re: McIllece Sports has VOLS #1 on their preseason top 25

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Dave Bartoo says two teams in the east are better than the Vo11's. Who are you going to believe Dave Bartoo or McIllece Sports?



LINK

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I like Bartoo and find his system very helpful (it's mostly based on recruiting rankings + past performance with a few other factors thrown in) but it is heavily weighted to what the average recruiting ranking a team has over the past 5 years and in that category, of course, Florida and Georgia have more paper talent.

However, Bartoo has been terrible at analyzing the Vols in particular over the past few years. His model simply didn't work well when it came to predicting us. He thought we would be even with Oregon based on talent predictions but that Oregon would win what his formula couldn't account for was the statistically anomalous amount of attrition we'd suffered due to having so many coaching changes (his formula controls for attrition by basically saying it all evens out among teams since all teams typically suffer an amount of attrition within that is equal within the rolling recruiting averages he tallies - problem was we were an anomaly because of the exceptional turnover). Oregon out-talented us in every category and at every position and gave us an arse-kicking that was so utterly complete that Nathan Peterman looked like a good option to start the next game in the Swamp.

ESPN's FPI, OTOH, has been spot-on in predicting the Vols lately.