Marc Stein may be getting a little upset at John Hollinger over the next few days. Hollinger is upstaging Stein by bringing in a daily Power Rankings list. He's using an automated formula (which is very long...I've put it at the bottom of this post for those who are interested.
It's actually a really cool formula and a great idea! The one thing I wish they would add is an RSS feed so I can get the ratings in my Inbox every morning. Sure, they may lose a few page views from people who just look at that and move on but I think they would gain readership because people would be reminded of the daily updates.
I would also love to see a trends graph showing how my team has done over a week, month and over the season.
But I'm not going to complain too much. I love the numbers and love that it's a power ranking created by a computer rather than a human. That can cause problems sometimes (please see BCS for more on that) but when you're just doing power rankings, I think it's awesome.
Here's the formula:
RATING = (((SOS-0.5)0.037)*0.67) + (((SOSL10-0.5)/0.037)*0.33) + 100 + (0.67(MARG+(((ROAD-HOME)3.5)(GAMES))) +
(0.33*(MARGL10+(((ROADL10-HOMEL10)*3.5)/(10)))))
SOS = Season Win/Loss percentage of team's opponents, expressed as a decimal (e.g., .500)
SOSL10 = Season Win/Loss percentage of team's last 10 opponents, expressed as a decimal (e.g., .500)
MARG = Team's average scoring margin
MARGL10 = Team's average scoring margin over the last 10 games
HOME = Team's home games
HOMEL10 = Team's home games over the last 10 games
ROAD = Team's road games
ROADL10 = Team's road games over the last 10 games
GAMES = Team's total games