HOW HELPFUL IS JEFF SARGARIN'S NCAA football RATINGS

I respect the guy to the fullest, and do understand that many people live and die by his ratings, but for you guys here in the COVERS forum, how often to you use these ratings to double check your pick. I know I always give it a look, but never shy away from going against the SARG. THOUGHTS???

I agree something to look at, but doesn't make me want to shy away from a pick...

You really have to have experience using these ratings and know how and when to apply them during the football seasons. Oddsmakers have there own mathmaticians that copulate power ratings as a tool to make there own lines on games. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just kidding themselves. They are a very powerful tool for any serious and experienced handicapper.

Right now the ratings  are in the bayesian process, and until all teams are connected they really will not make much sense until teams have played several games( at least 2 months worth) Unless you have used them for years and have the knack for reading them. They're just a bunch of numbers

They work best toward the later stages of a season (November on).as team profiles and caliber of compitition ( SOS) is formed and RAW offensive and defensive true differentials emerge.

I have been using them for years and to me they are GOLD. You just cant take the difference of team A's rating and compare it to Team B's rating and add 3 points for HFA and have the true line difference of a matchup. Thats ludicris. Its more intricate than that.

Its an art to understand and apply these ratings through the NCAA/NFL footbal season. Someday I would like to write a book on it.

GL  and if I can help anyone with trying to understand them, feel free to chime in with me anytime.Thats what this forum is really about. Not the nonsense that I see on here most of the time.

im sure you have already seen this but...

SARGARIN has: ECU rated 50 with a RATING of 74.46

 while                 VA TECH rated 54 with a RATING of 73.61

VATECH has an amazingly hard schedule(according to the ratings) but cmon 20 pts??? According to SARGARIN's ratings ECU and VATECH are very similar, not 3 score difference...What do you think, love to hear some feedback guys

with only 2 games into the season can you really take account the strength of schedule rating?? i mean VA tech did just lose to JMU...

JFish,

Thats a tough call because I only work with dogs that are higher on the power rating chart and have a 12- to-  20 pt advantage in schedule number. However, I have played dogs later in the season that were higher on the chart with the weaker schedule.

 I still like to wait until the first wk in Oct. to find my dog plays with the 12-20 pt advantage in schedule that are higher on the chart. As the season goes on the  12 pt adv schedule dog that is higher on the chart becomes stronger but limited in number of plays you can find.

There are many variables to these ratings. What I like to do with college is hit my dog plays hard in Oct ( flats and teasers only) then wait until conference tournament games when both teams are on a neutral field.

Then you take Team A's last 3 or 4 road opponents ratings they played  and  avearge it out.This will give you an AOPR ( average opp power rating)  for Team A and the same for Team B.

Once you have Team A's and Team B's last 4 road AOPR , you then will have to find out by how many points Team A is beating their average opp's power  rating by and compare it to how many points Team B is beating thier AOPR by 

I will give examples tommorow of what Im trying to say, Im tired

What this means is that ECU has a positive true differential because they are winning games Scoring more(PF) than they are giving up (PA)  to an average opponet rating of 60.

VTech obviously has a negative true differential Giving up more PA than they are scoring (PF) The ratings shows this by each teams placement on the chart. VT is losing by so many points to an 82 AOPR. The teams basicly crisscrossed  on the chart. One team(ECU) is winning by a high scoring margin to weaker compititon raising thier stock, and VT (high profile team) is losing by so many points to stronger compitition dropping thier stock.

 Its still early in the season but whenever I have seen an underdog like ECU that is higher on the chart with the weaker schedule it could be a play, especially at +19.5

19.5 points is way to many points for VT to cover imo. Oddsmakers are still giving them to much credit. I say its a close game

Its always important to see where teams stand with thier own numerical rating. # 50 ( 74.4) vs # 54 (73.5).

The more important number is the Schedule # which is actually that teams  AOPR that the team has played to that date The Rank number is schedule rank: ie 3rd toughest schedule 75th toughest schedule 144th schedule and so on.

appreciate it WIZERGUY

some interesting stuff, would def. buy the book if it were on the shelves.

Many think its just a bunch of prince poppycock.

.......its for real. Dont forget to make weekly copies of NCAA/NFL power ratings because you will not find the prior weeks ratings in JS archives. Then once we get to the later stages of the seasons. Then I can advise on the other variables.

any way to get the first two weeks, have not even tried looking just responding to your post... will be printing them out so we can compare some notes WIZER, gotta love covers.

You still have until Saturday night to get week 2...get it while the gettins good, because after that it will be gone forever. It really doesnt matter about wk 1's ratings just as long as you start today making copies of wk 2 and so on...DO IT!!!!!!

JFISH...where can I see Jeff Sargarin's ratings?

Thanks and good luck crushing books!

Nice Bro!!!