SB Nation’s Sacramento Republic (among other things) blog Indomitable City Soccer keeps up weekly power rankings throughout the USL season. Last week, contributing writer Ryan Allen put together Elo ratings for the Eastern Conference based on strength of schedule, and your favorite purple soccer team found themselves with the eleventh easiest schedule in the East. Or fifth most difficult, if you’re a glass-half-empty kind of person.
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in competitor-versus-competitor games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-born American physics professor. “Elo” ratings should be differentiated from “E.L.O.” ratings, of course. There’s only one E.L.O. rating, and that’s “far out, man.”
Per the maybe/maybe not FAKE NEWS website Wikipedia dot com:
The Elo system was originally invented as an improved chess rating system, but is also used as a rating system for multiplayer competition in a number of video games,[1]association football, American football, basketball,[2]Major League Baseball, Scrabble and other games.
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Performance isn’t measured absolutely; it is inferred from wins, losses, and draws against other players. Players’ ratings depend on the ratings of their opponents, and the results scored against them. The difference in rating between two players determines an estimate for the expected score between them.
Anyway, Allen says that City’s first quarter of the season will be its easiest, followed immediately by its hardest second quarter. Elo rankings are based on opponents, of course, and don’t take time between games into account. However, it’s not hard to imagine the months of May and June being very difficult, as Louisville doesn’t play a single home match in May, and will probably also face schedule congestion thanks to the U.S. Open Cup taking place during that same span.
At the end of the day, all this stuff is just probability theory, but it’s interesting to talk about. Let’s just exceed expectations again, and we’ll be fine.
COME ON, CITY!
