The Cost of Beating Wagner

BYU just drubbed Wagner 70-6 on BYUtv. Despite the margin of victory, playing Wagner dropped BYU in the polls.



In the AP poll, BYU went from #27 to #29.

In the Coaches' Poll, BYU went from #32 to #34.

In ESPN.com's Power Rankings, they held steady at #32.



It also dropped our SOS (as per Sagarin) from #16 to #38.

One could argue that our standing was artificially high because we didn't play our FCS game until late October while others played theirs in September. But it turned out that Wagner was unusually (for them) bad this year. We may slide a bit more by facing the dreaded BYE this week.

It was also a bad week to forget to update and by default stick with your "Default Predictions" in the CougarCorner.com Football Predictions game...

snoscythe wrote:
It was also a bad week to forget to update and by default stick with your "Default Predictions" in the CougarCorner.com Football Predictions game...

I have the same issue.

It seems like this is also a function of the teams ahead of us (Mississippi St, UCLA) holding serve, some behind us (USC) winning big games, and others that were upset (Utah, A&M, FSU) not falling far enough. Creates a bulge at the bottom, and whipping Wagner won't help you differentiate from that group.

But we can't really know the true cost of beating Wagner until after the Missouri game - right? Aren't those two games part of the same transaction?

After #25 you have to take all movement with a massive grain of salt because the voters only vote for 25 teams. We went from 21 points in the poll to 18. That can be explained mostly by what the other teams did and isn't a big deal.

One "benefit" of the Wagner game is so we could get the Missouri game, yes?

BoiseBYU wrote:
One "benefit" of the Wagner game is so we could get the Missouri game, yes?

Yes. Adding the Missouri game required us to juggle the schedule a little and we ended up needing a last second addition which turned out to be Wagner. The original schedule would have had UNLV and Idaho State on it instead of Missouri and Wagner.

BlueK wrote:

One "benefit" of the Wagner game is so we could get the Missouri game, yes?

Yes. Adding the Missouri game required us to juggle the schedule a little and we ended up needing a last second addition which turned out to be Wagner. The original schedule would have had UNLV and Idaho State on it instead of Missouri and Wagner.

Plus, we get Missouri in Provo in 2020, or so. Right?

ABYUFAN wrote:
But we can't really know the true cost of beating Wagner until after the Missouri game - right? Aren't those two games part of the same transaction?

Cost is cost. Benefit can be calculated separately to determine if the transaction was a good/bad one, but cost is cost. We got dinged for drubbing the #248 RPI Wagner Seahawks. We'll see what the benefit is after the Mizzou game. But the benefit doesn't change what the cost is, it just allows you to pass judgment on whether the cost was worth it.

snoscythe wrote:

But we can't really know the true cost of beating Wagner until after the Missouri game - right? Aren't those two games part of the same transaction?

Cost is cost. Benefit can be calculated separately to determine if the transaction was a good/bad one, but cost is cost. We got dinged for drubbing the #248 RPI Wagner Seahawks. We'll see what the benefit is after the Mizzou game. But the benefit doesn't change what the cost is, it just allows you to pass judgment on whether the cost was worth it.

But isn't the actual "cost" the difference between Wagner + Missouri and the theoretical Idaho State + UNLV? Wagner didn't happen in a vacuum, we can't pretend that it did.



Alternatively, I guess if we leave out Missouri, then the "cost" of the Wagner win would be the difference between our drop in votes this week, and the drop in votes that we would have gotten had we kept ISU on our schedule (I looked it up - BSU played ISU the week after us. After we beat BSU they got 16 votes in the coaches poll, then they beat ISU 52-0 and got 8 votes in the Coaches poll)

Yes, it cost us 3 votes. I'm not sure it would be much different if we beat any other G5 team (except ones that are currently ranked). I wouldn't be shocked if we "lose" more votes this week as well.