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OSU’s F+ Rating

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Photo Attribution: US Presswire

Believe it or not, college football is about to enter its 8th week of the season. By now, the computer models are beginning to catch up with what is happening on the field. In my opinion, the best computer models covering college football are NOT included in the BCS rankings. You are probably at least vaguely familiar with them already, but the best computer models are Brian Fremeau’s FEI ratings and Bill Connelly’s S&P+ ratings.

Both models can be found at the outstanding Football Outsiders site. Very briefly, Fremeau’s model analyzes each possession by every team in the college football season and evaluates its success. Connelly’s does the same thing for each and every play. Both models make adjustments for strength of schedule and garbage time.

Each week, Fremeau and Connelly combine their ratings together into a single system called F+. OSU is currently 28th in the F+ ratings, good for 7th in the Big 12.

I converted the offensive and defensive F+ ratings into percentiles to make them a little easier to digest: in each category, 100% is the best, 0% is the worst. In the chart below, defense is on the X axis and offense is on the Y axis. The ideal location is the upper right area of the chart (yes, where OU is) meaning the team has an excellent offense and defense. Take a look. Each gray dot is a non-Big 12 team. Each Big 12 team is labeled. “B12” is the Big 12 average.

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A few notes:

OSU has an excellent offense (91%) but we are still only 6th in the Big 12. The average Big 12 offense is better than 80% of offenses in the country!

OSU’s defense is basically average (51%), but the problem here is how we compare to the rest of the conference. We are well below the Big 12 average of 68%. If this proves correct, we will not fare well against the great offenses of the Big 12.

Baylor – wow. According to F+, they have the best offense in the country and the 122nd best defense in the country (look for them in the far upper left corner of the chart).

OU is currently 2nd in the overall F+ ratings behind Bama. Oregon is 3rd.

According to F+, Iowa State has the 3rd best defense in the conference and the 13th best in the country.

The computer models absolutely love Texas Tech — the numbers seem to suggest that the OU game was the anomaly in their season. We’ll see.

Here are the current F+ rankings for the Big 12 and our non-conference opponents:

2) Oklahoma
4) Kansas State
5) Texas Tech
14) Iowa State
20) Texas
25) West Virginia
27) Arizona
28) Oklahoma State
29) TCU
53) Baylor
74) Kansas
83) Lafayette

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