Re:

It sounds like someone is working hard and making the company lots of $.

Where the hell do you come up with this shit?

BRIAN HOSKINS@ENRON COMMUNICATIONS
02/20/2001 09:18 AM
To: Eric Bass/HOU/ECT@ECT, Luis Mena/NA/Enron@ENRON, Timothy
Blanchard/HOU/EES@EES, Matthew Lenhart/HOU/ECT@ECT, Chad Landry/HOU/ECT@ECT,
Zachary McCarroll/Enron Communications@Enron Communications, James
Wininger/NA/Enron
cc:
Subject:

Box Score Banter
The following question and statistical numbers come via J.C. Corrigan of
Richmond, Va.

He asks:

"Which conference is best? Pac -0? ACC? SEC? Big 10? Big 12? Big East? Using
the RPI, I evaluated the top eight teams in each conference (ACC is the
smallest in terms of members, and I threw out their "Russian judge" team).
If you were to add these individual team RPI up, the least sum would
indicate the greatest depth:

Big Ten, 178; SEC, 194; Big East, 246; Big 12, 278; ACC, 369; Pac-10, 382.

Now some may argue that you should not count the bottom teams, since half
are forced into a losing record. Others say, only one team can win, so why
concern yourself with the bottom feeders? To refute that, here's what the
sums look like using only the top four teams from each conference:

SEC, 40; Pac-10, 41; ACC, 48; Big Ten, 49; Big East, 66; Big 12, 69.

If indeed each conference has their bottom feeders, then we want to make
sure there are no "gimmies" for those teams on top. So what's the RPI rating
of the lowest team in each conference?

SEC, 103 (LSU); Big Ten, 135 (Northwestern); Big 12, 157 (Texas Tech); Big
East, 167 (Virginia Tech); ACC, 168 (Clemson) Pac-10, 173 (Washington State)

Others will argue that we should include each team and then "normalize"
based on the number of teams per conference. This will also account for the
small differences between teams and reward second-tier team strength. Here
are the conferences with their average RPI and median RPI.

SEC (39.1, 38.5), Big Ten (39.4, 29.0), Big East (45.2, 49.0), ACC (59.7,
35.0), Big 12 (66.7, 47.0), Pac-10 (70.8, 55.0).

This data clearly shows how "top heavy" the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-10 are. But
who's the best? When evaluating where each conference ranks across the these
five categories:

SEC: 2-1-1-1-3 8

Big Ten: 1-4-2-2-1 10

Big East: 1-5-4-3-4 17

ACC: 5-3-5-4-2 19

Big 12: 4-6-3-5-4 22

Pac-10: 6-2-6-6-6 26

The SEC has a slight edge over the Big Ten, but some may say the RPI is
biased. So how would these numbers hold up using the Sugaring Ratings?

SEC: 10

Big 10: 11

ACC: 12

Big 12: 20

Pac-10: 22

Big East: 29

Personally, I think the RPI is a little more accurate. Hope you found this
interesting in my attempt to answer the oldest question in the NCAA book.
Ideally, I would like to include head-to-head competition and run these
numbers, but I'm an amateur and I don't that much time on my hands."
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