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307bball
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I think we are getting pretty far into hair-splitting territory here (at least I am). I agree with Ragtime that quality of opponent is the ultimate predictor of win/loss (and have said as much). The discussion around how to decide the difference between a tougher vs easier schedule has nothing to do with win/loss. You could go undefeated or winless and have either the toughest schedule ever or the easiest schedule ever...they don't correlate. Whether Wyoming would be "likely" to win is irrelevant to the discussion. The SOS numbers of schools is totally a reflection of the conference within which they are playing. There are outliers, Like UNLV in 2010, but if you are trying to get a sense of how tough a given Wyoming schedule is compared to another Wyoming schedule...SOS is a terribly low resolution way to do it.

Amazingly...I think that Ragtime and I have uncovered some common ground with the idea about opponent quality. I am still hung up on what games you get at home vs away but I readily admit that if we played a Big 10 schedule entirely at home that it would be tougher than a MWC schedule played entirely on the road. This is still consistent with my previous posts. Perhaps the appropriate modifier would be something like:

For a given MWC schedule, the home/away breakdown plays a large part in determining the difficulty of said schedule. I also like to look further into other considerations like:

- Who do we get coming off of a bye week
- Who gets us coming off of a bye week
- Rivalry games
- Senior night games
- Trap games (both directions)

These are all things that actually influence betting lines ... and for good reason. Now, generally it all kind of evens out and even if you get a disadvantageous set of circumstances in one direction there are other factors in your favor. There are, however, times when the stars align and you get all (or most) of the variables breaking for or against you. This is highly subjective but I don't think it's subjective in direction...just in magnitude. FWIW, the 2018 and 2019 schedules feel pretty similar but I do think that there was a difficulty in the way the schedule broke in having three of the four final games on the road against division foes with no bye week.
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WYO_Fan_inPA
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^Well, if we were in a great conference, we may struggle to finish .500?
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