Honors Theses
Date of Award
Spring 5-10-2023
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Allied Health Studies
First Advisor
Talmage James Reid
Second Advisor
Laura Sheppardson
Third Advisor
W. Mark Wilder
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
We investigate the use of Google’s PageRank algorithm to rank sports teams. The PageRank algorithm is used in web searches to return a list of the websites that are of most interest to the user. The structure of the NCAA FBS football schedule is used to construct a network with a similar structure to the world wide web. Parallels are drawn between pages that are linked in the world wide web with the results of a contest between two sports teams. The teams under consideration here are the members of the 2021 Football Bowl Subdivision. We achieve a total ordering of the 2021 FBS teams by applying the PageRank algorithm to the results of the regular and bowl seasons. A statistical method of correlation is used to compare the final AP rankings with PageRank models based on Margin of Victory and Total Points Scored.
Recommended Citation
Majors, Morgan, "An Application of the PageRank Algorithm to NCAA Football Team Rankings" (2023). Honors Theses. 2999.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/2999
Accessibility Status
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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.