Credit: Matt Dwyer
Earlier this month, The Eighth Man announced our Elo ranking system, with a preview of the rankings of the top-20 teams in Elo. This week, we are excited to release the league’s full Elo standings, from top to bottom.
Since the last article, we have made a couple tweaks to our rankings, mostly due to newfound data. These include the additions of games from previous seasons played by Austin Quidditch, University of Arkansas, Arizona State University, the California Dobbies, Crimson Elite, Central Michigan University, Duke University, Florida State University, Lumberjack Quidditch, LSU, Loyola University Chicago, University of Minnesota, Michigan State University, Northern Arizona University, Penn State University, the San Marcos Sharknados, Silver Phoenix, the Silicon Valley Skrewts, Tri-State Lightning, University of North Carolina, Utah State University, VCU and the Wizards of Westwood. However, this update only added games that these teams played against teams that no longer exist or games played between one another. Thus, the effect of adding these past scores to our rankings was relatively minor. Furthermore, an oversight in our code had the Crimson Fliers Elo rating from before the 2015-16 season carry over to the current Crimson Fliers. This has now been adjusted so that this Elo ranking was carried over to Crimson Elite, which we feel more accurately reflects the historical ranking of the team.
Despite these changes, the average Elo change among the top 20 teams was just over four points—none of these teams lost points in their ratings from the changes, and the highest gain among the top 20 teams was seven. Even Crimson Elite, who gained the most from these changes, only added 16 points to their Elo rating. That said, close observers will notice that Ball State University (16) and Penn State (15) have switched places in our rankings. These teams are nearly identical in ranking, however, and thus the small shift was able to rearrange their placement.