Who's Winning The Pac-10? Oregon Ducks 50-50 For BCS Title Game

(Note: Washington State preview material will be coming tomorrow morning. Sorry for the delay.)

This is the second of a three part series with Samsung Enhanced Content which will break down the relationship between technology and sports (the first part broke down Shane Vereen's first touchdown against Arizona State)  Today we looked at advanced metrics (Vegas lines, heh) based on technologies available to us (online sportsbooks, yippee!) and use that to calculate win probabilities and likelihoods of who will win the 2010 Pac-10 Conference (see last week's projections!). Technology is amazing at making us all degenerates!

With Washington getting totalled by the Furd last weekend and Oregon State, this leaves only four legitimate contenders for the crown (and it's the same four from last year!):

Oregon, Oregon State, Furd, and Arizona.

Oregon and Oregon State remain in control of their own destinies. Furd and Arizona have losses to Oregon and Oregon State respectively, so they need some help...but they also matchup this weekend in a critical tilt in Palo Alto, with the loser likely relegated to dark horse status in the Pac-10 title race.

So here are the odds we and Berkelium97 calculated that would give these teams the Pac-10 title.

Odds Oregon wins the Pac-10 (most likely scenarios include winning out or winning three of four except OSU): 71.50%
Odds Oregon wins out and goes to the National Championship game:  50.28%
Odds Oregon State wins out (including beating Oregon) and heads to Pasadena: 3.843%
Odds Furd wins out and Oregon loses two: 4.354% (whew, that's a relief)
Odds Arizona wins out and Oregon State loses one: 0.3157% (yikes. Sorry Wildcats fans.)

Ducks fans should be quaking in their boots. I have no idea where the other 18% would go and would end up winning those scenarios, but let's just say that this approximation indicates Oregon is at least eight times more likely to win the Pac-10 than all the remaining contenders COMBINED.

Check our math after the jump!

Avinash: Here we go. Based on some guesstimation, previous lines, Vegas rankings, I tried to come up with win probabilities based on probable Vegas lines for our matchups.

This week's lines
Arizona +9.5 at Furd
Cal -14 at Wazzu
Washington +35 at Oregon
Oregon St -5 at UCLA
ASU +5 at USC

Projected lines
Furd -8 at ASU
Oregon -15.5 at Cal
Wazzu +28 at OSU
USC +2.5 at Arizona

UCLA +4.5 at UW
Furd -7.5 at Cal
USC +4 at OSU

UCLA +6.5 at ASU
Arizona +14 at Oregon
UW +6 at Cal
OSU +5.5 at Furd
Notre Dame +12 at USC

Oregon -10.5 at OSU
USC -10 at UCLA
Wash -14 at Wazzu

Then using this dude's matrix of a team's win probability based on its lines, I obtained the expected win probabilities based on the line

Arizona
22.4% chance to beat Furd
50.1% chance to beat USC
17.8% chance to beat Oregon
72% chance to beat ASU

ASU
34.3% chance to beat USC
28% chance to beat Furd
67.8% chance to beat UCLA
28% chance to beat Arizona

Cal (the injury to Kevin Riley will hamper our probabilities against the Furd and Oregon)
82.2% chance to beat Wazzu
16.7% chance to beat Oregon
27.6% chance to beat Furd
66.7% chance to beat UW 

Oregon
99.5% chance to beat Washington
83.3% chance to beat Cal
82.2% chance to beat Arizona
73.8% chance to beat OSU

OSU
65.7% chance to beat UCLA
97.7% chance to beat Wazzu
63.3% chance to beat USC
36.1% chance to beat Furd
26.2% chance to beat Oregon

Furd
77.6% chance to beat Arizona
72% chance to beat ASU
72.4% chance to beat Cal
63.9% chance to beat OSU

UCLA
34.3% chance to beat OSU
41.5% chance to beat Washington
32.2% chance to beat ASU
28.0% chance to beat USC

65.7% chance to beat ASU
49.9% chance to beat Arizona
36.7% chance to beat OSU
80.9% chance to beat Notre Dame
71.3% chance to beat UCLA

Washington
.5% chance to beat Oregon
58.5% chance to beat UCLA
33.3% chance to beat Cal
82.2% chance to beat Wazzu

Wazzu
17.8% chance to beat Cal
2.3% chance to beat OSU
17.8% chance to beat UW

Berkelium97 Arizona will win 1.63 more, ASU will win 1.58 more , Cal will win 1.92 more, Oregon will win 3.39 more, Oregon State will win 2.89 more, Stanford will win 2.85 more, UCLA will win 1.36 more, USC will win 2.236 more, UW will win 1.75 more, and WSU will win .379 more. 

Avinash: So looking at it my way, if we just add those figures above, our final standings in-conference and over the final five weeks will be something like...

Which isn't that much different from Berkelium's projections.

Berkelium97: There are 20 games left, so we have 20 wins to distribute.  Based on reasonable estimates, I'll divvy up the wins as follows:

Arizona earns 2
ASU earns 1
Cal earns 2
Oregon earns 4
OSU earns 3
Stanford earns 3
UCLA earns 1
USC earns 2
UW earns 2
and WSU earns 0

So we have for our final standings:

Oregon: National Championship Game
Stanfurd: Alamo Bowl (Boise/TCU probably ends up in Pasadena)
Oregon State: Holiday Bowl
Arizona: Sun Bowl
Cal: Las Vegas Bowl.

If Oregon loses a game, it'll probably end up with the Ducks in Pasadena (none of the bowl opponents change).

Finally, there are no rosy scenarios for the Bears. Cal has been eliminated from the Pac-10 race. Berkelium broke it down.

Berkelium97: Cal has been mathematically eliminated from the Rose Bowl.  There is no way Oregon will lose twice more (in addition to losing to Cal), OSU will lose three more, Arizona will lose three more, and Stanford will lose once more (in addition to losing to Cal).

Pasadena will wait another year.