Week 1 Imperialism Map

Submitted by UNCWolverine on

Thought this was pretty cool and worth sharing. I'll bet Jimmy just hates losing at Risk. Think I'd secure Australia first then go after the Americas....

What if College Football games were actually battles for land? This map answers this question. The original map is my closest FBS team to every county, but if a team is beaten their land is taken by the team that beat them. Teams will keep their land until beaten by another team and then all land will be passed to the new winner. For example Oregon State lost to Colorado State in week 0. Colorado State then lost to Colorado in week 1. Therefore Colorado owns Colorado State's land and Oregon State's land.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/6y8xxm/week_1_imperialism_map/

stephenrjking

September 5th, 2017 at 5:47 PM ^

Interesting idea, but the "closest" premise is flawed and the clearest sign of this is that Minnesota, of all schools, appears to start with the most territory in the lower 48. They need use one of those Facebook-sourced "favorite team" maps instead, for better balance.

It's going to wind up looking weird late when flukey win streaks mean most teams aren't playing for anything but two mid-pack Big 12 teams (or something) are playing for half the country.

Overall a cool concept, though, and if this is posted again I'll click. Reminds me of the college hockey championship belt, a long-running USCHO forum feature that has become (by default) one of the USCHO forum's best assets.

NittanyFan

September 5th, 2017 at 7:59 PM ^

The "college football belt" takes on a similar idea.

I did this same analysis on 1997 once --- sry, don't have all the details in front of me.  Nebraska and Michigan, as you intuitively expected, had the most "territory" at the end of the year.

However, there was also 1-10 TCU.  I recall that they ended the year with the "territory" of 5 teams - including then-power house Miami FLA!  

Miami lost to Arizona State, who next lost to BYU, who next lost to Rice, who next lost to SMU, who next lost to TCU in the season finale.

drewz05

September 5th, 2017 at 6:05 PM ^

If every team Bama faces has lost the week before, they won't actually accumulate any more areas.  Someone in the reddit thread pointed out that it's possible Miami (YTM) could go 4-0 and not have a single county on the map, since they didn't even get their own county to start out with (FIU did).

stephenrjking

September 5th, 2017 at 6:12 PM ^

Not necessarily. Since so many teams don't play each other, weird stuff happens. Like, Georgia could lose to Notre Dame this week, and its territory will be out of the SEC for the rest of the year. Tennessee could then beat Florida but then lose to Georgia, but win the SEC East, and show up at the title game with almost no territory for Bama to take. 

Minnesota's massive territory could be ceded to the B1G East when they play Maryland in a few weeks, which would likely result in OSU carrying it into the playoff. But if Minnesota loses this weekend in Corvallis, the Pac 12 could get it and it might never make it out of the west.

 

stephenrjking

September 5th, 2017 at 6:25 PM ^

Appears that way. In that sense, at least, it can demonstrate how conferences are doing as a whole if they have a lot of home territories under their control. Also, once a team loses its home territory it's really hard to get it back, so you'll see oddities like Oklahoma missing Norman but owning half the state of Michigan (CMU plays at Kansas, which...) in the Big 12 title game.

SpikeFan2016

September 5th, 2017 at 6:30 PM ^

This is dumb simply because they gave the University of Michigan two counties in the state to start with....CMU/EMU/WMU don't own pluralities anywhere in the state, yet each has more of the state attributed to it. 

Wally Llama

September 5th, 2017 at 7:50 PM ^

I'd be curious what a reconstruction of last sewson would look like week-by-week. (Although I'd imagine it would be sad to see how much territory Michigan lost to Iowa.)

NittanyFan

September 5th, 2017 at 10:05 PM ^

Some oddities come out of it:

(1) Clemson owned a considerable amount of land at the end - but not the most.

(2) Northwestern actually owned more land than Clemson.  Clemson, of course, lost to Pittsburgh late in the season, who lost to Northwestern in the Pinstripe Bowl.  

(3) Wisconsin was the only other B1G team that was an end-of-season "land owner."  Owned the land of 5 teams (Georgia Southern, Mississippi State, Northwestern, South Alabama & WMU).  A some-what random 5-some that includes only 1 MAC team despite the win over WMU: most MAC land gets lost to larger conference teams in September.

(4) USC was the biggest individual "land owner" in B1G territory.  A function of the Rose Bowl: that single game won them Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska and OSU's land.  USC also ended the year owning Rutgers' land: won by virtue of beating Washington in the regular season.

(5) Iowa's land was owned by an FCS team at the end of the year: James Madison.

(6) Air Force and Southern Miss were the only 2 teams that owned their own land at season's end.  They lost it at a point, of course, but it circled back to them.

spiff

September 5th, 2017 at 8:24 PM ^

So we are like one of those northern German states in EUIV? High development, surrounded by lots of weak OPMs. We should be forming Prussia by early October.

ak47

September 5th, 2017 at 9:48 PM ^

The people at reddit created an ncaa version for it that included recruiting being boosted or only within your territory, etc. Would be  a lot of fun.

M-Dog

September 6th, 2017 at 8:57 AM ^

Cool idea, but needs some tweaks to avoid recency bias.  It overly rewards the games played at the end of the year.

Plus if a mediocre team wins its bowl game and the National Champion is a team that lost close to the end of the year (or beat a team late that lost close to the end of the year), that mediocre team could finish with more land than the National Champion.