Ranking and prediction of collegiate wrestling

[摘要] College wrestling rankings have a major impact upon the sport, as they are one of the criteria used to determine advancement to postseason championships and seeding, thereby benchmarking individual, team, and program success. In addition to ordering athletes based upon past performance, rankings may function as predictors for future match outcomes. This research identifies potential biases in traditional ranking methodologies and offers alternatives based on the network-based PageRank and Elo ratings. Using data from the 2013-2014 NCAA Division I wrestling season, we evaluate both existing and our new rankings on the basis of predictive accuracy. Our new methods significantly improve upon a baseline of 67% accuracy and several of the existing ranking methods. These results and follow-up analyses suggest that Elo presents an especially attractive alternative to current ranking systems for college wrestling, with potential extensions to the prediction of point differentials, ensemble methods, and generalizability to other combat sports.

[关键词] Sports rankings;time series;evaluating forecasts;wrestling;Elo ratings;PageRank