Grading the Rankers, VanDelay Sports

The folks over at VanDelay run about one of the best sources of MAC info out there and they have released their 2009 MAC football predictions. Its been awhile since I did a 'grade the rankers' and this is one of the few I can find which is complete for 2009 and for which I can find their 2008 predictions. For those of you who are not familiar with VD's MAC blog what it lacks in appearance it more than makes up for with content and organization.

VanDelay's Pigskin Preview

	Correlation	2008 Grade
East	50	57
West	68	92
Overall	59	75

VanDelay did pretty well last year as pretty much everyone gets a pass on the east because in addition to Miami falling flat any number of plays from any number of games shuffles around the top 4-5 teams.

VanDelay Sports (2009)

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

Mac Smack (2009)

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

The Pigskin preview stands out in several ways:

Most noticeably they have Ball state at the cellar of the MAC West, you have to love Coach English of the Eagles and Toledo's Beckman but to see either of those teams eclipsing Ball State this season is way out of whack with what most people, myself included, were expecting. They were one of the publications calling for Ball state to take it all last year so maybe they have a pulse on the cards but I would be surprised if BSU falls short of 7 wins and amaze if they fall short of 6.

In addition to Ball State falling off they have the Huskies falling below Toledo making them the only preview not to have NIU following after some iteration of Western and Central Michigan.

On the east side they are thus far the only publication that has had Temple lower than 3rd in the east and have Ohio finishing higher than anyone else at second. Looking at temples favorable schedule its hard not to seem them coming in first or second in that division.

Miami cost Van Delays 22 points last year (10 for division crown and 12 for placement) 25 if you count that their terrible season kept Ohio from finishing second to last but they fared about as well as everyone else in 2008.

Pigskin Preview 2008

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

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 for their east and their scores:

	Sporting News	The Quad	VanDelay
2008 Grade East	61	40	57
2008 Grade West	96	79	92
Correlation East	75	83	50
Correlation West	89	100	68

With four sets of data its also probably worth putting up the average team rankings.. each teams score is their average ranking...

West	Score	East	Score
CMU	1.25	Buffalo	1.50
WMU	1.75	Temple	2.25
NIU	3.25	BG	3.50
Ball State	4.50	Ohio	3.50
Toledo	4.50	Akron	4.75
EMU	5.75	Miami	6.00
		Kent	6.75

If anyone out there knows of a preview for which I can get the 2009 and 2008 data plaease 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.