1st ever SB Nation Power Rankings: 49ers in 9th place tie!

by David Fucillo on Sep 20, 2007 6:33 PM PDT in San Francisco 49ers News

Everyone's a little down from the news of Manny Lawson's injury, so like any good entertainer, I'll try and distract you guys a little bit.

Since everybody else is doing it, the football sites here finally decided to debut the SB Nation Power Rankings. With some html help from The Sports Guru over at Mile High Report

I was able to compile league wide power rankings, which I present now for your viewing pleasure and debate. We received 18 total ballots and expect that number to rise in the coming weeks. I figure getting over half the sites is a pretty good turnout for this first week.

Basically, every team was ranked 1-32 and then there rank #'s were added up and divided by the total ballots (18) to get a rating. It's not the most scientific poll in the world, but it's fun and gives you an idea of things. For those curious, I voted the 49ers 13th. I love them and think they're going to be solid this year but based on the first two weeks I just couldn't rate them any higher.

So what do you think of the rankings? Who's too high and who's too low?

SBNation NFL Power Rankings -- WEEK 2



SB Nation Power Rankings -- Week 2
Rank	Team	Record	Rating	Last Week
1	New England Patriots	2-0	1.39	-
2	Indianapolis Colts	2-0	2.06	-
3	Pittsburgh Steelers	2-0	4.67	-
4	San Diego Chargers	1-1	5.11	-
5	Dallas Cowboys	2-0	5.28	-
6	Denver Broncos	2-0	6.72	-
7	Chicago Bears	1-1	7.72	-
8	Baltimore Ravens	1-1	10.44	-
9	San Francisco 49'ers	2-0	10.72	-
9	Cincinnati Bengals	1-1	10.72	-
11	Green Bay Packers	2-0	11.17	-
12	Washington Redskins	2-0	13.06	-
13	Houston Texans	2-0	13.22	-
13	Seattle Seahawks	1-1	13.22	-
15	Detroit Lions	2-0	14.44	-
16	Tennessee Titans	1-1	15.94	-
17	Carolina Panthers	1-1	16.94	-
18	Jacksonville Jaguars	1-1	17.83	-
19	Philadelphia Eagles	0-2	19.50	-
20	New Orleans Saints	0-2	19.67	-
21	Arizona Cardinals	1-1	20.89	-
22	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	1-1	21.72	-
23	Minnesota Vikings	1-1	22.56	-
24	St. Louis Rams	0-2	24.11	-
25	New York Jets	0-2	24.72	-
26	Cleveland Browns	1-1	24.83	-
27	New York Giants	0-2	26.06	-
28	Buffalo Bills	0-2	27.11	-
29	Kansas City Chiefs	0-2	28.17	-
29	Miami Dolphins	0-2	28.17	-
31	Oakland Raiders	0-2	28.89	-
32	Atlanta Falcons	0-2	30.94	-

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Comments

Good list

Even know i think Cowboys have played better football overall than the Chargers have so far this season but we will see how the Cowboys play when they matchup against the Bears.

by rimrock101 @ Niners Nation on Sep 20, 2007 9:43 PM PDT reply actions

Almost ranked even with Ravens

That should indicate possibilities in the game at the Stick. Seahawks listed below the Niners.

by Bob In Pacifica on Sep 21, 2007 5:56 AM PDT reply actions

I can't believe...

... there was a tie in that ranking scheme. How likely is it that an average (to the hundreths) that two values would be the same!

by sfgfan on Sep 21, 2007 8:38 AM PDT reply actions

much less two ties!

A Bare bones probability can be calculated, though. Knowing there are 18 people each compiling lists of 32 that can be arranged in any way... the hard part accounting for tendency (which is to say, nobody would choose the Raiders #1, even though they HAVE the choice).

So unless I've forgotten how to do math, one person could submit any one of 2.6313083693369353016721801206e+35 (in windows calculator notation) possibilities. Ok, so that is way too much... I'll try to bring it down. I'll assume variance in groups of fours only (so the top four teams would be the same in each regardless of order, and so on down the line). Each group of four will have 24 possibilities (4x3x2x1), creating 8 groups of 24 possibilties that can be mixed and matched.

Man it's been a long time since I did anything resembling statistics or probability in a math class. Five years removed from math to begin with...

So that would work out as just 24 to the 8th power, no? Meaning one person could come up with 110,075,314,176 different combinations?

Well... it's less than before, anyway.

BUT the probability of averages levels it out! In this system there are 8 groups of 4 teams. Each team in the group of 4 is given to have an equal probability of being any spot 1-4. So the probability of a team averaging 1 (unanymous 1st place votes) is low, but the probability of a team averaging 2.5 (evenly distributed votes) is very high within an individual group. And rather than being dependent on huge numbers of combinations, it's dependednt on the tendency of those combinations to even out...

Anyway, I'm not nearly advanced enough in statistics or probability, nor am I close enough to the math experience I do have to work this out in numbers. What I will say is that I believe the rankings do GENERALLY fall into localized pockets of teams like my unfinished method uses (not as clean as groups of four, but general). Within these pockets there are further tendencies toward the top and the bottom of the order, but the probability for each team would still be to drift toward the mean of the group. I would imagine that because of this the probability of ties in the middle of each group is pretty high up to around 10 ballots (somewhat arbitrary estimation), and then of course continues to go down from there. Assuming there are like 8-10 "natural" groups in the NFL rankings (also kind of arbitrary), the fact that there are ties in only two of them (20-25%) would seem to show that by 18 ballots these chances are in fact thinning out pretty significantly...

But then again, a lot of this is semi-educated-ass-talking. If I had the capacity for these numbers I would have gladly cranked it out, but I can only go so far before I have to defer to "logic," which is significantly removed from hard fact.

Anyway, sorry for basically spending all this time coming up with very little that's worthwhile. It was fun for me, at least...

I keep reliving the moment when Steve Young almost fell down. Over and over. / My Blog, For Writers

by howtheyscored on Sep 21, 2007 9:56 AM PDT up reply actions

You went to Cal, right?

Does that mean you escaped out of there only having to take freshman year math? Or were you there longer than five years?

by sfgfan on Sep 21, 2007 10:39 AM PDT up reply actions

To be honest

I never had to take a math class at Cal. I was a mathwunder in High School and passed out of college reqs with AP credit. It's just been too long since then for me to have this stuff fresh. The thing about math is you have to use it or you lose it.

I probably could have worked this out five years ago in a snap. I just don't remember the relationships the numbers need to have to each other for these kinds of probabilities to work out. It looks like theres sine wave in there somewhere... maybe not a pretty one... trig was fun...

I keep reliving the moment when Steve Young almost fell down. Over and over. / My Blog, For Writers

by howtheyscored on Sep 21, 2007 11:07 AM PDT up reply actions

CS major

Being a computer science major in college, I forget that math isn't very much a pre-req for most majors. Freshman calculus (which can be AP tested out of) is the general requirement, no? I felt like I took math classes forever, and I don't really remember most of the stuff I learned.

I seem to remember calculus somewhat, but linear algebra, stats, diff. EQs... they've all seemed (mostly) to escape me.

by sfgfan on Sep 21, 2007 11:21 AM PDT up reply actions