The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

The traditional fans tend to treat head-2-head as the ultimate arbiter of ranking 2 teams with identical records.  
The more statistically-inclined crowd tend to treat h-2-h games as 'just another game' or data point, and don't give it special weight.

Which group is right?  Are either?  Both?!?

A&M beat Florida at home.  It was a tie game late, and with Florida nearly in position to kick a FG, they fumbled and A&M wound up kicking a FG as time expired.  Basically the closest outcome you can have, short of overtime.

Does anything else matter?  A&M is 5-1.  Florida is 5-1.  Same conference.  Played each other.  H-2-H is the tie-breaker, nothing more to see here.  


Well....maybe.  Maybe not.  What harm does it do to look deeper?
Fortunately for us, there are no wildly-imbalanced cupcake games to slant a strength-of-schedule look.  And because of that, margin-of-victory may be more useful as well.


A&M's opponents: 
0-6 Vanderbilt
6-0 Alabama
5-1 Florida
2-4 Miss State
3-4 Arkansas
2-5 Carolina...........total record, 18-20....nearly .500.

Florida's opponents:
3-4 Ole Miss
2-5 Carolina
5-1 A&M
2-3 Missouri
4-2 Georgia
3-4 Arkansas..........total record, 19-19....right at .500.
Their schedule strength has been roughly the same.

Then we should look at margin-of-victory versus nearly-even schedules.
A&M has a +50 point differential in 6 games.
Florida has a +95 point diff in 6 games.

That's a little surprising - Florida's is nearly double that of A&M's.  But how?  Well, A&M only beat Vandy by 5 points.  And their win over Florida was by 3.  But the biggie influencer on this stat is their loss:  28 points to Bama.  A total blowout.  

So while the Aggies' win over Carolina is more impressive than Florida's was, so too was Florida's win over Arkansas compared to A&M's.  And Florida's only loss, to A&M, was on a last-second FG.  

.

No, none of this is super-important.  If they both win out, Florida will get its own shot vs big, bad Bama and would then leapfrog A&M with a win.  But until then, there seems to be more people using h-2-h over MOV.  

A&M beat Florida a relative short time back. IMO it would be asinine to rank Florida over their beaten opponent. However Florida seems to have the hype machine behind them. It doesn't matter because Florida gets to play Alabama who beat A&M. Win that game and you have Florida who beat Alabama who beat A&M.That would legitimize Florida's claim vis a vis A&M.

Syllogism doesn't work in CFB.  It is known.

imo, it's more of a sliding scale than and hard/fast rule either way.

generally, h2h is just another data point, but at some point, when the data set are close enough that the true answer is lost in the fuzz, then h2h becomes the deciding factor.

uf/aTm are approaching that point. their data set are pretty similar.

interestingly, i think depending on what you're asking, i'd give different answers. if you're asking who would win in a rematch, i'd pick florida (mainly because i trust trask much more than mond, though mond hasn't been bad this year). but if you're asking if the season stopped today, who would i put in higher bowl slot/cfp, i'd say aTm deserves it due to h2h (and because the remainder of the data doesn't separate uf enough to overcome h2h). normally i'd say that is a moot point cause we definitely have more season to play. not so sure this year.

I think Florida would win 7 times out of 10 if they played again, just a guess obviously.

I'm more interested in the much more probably UF-Bama matchup.

You only get one shot in CFb to prove who the best team is. This year, it was A&M, without a doubt. 

I thought Florida was going to give Alabama a run for it late in the third but Fla keeps giving them the ball and can’t stop them. It was exciting at 35-31. 

Are you saying A&M is the best team in the country and should be in the playoffs? I believe you meant to say A&M deserved to be in the playoffs which I don't necessarily disagree with. I would like to hear your logic.