Question about SOS

[macus23 24]

Some of you are pretty knowledgeable about how the computers calculate Strength of Schedule so I have a quick question.

I have read that the computers will not count 2 victories over the same opponent.  With that being said, would our SOS be higher if we faced a team in the SECCG other than USCe this year, even if that team has 3 losses??? 

OR would we be better off playing USCe and not having a team with 3 losses count against us?

The reason I ask is FLA could possibly crawl back into the top 25 with wins over USCe and FSU, and that could be a quality win.

Before everyone replies with the "all we gotta do is win out and it won't matter" response, I know that already. 

I get it, trust me.  This is only a question about how SOS is calculated.

Thanks and WDE!

[Guest simonsez]

Bump

[Ronald McDonald 0]

I'd really like to know the answer to this one.

[macus23 24]

Yeah I hope someone can figure it out.

I think that I will pull for FLA the rest of the way regardless.  If they creep back into the top 25, MAYBE seeing that we beat so many top teams will prevent the dreaded split BCS national championship for us and a sympathy AP national championship for Boise/TCU.

[Lynx34 0]

I'd think we would want to play USCe as far as SOS is concerned because they're ranked and Florida is not, and even if they win out, I don't think they'd be higher than a USCe that loses once more.  The misconception about SOS is that it does not take wins and losses into account, at least not directly.  SOS is calculated using a (warning: math terns)well connected algorithm(/warning) within a given poll which will spit out some numbers and then the teans can beranked by their SOS according to that.

This is what the computer polls use to help rank teams but they each do it differently and they each do so within their own poll ignoring all other polls.  What I'm not sure of is how it uses one exactly can use its own rankings to determine SOS which is used within the rankings.  Presumably some kind of recursive algorithm is used, but I'm not sure how it'd be implemented.

As for humans, well we all know they do whatever the crap they want.

[macus23 24]

thanks Lynx,

Since it doesn't calculate wins/losses directly, that kinda explains why it wont count a win against a team twice.

But don't you think that FLA will be higher ranked coming out of that algorithm if they beat USCe head to head? 

What I'm really wondering is would I rather USCe win out, or FLA?  (We'd destroy them both so bring em on.)