About
Combining Sports and Math
The goal of NovaKingSports is to combine sports journalism and sports analytics. Both stats and nuanced opinion have their place in sports, which is what makes them so beautiful. Instead of anchoring in to one perspective or the other, why not let them both support each other?
The intention is to provide good solid opinions backed by statistics, and analytical predictions backed by subtle qualitative observations. Behind every ranking, prediction, article, and opinion, there is real reasoning that takes an objective look through both lenses. No more need to wonder what angle is being played, you can see the process for yourself.
What you'll find here
- Rankings
- NovaModel power ratings for college football, college basketball and the NFL, rebuilt as each season is played.
- College footballCollege basketballNFL
- Teams, players and games
- Every team's schedule, roster and rating history; position-by-position player rankings; and a page for every game, with each team's season going into it.
- Player rankings
- Analytics
- Studies that test common beliefs against the data - whether home field and home court are real advantages, whether a bye week helps, what actually moves the AP poll - and a metric explorer for finding patterns of your own.
- Analytics hub
How the rankings work
Every rating on the site is computed from game results. There is no panel, no ballot and no editorial adjustment. A team's rating depends on who it played and how it did against them, offense and defense are rated separately, and each week's ranking is built only from games that had already been played.
The full account, including what the ratings deliberately leave out, is on the methodology page, with the details of the team model in how team ratings work.
Where the data comes from
Scores, schedules and box scores come from CollegeFootballData.com, CollegeBasketballData.com and nflverse. Everything built on top of them - the ratings, rankings, studies and metrics - is computed here. NovaKingSports isn't affiliated with or endorsed by any school, conference, league or data provider.
Who's behind it
NovaKingSports is an independent project, built and maintained by one person.
I'm a software engineer who has a Master's in Machine Learning and Data Science. I have always enjoyed watching sports and played sports growing up. I had two brothers who played college basketball, and my mom won a national championship playing college basketball, so sports has always been a part of my life. I have always been intrigued by the idea that you could use statistics to get real insights into sports, but have never been foolish enough to think that you can take the human element out of it.
The plan is to grow into more sports as time goes on, and corrections are always welcome. Let us know which sports you want to see next, or what looks off, on the contact page.