Archive for August 27th, 2013

Football: Down with YPP

A metric that has been gaining attention lately is Yards Per Point (YPP).

What good is a metric if not for ranking things?

And what good are rankings but to tell you who is better?

And how do you truly know which teams are better except for when they play each other?

Thus, I have incorporated YPP into my list of football team rankings. Really, though, it’s not rankings so much as it is an attempt at predicting winners (moneyline. I have yet to incorporate spreads).

We can know how good a metric is by using it to predict winners and then comparing the actual winners.

YPP is not all that impressive.

It’s better than randomly picking a team, but not as good as most of the other metrics.

Go view YPP values and results for the years 2006-present.

Again the Philistine said, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day; give me a man that we may fight together.”

1 Samuel 17:10