Grading the Rankers, CFN (Scout)

Scout is one of the larger integrated sports publishing companies out there. Scout directly provides more than two million people with content making Scout the most read independent sports publisher in the country. So its no surprise than in July and August folks tend to start to look for their annual preview. They finished up the Mid American Conference last week and I am finally getting around adding them to the 'grading the rankers' series.

Slowly some consensus is starting to build around Buffalo and Central Michigan winning their divisions. Western Michigan continues to be seen paired with CMU as the two legitimate powers in the MAC. Only up to five polls so far and I expect more to roll in so we will see how things work out as the summer rolls on.

CFN (Scout)

	Correlation	2008 Grade
East	58	54
West	78	74
Overall	64	64

The Quad Finally has some company as previews that failed last year. They are also the most off of MAC-Smacks 2009 predictions so I can hope they are as wrong last year as they were this year (disclaimer: I root for Buffalo so I hope that CFN is right on the Bulls).

CFN (2009)

West	East
Central Michigan	Buffalo
Western Michigan	Bowling Green
Toledo	Akron
Northern Illinois	Miami
Ball State	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Temple
	Kent

Mac Smack (2009)

West	East
Central Michigan	Temple
Western Michigan	Buffalo
Northern Illinois	Bowling Green
Ball State	Akron
Toledo	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Miami
	Kent

Temple finishing 6th in the East kind of seems way off, This year should either be like last year (contender for the east) or better. Temple has enough returning talent and enough quality new blood that they should challenge, if not win, the MAC east division. Nobody has picked them to finish lower than 4th and a 4-8 season with only two conference wins would probably, and rightly so, put Al Golden on the hot seat.

Kent Remains the only team to be picked last in every poll while Miami gets their best look so far being predicted to finish 4th in the East. Outside of Temple and Miami everything shapes up pretty much in line with other publications.

In the west Ball State gets picked to finish 5th, what people are seeing in the Cardinals I don't know. Losing Davis, Hoke and so much of the OL is going to bite them quite a bit but do people honestly think they will fall lower than Toledo and EMU who both had poor seasons last year and are breaking in new coaches?

Scout is one of the few that does not just predict finish but also the records and individual game results. They have Buffalo winning The East with a 6-6,5-3 over Bowling Green by head to head tie breaker. They have Central Beating Buffalo setting up a a similar situation to 2007 when Miami won the East with a 6-6 and was 6-7 after losing the championship game to Central Michigan (thus technically Bowl Ineligible)

Scout did a terrible job picking the MAC last year, the worst yet having Miami finishing 1st and Buffalo finishing last. Not to mention Ball State finishing 4th and Toledo finishing second.

MAC Media 2008

West	East
Western Michigan	Miami
Toledo	Bowling Green
Central Michigan	Ohio
Ball State	Temple
Northern Illinois	Akron
Eastern Michigan	Kent
	Buffalo

Mid American Conference 2008

West	East
Ball State	Buffalo
Central Michigan	Bowling Green
Western Michigan	Temple
Northern Illinois	Akron
Toledo	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Kent
	Miami

So far here are the polls I have seen and their scores:

		Sporting News	The Quad	VanDelay	MAC Media	Scout CFN
08 Grade East		61	40	57	56	54
08 Grade West		96	79	92	79	74
Correlation East		75	83	50	67	58
Correlation West		89	100	68	89	78

Another seeming low pick for Ball State shakes up the West a bit and and there seems to be a trend in the east with Temple and Bowling Green, who have the benefit of not playing each other, fighting over second place. The tie breakers that might be brought to bear in the east get really ugly With Buffalo, Bowling Green, and Temple let alone the other teams in the east.

West	Score	East	Score
CMU	1.20	Buffalo	1.40
WMU	1.80	Temple	3.00
NIU	3.40	BG	3.20
Toledo	4.20	Ohio	3.80
Ball State	4.60	Akron	4.40
EMU	5.80	Miami	5.60
		Kent	6.80

As always if anyone out there knows of a preview for which I can get the 2009 and 2008 data please give me a shout..

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The Criteria for grades is as follows: Correspondence Score:

• Penalty Points: For every spot off a team is between predictions a single point is taken off (Example: SN picked Central to win the West, I picked them second so that's minus one per team, or I picked Temple to win the East and SN pick them to finish third that would be minus two).
• Total Points: The total points is the maximum number of penalty points for a division, for the 6 team west that is 18 points and for the 7 team east that is 24 points.
  
• Score: The penalty points are taken from the total points (18 for the west, 24 for the east) and then a simple percentage is calculated. For the west there were two penalty points (one for CMU and one for WMU) so that's 16 points out of a possible 18 or 88.5%

Mac-Smack Prediction Grade:

• Predict the Conference Champ: 10 points, if your predicted champ finishes second, 5 points.
• Predict the Worst Team in the conference 6 points, if your predicted worst finisher places second to last, 3 points.
• For each team in the west if you predict correctly their place 14 points, if you are one place off 12 points, two places off 9 points, three places off 5 points, four places off 1 point.
  
• For each team in the east correctly predicting correctly will get you 12, one place off 11, two places off 8 three places off 5, four places off 2, five places off 1.