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A Consistent Weighted Ranking Scheme with an Application to NCAA College Football Rankings

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Author Info
Fainmesser, Itay
Fershtman, Chaim
Gandal, Neil

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Abstract

The NCAA college football ratings, in which the "so-called" national champion is determined, has been plagued by controversies the last few years. The difficulty arises because there is a need to make a complete ranking of teams even though each team has a different schedule of games with a different set of opponents. A similar problem arises whenever one wants to establish a ranking of patents or academic journals, etc. in which the raw data are (incomplete) bilateral citations or interactions among objects. This paper develops and estimates a simple consistent weighted ranking (CWR) scheme which, in the sports world, depends on four parameters (winning vs. losing and the relative importance of home vs. away games). In most ranking problems, there are not explicit criteria to evaluate the success of proposed rankings. NCAA college football has a special structure that enables the evaluation of each ranking scheme. Each season is essentially divided into two parts: the regular season and the post season bowl games. If a ranking scheme is accurate it should correctly predict a relatively large number of the bowl game outcomes. We use this structure to estimate the four parameters of our ranking function using "historical" data from the 1999-2003 seasons.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 5239.

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Date of creation: Sep 2005
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5239

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Related research
Keywords: NCAA football; ranking; sport tournament;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
C8 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs
L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Recreation; Tourism

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Liebowitz, S J & Palmer, J P, 1984. "Assessing the Relative Impacts of Economic Journals," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 22(1), pages 77-88, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Ray C. Fair & John F. Oster, 2002. "Comparing the Predictive Information Content of College Football Rankings," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm310, Yale School of Management. [Downloadable!]
  3. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta & Oscar Volij, 2004. "The Measurement of Intellectual Influence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(3), pages 963-977, 05. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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