Panther7 wrote:
When an unranked team kicks the crap out of Duke, do they chant "OV-ER RAN-KED" or "OV-ER RAT-ED"?
/case
But that's the exact point I am raising. When we talk about rating, we are talking about the weights given to certain metrics vs. performance. For example, a school like UH, which doesn't send students anywhere but Houston (or maybe San-A or Dallas), will ultimately suffer from rankings that give so much weight to "reputation". Because UH has such a strong hold on its own market (and we can assume that its BigLaw placement would be stronger if there were simply more Biglaw firms in Houston) UH's performance, all else held equal, would outperform its ratings and, by extension, its ranking if the weight for reputation was different. Reputation is, for most schools, primarily location-driven. Thus, UH suffers unfairly because it doesn't send or need to send its graduates outside of Houston, and certainly not outside of Texas. It out performs its rating and, thus, its ranking by extension.
If we say that a team is overranked, again, the ultimate questions are going to depend on the metrics that make up the ratings that lead to the rankings: previous year's record, previous years titles, returning seniors, all-conference players, injuries, previous year's shooting percentages, blue chip recruits (and who they play behind and at what positions), current and previous year's strength of schedule, etc, etc.
But there would also be too many intangibles: strength of non-conference schedule, preseason tournaments, point guard's year of school/age, coach's age, tv schedule, travel schedule, etc, etc. The rankings are controlled by all of those factors. What weights do they get? The system is almost always going to contain errors because you can always argue the weights. The crowd should be yelling overrated. I know they yell that at individual players.
And btw, quit talking about my team!
