The BCS Works Its Magic

Those problematic computers strike again.

Actually, the standings aren't all that problematic, but... USC's No. 2 and that's just not cool.

I'll release my rankings later today, but it will be difficult, to put it mildly, to put USC at that No. 2 spot.  USC's the biggest name of the undefeateds, has played the most difficult schedule and has shown over the last few years to be an incredibly successful football program.

And yet, that's not really what should be considered when humans (through the AP, Harris and Coaches polls) rank a team.

Who is best?  Put them No. 1.  Who is next best?  Put them No. 2.  Continue until you're at No. 25.  Repeat the next week.

The computers have USC No. 1, and may disrupt a favorable championship game if this holds.

Luckily for upset Michigan, West Virginia, Florida, Louisville, Auburn, Texas and other fans, the season's not over.  I do not anticipate USC staying at that No. 2 spot.  They finish their season with Oregon, California, Notre Dame and UCLA.  With the way they're playing that's a murderous stretch that the Trojans simply won't survive.

The best thing going for the BCS right now is that the season has several more weeks to play itself out.  LOTS will happen between now and that fateful Sunday when the final BCS rankings are released.

What's interesting is this plays into my arguments about not ranking teams strictly by wins and losses.  A good case can be made for Michigan or West Virginia or Auburn or Florida (and perhaps Louisville, Texas, California, Tennessee) being better teams than USC.  For way too long we've been burdened by this notion that teams must be "deserving" of a certain spot, which is code for "hasn't lost X amount of games and hasn't embarrassed itself any worse than the competition".  All that should ever matter is "how good is this team?"

Such an evaluation obviously makes many people uncomfortable, because there is no perfect way to determine this.  It is left up to each of us, each of the pollsters, to use our experience, our intelligence, our biases and observation skills, to develop rankings that are as accurate and fair as possible.

It's an imperfect system, but so are the computers.  What makes many of us comfortable with the computers is that they are unwavering and do not break from their internal logic.  There is a logic to how they arrive at their rankings, but it will continue to provide unreliable results when the inputs are all taken from an imperfect regular season of play.  Teams do not all play the same schedules.  Teams do not all play the same number of home and road games.  Conferences are not equal year to year.  All of this takes the computers further away from accuracy, but it's something PEOPLE have the power to compensate for and recognize.

To date we've done just a so-so job of factoring in for these things, but we can always do better.  That's the challenge.  I've advocated poll reform before and I continue to be an advocate.  Choose better and more informed voters, give them the tools and time necessary to make informed votes.  Things can be better than they are now.

That and get rid of the coaches polls and computers, outright.

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From the CFR Forums: Anger at the BCS

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MGoBlog gives a plug and also has a link to this: Las Vegas Sports Consultants Top 25 via the D.C. Sports Bog.  Those guys know what they're doing... but their top 25 from last week was a bit funky for my taste.  At least they had Georgia outside of the top 25, I can respect that.

Comments

[Mark]

I'm not in favor of a playoff system, but I am wholeheartedly in favor of revamping the process by which the top teams are picked for bowl games. Scrap the AP, coaches, BCS polls entirely, or at least don't make them the be all, end all of the selection process. Create a 10-15 person committee in charge of ranking teams. Give them the tools to watch all of the top teams and games. If they MUST release some sort of ranking early in the season, don't put anything out until Tuesday or Wednesday so they have a chance to watch tape, make judgements, and actually think about what they're doing.

[CFR]

Agree.

Or at least, give AP voters time to do their jobs. Most are working games on Saturdays, and have 10 or 11 pm deadlines to get stories off after interviews, etc.

Most of them simply have no idea whats going on beyond scores and whatever video of games they caught in the press box during whatever game they were covering.

[LED]

Well, Mark has of course just described to a "T" the Master Coaches Survey. And if either of you followed the MCS last year, you would know that their Poll was almost identical at the end of the regular season to the Harris, the AP and the Coaches. The differences in poll positions through the top 25 were so small as to be remarkable in the similarities.

And to the point of doing a TOP 25 poll each week -- Take CFR's comment,
"Who is best? Put them No. 1. Who is next best? Put them No. 2. Continue until you're at No. 25. Repeat the next week."
That is incredibly obvious, overly simplistic and must come from a guy who never does a true Top 25 poll but putts around with some (yawn) Top 15 "power rating!" Top 25 rankings require alot of thought, work, research and a ton of college football viewing. Top 15 Power rankings are child's play by comparision. I guess that's why you can whip out a Top 15 and even top contenders so easily with your system.

You wanna know how to do a real Top 25 poll? Take all the undefeated teams and rank separately. Do the same with the one loss, two loss, etc.

Then take the top one-loss and insert into you list of unbeatens, Sorta like you said, compare your top unbeaten team with your top 1-loss guys -- who's better? Go through the two lists until both are combined. Then do the same with the two-loss teams until all three lists are combined. And so forth.
And while you are doing this process you will find some anomalies and you will have to be able to justify you picks or readjust your original lists. And by the end of November, you will have to include 4-loss and 5-loss teams and you get a great overview of how you percieve half of the teams in Division 1A football. And it is alot of work.