Brian Fremeau and Bill Connelly, originators of college football’s two statistical approaches -- FEI and S&P+, respectively -- began to create a combined ranking that would serve as 'official' college football rankings. F/+

The Fremeau Efficiency Index (FEI) considers each of the nearly 20,000 possessions every season in major college football. All drives are filtered to eliminate first-half clock-kills and end-of-game garbage drives and scores. A scoring rate analysis of the remaining possessions then determines the baseline possession efficiency expectations against which each team is measured. A team is rewarded for playing well against good teams, win or lose, and is punished more severely for playing poorly against bad teams than it is rewarded for playing well against bad teams.

The S&P+ Ratings are a college football ratings system derived from both play-by-play and drive data from all 800+ of a season's FBS college football games (and 140,000+ plays).

The F/+ is an index of both the FEI and S&P Ratings.

Here are some of the key advanced rankings for the Iron Bowl.

When Alabama has the ball

• F/+: Bama O 12th, Auburn D 22nd
• Standard Downs S&P+: Bama O 11th, Auburn D 51st
• Passing Downs S&P+: Auburn D 12th, Bama O 14th
• Rushing S&P+: Bama O 12th, Auburn D 39th
• Passing S&P+: Bama O 17th, Auburn D 34th
• Adj. Line Yards: Bama O 12th, Auburn D 19th
• Adj. Sack Rate: Bama O 19th, Auburn D 33rd
• First Down Rate: Bama O 12th, Auburn D 95th
• Explosive Drives: Bama O second, Auburn D 84th
• Methodical Drives: Bama O 39th, Auburn D 94th

When Auburn has the ball

• F/+: Bama D second, Auburn O 17th
• Standard Downs S&P+: Bama D fourth, Auburn O 30th
• Passing Downs S&P+: Bama D ninth, Auburn O 10th
• Rushing S&P+: Bama D second, Auburn O 11th
• Passing S&P+: Bama D 11th, Auburn O 27th
• Adj. Line Yards: Bama D second, Auburn O fifth
• Adj. Sack Rate: Auburn O 90th, Bama D 113th
• First Down Rate: Bama D 19th, Auburn O 23rd
• Explosive Drives: Auburn O eighth, Bama D 11th
• Methodical Drives: Bama D second, Auburn O 59th

From this data, which is pretty significant statistically and used by many analysts to predict odds and outcomes, these are my thoughts:

• When it comes to overall D vs O, Alabama has a clear edge as you can see in the bold above. Auburn will have a difficult time moving the ball on Alabama, and will have moderate difficulty stopping the Bama offense, especially the run. This will open up the secondary and expect the TEs and deep balls from Bama to start humming

• Bama’s first down rate is far superior than Auburn’s, and looks as though methodical drives combined with ability for first downs is going to edge out time for Auburn and give Alabama a distinct advantage for possession. So, if AU is to fall behind, it’s going to be very difficult for them to come back. They’ve come back to win against many teams this season, but by no more than 8 points or so (except for TAMU whose defense is a sieve)

• Additionally, Auburn will HAVE to throw the ball, they will put up rushing numbers, but nothing over the 200 mark. The rest of Auburn's offense is going to have to go to the air. This will lead to mistakes and a loss of possession time for the Tigers.

•A very good regression shows Bama as a 70% winner of the game within an 85% accuracy of the regression. This makes Auburn very unlikely to win this game. LINK / If you view this link and expected wins after week 13, you can see Auburn has lesser odds than Bama.LINK

•*Auburn is allowing 250/yds/gm passing and 150/yds/gm rushing against opponents on defense. *Alabama, if they rush for 140 yards, haven't lost a game (this statistic goes back several seasons).

•Alabama is a 70% probable winner of this game within an 85% accuracy model, the F/+ statistics above also indicate this to be true.

•TL; DR (too long; didn’t read)= Bama is a pretty strong favorite in this game and is likely to win on both sides of the ball and time of possession, they are likely to win by more than the spread. This is probable, and not guaranteed (70% chance).

This post was edited on 11/27/13 at 12:38 pm