Going to address this in 2 parts. Both good points.
Wufan wrote:This is good stuff, and I think it illustrates the point well, but cdizzle is correct that your numbers are flawed because each team would not have played WSU and will therefore not be as good as you project. Again, I doubt if you went to the extraordinary work of simulating games against replacement level teams each season, that the outcome would be different.
Thanks for taking a look at it and the kind words. The numbers are overly simplistic to reach a rudimentary point that was the crux of an argument in another thread. Would the Valley fall to 16th as a result of Wichita leaving. The answer was a resounding no, which was all this analysis was proving. I'm glad others have dove deeper because it's an interesting discussion regardless of conference affiliation.
To your point, yes, each team will drop due to the "opponents record" and "opponents opponents record" part of the RPI. If you look at the "future weight" of any conference team according to rpiforecast.com, you can see that any 1 conference member is associated with roughly 4.42% of a team's RPI. Thus, Wichita's influence on ISU's RPI is 4.42%. It's slightly more when you look at opponents opponent's record in conference play, so let's use 5% as a guideline. What we really need to do is go in and remove 5% of Wichita's record, and their opponents records from all 8 years and we'll be closer to being right on the money, but even without this analysis we're within 5% of the intended result anyway, and even closer once you add in the replacement team. So yes, you're correct that you can get closer than my simplistic overview did, but the result is the same. The MVC isn't dropping too far (if at all) once Wichita leaves. But again, that's more due to the current state of the 13th-16th conferences than what the Valley has going on.
Wufan wrote:The second point I'd like to make is that the original argument was "if WSU left the conference would drop to 16". With that statement, Royalshocks questions are still legitimately at play. Would the loss of the current "marquee" program hurt the overall brand of the MVC such that the rank dropped further than the numbers by themselves would indicate? Honestly, too much conjecture here to come up with a reasonable explanation, but much better to ponder than to dismiss as off topic.
This is a tough one. The MVC has survived many name schools leaving, and it's still been able to right the ship. Would this be another example in that line, or would this be the straw that broke the camel's back? It's insanely hard to quantify this though as the replacement team comes into play, as does the ability of the other conference members to improve their athletic prowess within the current structure. Difficult one to tackle, but I don't see the MVC dropping below some of those below us, even with a loss of Wichita... do you? Success is cyclical. Without Wichita, maybe Northern Iowa or ISU runs 18-0 in conference, is able to recruit better, and becomes the next Wichita within 5 years. Then, you're not losing Wichita's numbers because UNI or ISU took it's place... so you just have to find a replacement for their average RPI instead of finding the one for WSU like we originally thought. It's a fun discussion, but not one that you can put a number on.