Football Champions

In my post on USL1 power rankings, I used a simple ‘points per game’ (PPG) to rank teams instead of the even simpler ‘total points’ used on most standings reports. I mentioned that I wasn’t completely happy with it though, and that I might work on something using a weighted average. Well, I finally put it together, and have ranked the MLS and USL1, and PDL (Northwest Division) according to it.

I looked at the teams’ last five league results, and gave each result a weighted score. The earliest was points x 0.8, the next was points x 0.9, and so on, until the most recent game which was points x 1.2. I then divided these by the sum of 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 (which is 5). The resulting value gives an approximation of how well the team has played recently, with the most emphasis on the most recent games. I call this a team’s ‘scariness rating’.

Here’s what the MLS looks like when compared to the Collective Power Ranking put together by Jeff Bull.

Team	Scariness	Collective Power Ranking
New England	2.64	1
Dallas	1.98	3
New York	1.94	2
Kansas City	1.86	4
Colorado	1.58	5
DC United	1.58	6
Toronto	1.26	11
Chicago	1.02	7
Los Angeles	1.00	8
Chivas	0.94	10
Columbus	0.76	12
Houston	0.60	9
Salt Lake	0.42	13

Because some teams in the USL1 and PDL (Northwest) haven’t played five games yet, I’m not going to post them yet. As the tables are fleshed out, I’ll add them to a ‘Scariness Ranking’ post each Wednesday. I’ll also try to remember to add the scariness rankings to teams where appropriate (like my predictions posts). If you’d like to grab them and use them yourself, please feel free—just point people here for an explanation of what they mean.