position Ranking.
--18 points for every commit that is number two, three, four, or five at an offical Rivals Position Ranking.
--8 points for every commit that is number six through number X at an official Rivals Position Ranking.

This last one varies by position. Each position has a different cutoff. For kickers, for example, we add 8 to n if a commit is ranked from 6 through 10. But at wide receiver we give it all the way down to 50. Every position has its own cutoff. I didn't dream up the cutoffs...I just used the ones that were there in the original formula, devised by Jeremy Crabtree in 2001.

--The last thing we add to n is the amount over 3.0 for the star rating of the entire class, times 100. For example, if your class is an average 3.03 stars, we add 3 to your n.

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EXAMPLE: Continuing with Team Z, they have five commits ranked on the Rivals100...

--Two from 21 to 30 (worth 8 each)
--One from 31 to 40 (worth 7)
--Two from 51 to 60 (worth 5 each)

Z also has one commit ranked in the top 50 on the Juco list (worth 6 for being 41-50) and one on the Prep list (worth 10 for being 1-10).

Z has one player ranked as the tops in the nation at his position (worth 24), five ranked from second to fifth at their positions (18
each) and 16 ranked from sixth on down to their position cutoffs (8 each).

Finally, they have an average star rating of 3.66, which gives their n another 66 points.

All told, Z's value for n is 357.

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So there you have all of the parts of the formula. For our Team Z
example:


H * ( n / ( n + m ) ) + L * ( m / ( n + m ) )

2955 * ( 357 / 407 ) + 248 * ( 50 / 407 ) = 2622

So, when a team that drops nominally wants to know what happened, these are some of possibilities:

--Their average star rating might have gone down a little. Say, they're hovering near 3.0 right now, but if a team's star rating is below 3.0 we don't dock them points, we just don't add any to n.

--A player might have moved down a list. If they had a player in the Rivals100, ranked, say, at 24, and he dropped to 44, that's a couple of points lost on their n. Even bigger is if a player dropped in his position ranking, from the second-to-fifth range into the sixth-to- whatever range, or dropped off the list entirely.

 

Figuring out the atomic number of popcorn would be easier...

 

Man I hope Benton gets in, I've been waiting to see him play for two years now.

 

I encountered some folks in Plano last weekend, who told me that Plano Senior High's star RB, Rex Burkhead, is an LSU lean at this point. He's a Jacob Hester prototype--and has over a 4.0 GPA, great kid.

Is LSU still looking at him?

 

TB3,

Great explanation! Very interesting.