[stupac2]

I mean, I like these too, I meant just going farther and farther down the rabbit hole of comparing schedules and trying to do opponent adjustments. I think this is a valuable exercise for conference play, but outside of that you run into a lot of problems (that have been identified) and trying to address them in any meaningful manner is difficult. So you can keep going but eventually, unless you really want to reinvent the wheel, it probably makes sense to just pick a system done by professionals. Those may or may not be black boxes, but I've never understood why that matters, if the goal is to illuminate the upcoming matchup, then you want something with a predictive track record, and that's what FPI and DVOA (not sure about F+ or anything else FO does for football) try to do.

[stupac2]

I mean, I like these too, I meant just going farther and farther down the rabbit hole of comparing schedules and trying to do opponent adjustments. I think this is a valuable exercise for conference play, but outside of that you run into a lot of problems (that have been identified) and trying to address them in any meaningful manner is difficult. So you can keep going but eventually, unless you really want to reinvent the wheel, it probably makes sense to just pick a system done by professionals. Those may or may not be black boxes, but I've never understood why that matters, if the goal is to illuminate the upcoming matchup, then you want something with a predictive track record, and that's what FPI and DVOA (not sure about F+ or anything else FO does for football) try to do.