We all know the transitive property does not work at all. But if your going to apply it- be balanced about it.
you just said OSU did better against 2 of their 3 common opponents- but then you focus on the one where UM did better.
You can’t reasonably make that comparison. OSU mutilated MSU in THEIR stadium, right out of the gate. UM took a long time to put them away. But that’s a rivalry game. To me- that was a dominating win by Michigan.
I don't know, maybe you are right. I've been tracking tOSU's and M's opponents by sagrin ranking all year and here are Michigan's seven wins sorted as such:
That PSU game is a major outlier. The only other teams that Michigan was able to beat by 24 or more were their atrocious OOC opponents. Ie, if Michigan is good enough to beat #14 PSU by 24 then:
- Why did they only beat #38 Iowa by 13?
- Why did they only beat #43 Maryland by 7?
- Why did they only beat #49 MSU by 22?
- Why did they only beat #85 IU by 21?
Iowa, UMD, MSU, and IU are not as good as Penn State and for some reason Michigan's games against them were closer than their game against PSU. Why?
Here is another way to look at it. I track all B1G teams games compared to each of their opponents' other B1G opponents. Here is the table:
This is sorted by last week's power ranking because this week's isn't updated yet but it will be reasonably close so that doesn't matter much. Explaining this table:
- Each B1G team has now played five B1G games.
- Each B1G team's five league opponents are ranked relative to each other based on the scoring differential against the team in question. For example, look at the tOSU row:
- PSU lost to tOSU by 13 so they are #1
- MSU lost to tOSU by 29 so they are #2
- UW lost to tOSU by 31 so they are #3
- RU lost to tOSU by 39 so they are #4
- Iowa lost to tOSU by 44 so they are #5
Penn State's worst-of-the-year performance against Michigan is an obvious outlier that just jumps off the page. It suggests that Penn State is worse than Maryland (only lost to M by 7), Iowa (only lost to M by 13), Indiana (only lost to M by 21), and MSU (only lost to M by 22).
What to do with outliers?
On the one hand, maybe this was just a particularly good day for Michigan and/or a particularly bad day for Penn State. OTOH, Michigan did something similar to Ohio State last year. The Wolverines were pretty unimpressive for an eventual B1G Champion all year last year. They only beat Rutgers by 7, UW by 21, UNL by 3, NU by 26, IU by 22, PSU by 4, and they LOST to MSU. Their only really impressive league win prior to tOSU was beating Maryland badly but even there, their 41 point win wasn't as big as tOSU's 49 point win. Then they rolled into THE GAME and looked like world-beaters for three-and-a-half hours. Does Michigan simply have another gear that they reserve for only their best opponents? Michigan's 2021 B1G opponents ranked against each other:
- MSU beat them
- Nebraska lost to them by 3
- Penn State lost to them by 4
- Rutgers lost to them by 7
- Ohio State lost to them by 15
- Wisconsin lost to them by 21
- Indiana lost to them by 22
- Northwestern lost to them by 26
- Iowa lost to them by 39
- Maryland lost to them by 41
MSU, UNL, PSU, and RU were absolutely NOT better than tOSU last year. We know this because tOSU beat them by 49, 9, 9, and 39 points. Also, Iowa was NOT one of the worst teams in the B1G last year. I'll concede that they were overrated due to playing in the weaker division but they weren't worse than more than half of the eight B1G teams that did better against M than they did.
