Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

In part one of this year's math-based preseason analysis of the college football season, we looked back at the 2024 season. Through that analysis, we learned about the historical accuracy of preseason polls (plus-or-minus 25 positions) and regular season win totals (plus-or-minus 2.5 wins). We also explored the impact of changes in ability, schedule, and luck. Now it is now time to shift focus to the 2025 season. Over the years I have developed and refined a way to simulate the entire college football season using schedule information and preseason rankings as the only inputs. I will soon go through the full details of what I learned from this exercise.  For today, I will focus exclusively on what it says about the Michigan State Spartans. We will take a close look at the Spartans' 2025 schedule from three different points of view. Opponent Overview The best place to start this analysis is with the simulation's inputs. Figure 1 below summarizes the preseason rankings (w...

I have always been fascinated by the intersection of math and sports. Over the past several years, I have developed and refined a set of mathematical tools that I use to help me better understand the worlds of college football and basketball. With the 2025 college football looming, it is time to open up the analytical toolbox and see what we can learn. Before we dive into the upcoming season for the Michigan State Spartans and beyond, it will be helpful to review the results of the past season. General Lessons from the Past During the summer college football fans and sports analysts have limited information. However, there is no shortage of various predictions about rankings, win totals, conference champions, and playoff participants. But how accurate are these predictions, historically? After studying this data for several years, the simple answer is that on average, the experts do a good job, but there is also a significant amount of variance. More quantitatively, I have deve...