Hubs and Authorities of the English Premier League for 2010-2011

TL;DR

This paper applies the HITS algorithm, traditionally used for web page ranking, to rank football teams in the English Premier League by modeling matches as a directed graph with hubs and authorities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of the HITS algorithm to sports ranking, using game outcomes as links to determine team importance.

Findings

The champion team is identified as the 'worst hub' with no losses to strong authorities.

Teams with equal wins and losses are ranked by the quality of their victories.

The method provides an alternative ranking system based on network analysis.

Abstract

In this work author applies well known web search algorithm Hyperlink - Induced Topic Search (HITS) to problem of ranking football teams in English Premier League (EPL). The algorithm allows the ranking of the teams using the notions of hubs and authorities well known for ranking pages in the World Wide Web. Results of the games introduced as a graph where losing team 'gives a link' to a winning team and, if draw registered both team give links to each other. In case of a win link is weighted as three points in adjacent matrix and in case of draw as one point. Author uses notion of authority in order to define team which win a game and hub as a team which lose a game, the winner of the competition defined as the 'worst' hub, team that didn't reinforced any other team. Using this ranking system, the champion's team, which is a 'worst hub' must not lose, or draw games to other 'good authorities' teams. If by the end of the competition there are teams with an equal number of wins and losses then the team which has beaten more teams with higher authority ranks, wins.