Okay, so I’ve been messing around with this idea for a “Fantasy Football Power Rankings Generator.” I’m no expert, but I figured I’d give it a shot and document the whole messy process. Here’s how it went down:
The Idea Hits
First, I needed a starting point. My league is always arguing about who’s really the best, even if their record doesn’t show it. So, I thought, “Why not build something that spits out power rankings?” It seemed like a fun little project, something to take my mind off… well, everything.
Gathering the Data (The Hard Part)
This was a pain. I realized pretty quickly that I needed data, and lots of it. I started manually inputting stuff from our league website into a spreadsheet. You know, things like:
- Team Names: Obvious, right?
- Wins/Losses: The basics.
- Points Scored: How many points each team puts up.
- Points Against: How many points they let the other teams score.
- Maybe some other stats like margin of victory, who knows!
It was tedious. I almost gave up here. I spent hours just copying and pasting. There’s gotta be a better way to do this, maybe some fancy website scraping tool. But I’m keeping it simple for now.
The “Algorithm” (If You Can Call It That)
Next, I had to figure out how to actually rank the teams. I’m no math whiz, so I kept it super basic. I decided to use a weighted scoring system. Here’s the rough idea I came up with:
- Wins: Worth a good chunk of points.
- Points Scored: Also pretty important.
- Points Against: Inverted, so fewer points against means a better score.
- Head to Head: give some consideration for direct games.
I basically just made up some numbers for how much each category was worth. I figured I could tweak them later. It was all about getting something working.
Putting It Together (Spreadsheet Magic)
I used a spreadsheet (it will do the job). I created columns for all my stats, and then a final column for the “Power Ranking Score.” I wrote a formula that basically did this:
(Wins Weight1) + (Points Scored Weight2) - (Points Against Weight3)
I played around with the “Weight” numbers until the rankings looked somewhat reasonable. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing!
The Results (and Future Tweaks)
I ran the “formula,” and… it worked! I mean, it gave me a list of teams, ranked from top to bottom. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a start. My league mates thought it was hilarious (and also argued about the results, of course).
I know this is super basic. Here’s what I’m thinking of adding/changing:
- Automated Data Input: Seriously, there has to be a way to do this without all the manual work.
- Better Algorithm: Maybe incorporate more stats, like strength of schedule or something.
- A Nicer Output: Right now, it’s just a spreadsheet. Maybe a simple website or something would be cool.
It’s a work in progress, for sure. But it was a fun little experiment, and it definitely spiced up our league’s trash talk!
