Had a little time so I thought I would see how accurate Guess Reports is in identifying the National Champion. Since I am only in 2 worlds both in D2 I limited my evaluation to Warner & Hayes D2. Over the last 15 seasons in each of these 2 worlds Guess is pretty spot on. Warner saw only 5 of the 30 teams that reached the National Championship Game rated lower than #4 and only twice in the last 15 seasons did a team rated lower than #2 win the NC. That was #3 in season 119 and #5 in season 112. Hayes seemed a little more competitive. Six of the 30 teams that reached the National Championship Game were rated lower than 4 over the last 15 seasons. Twice a team rated lower than 4 won the NC. Season 91 saw the #5 rated team win it all and the #7 team won it all in season 98. In both worlds the #1 rated team won the NC eight times. Over the course of the last 10 seasons the trend is moving toward you better be in the top 4. Somewhat good news for Bryant in Warner but that Crown seems to be pretty much held in one place. Curious if any of the other worlds have the same outcome.

My St. Joe's team in Warner is admittedly a little down this year. I've done too much waffling on which direction I want to take the team. Still, it'll be a challenge to wrestle it out of the hands of Fotman and me.

bhazlewood did some research on this awhile back...maybe about a year ago??? It's a forum thread on here somewhere.

I looked into Heisman world and found much the same though lower rated teams had a little more success. Eight times teams with a lower ranking of #4 made it to the Championship Game and twice won it. (Kudos mojolad) Those rankings were #5 & #6, The #1 ranked team only won it all on 5 occasions. Twice each a #10 & #11 team made it to the NC Game. It still looks like you only have a slightly better than 10% chance of winning the National Championship if you are not ranked in the top 4 by Guess.

My review of the last 15 seasons of Yost further illustrates the notion you can predict the National Champion will come from one of the top 4 Guess ranked teams. All but one of the last 15 National Champions was ranked in the top 4. The lone team was ranked #7. Seven teams made the Game without winning which includes the lowest ranked team to make the Game, 18th ranked California (PA ).

And then there is Dobie world. In the last 15 seasons only once did a Guess #1 ranked team win the National Championship and only five teams ranked 1 - 4 won it all. Even 14th ranked West Georgia won a National Championship. Eighteen teams ranked lower than 4 reached the NC game and 10 of those ranked lower than #8. Is this the most competitive world in WIS? At least it appears the most unpredictable. I will be interested to see if this continues.

In Bryant D2, the top 4 GUESS ranked teams all made the top 4. Clean sweep.

Camp world has proven interesting. Six times in the last 15 seasons a team ranked below #4 has won it all. Then again each time the team was the pete_61 Hillsdale team. Hillsdale also won five times ranked #1. It appears it does not make any difference. Ranked #1 or #10 or anywhere in between, 13 of 15 seasons the result has been the same. By the way Texas A&M and Nebraska - Kearney were both ranked #1 when they won the National Championship. Neb-Kearney did it the hard way defeating Hillsdale. Kudos to Impala1995ss. Forget Neb-Kearney was ranked #1 and Hillsdale was#6. That had to be the GD high point. The accolades for pete_61 have been recorded on the forums before so this evaluation seems to confirm those sentiments.

As you move up the last 15 seasons in Stagg D2 being ranked in the top three of the Guess rankings looked to be imperative. Twelve straight times. Five #1's, five #2's and two #3's. Then the last three seasons two #5 ranked teams and a #6 ranked team won it all. Maybe more telling 13 of 15 National Championships were won by either Winona or Virginia St.

Next on the evaluations are Wilkinson, Rockne and Bryant. All had about 1/3 of the teams making the NC game ranked below the number 4 slot of the Guess Report Roster Rankings. And while Wilkinson had 5 of the last 15 NC ranked below #4, three of those had a #5 ranking. Rockne had just 1 ranked below the #4 ranking and that was a #5 ranked team. In fact only 1 team ranked at #4 won it all and only 2 ranked at #3 won it all. Eleven teams ranked either #1 or #2 finished as National Champions. Bryant was similar to Rockne. Only 1 team, a #6 ranked Glenville won it all with 10 teams in the last 15 seasons ranked either #1 or #2 became National Champions.

Good research ranger! I figured Guess was pretty accurate and it seems like your research backs that up. Of course there are always a few outliers (good game planning coach vs bad gameplanning coach would be a huge indicator to me), but for most part GUESS is a strong indicator of team strength.

I thoroughly enjoy the Guess reports...thanks bhaz!!!

I had one more world, Leahy, to complete the evaluation and Leahy was in line with what was previously found. Only two teams, a #5 and a #6 were able to capture the title outside of the top 4 rated Guess teams. What is more only 1 team rated below the #5 rated team finished as the runner up. Over the eleven worlds the final tally was an 80% accuracy for the winner of the NC being rated #1 - #4. When I pushed that out to include the #5 rated team the percentage was raised to 87%. Two worlds, Camp and Dobie really had an affect on the overall percentage rate. Taking those two worlds out of the equation the percentage for the top 4 rated teams rose to 87% and for the top 5 rated teams it was 94%. Since completing the 15 season run down for all eleven worlds 3 have completed another season. Yost, Dobie and Wilkinson. The ranking going into the season respectively were #5, #1 and #4. I just completed the recruiting in Hayes. Sure hope I make it into the top 4 or 5. Thanks bigpoppa85. Glad to see someone found it interesting.

Looks like this "GUESS report" is something I should check out.

GUESS updated for Hayes but not Camp... maybe just a little behind?

Posted by DeBeque on 9/30/2017 10:04:00 AM (view original):
Looks like this "GUESS report" is something I should check out.

http://guess.gdreports.com