BCS: Beyond Common Sense

Honestly, I don't care much about college football. I like my Arkansas Razorbacks, but that's only because I went to school there. My dorm room was right up the hill and across the road from the football stadium. But...

Last saturday was a crazy day for all of college football. Many of the top teams lost to lower ranked teams which caused an entire nation of football fans to focus its eye on the BCS. And my Razorbacks are now ranked 3 in the nation. This is the highest they've ever been ranked and they have a chance at the national championship if (and this isn't a small 'if') they beat Louisiana State.

The BCS was created to end split championships between the conferences, and narrow the field for two teams to play in the BCS National Championship Game. It relies on a combination of polls and computer selection methods to determine team rankings.

Harris Interactive Poll- 115 panelists
They include former coaches, players, administrators and current and media.

Coaches Poll- 59 Division I head coaches
Coaches are chosen at random at the beginning of each season.

Computer rankings- This was the part of the story that I was looking forward to researching, but unfortunately much of the computer polling methodology is proprietary, and isn't published. I wanted to see the math!
Six different ranking systems aggregated by awarding points to the top three teams in each of the six system. The BCS takes the six point values and removes the lowest and highest point values given to a specific team. Four point values are left, which the BCS adds together.

The little information I could find is the Strength of Schedule formula.

Man! A lot of people hate the BCS!
Finding information about this next section was not hard.

Sure, fans and tv personalities argue football for amusement. But, at times, the BCS rankings have baffled everyone. I think that leads most people to believe the system is currupt or broken. They don't trust the computers or they think voters get pay offs.

Controversies

Bowl executives are paid unusually high salaries for employees of non-profit organizations.

These highly-paid executives allegedly give lavish gifts to politicians, collegiate sports executives, and university athletic directors.

Top BCS bowls routinely abuse their non-profit tax status by using charitable donations to give gifts and compensation to college athletic officials.

Some of my questions/criticisms:

How do the coaches vote intelligently? Aren't they only watching their own games and tapes of the teams they play? Do they ever get to see the performance of the teams they're voting for?

Two thirds of the BCS rankings come from human influence. How much of that is based on confirmation bias? Teams that have the reputation as strong competitors will be judged more favorably than others.

From what I can tell, the BCS doesn't have much of a life left. Even President Obama is on the side of a Play-off system. The BCS will begin renegotiating its contract soon. Everything could change by 2014.

Enjoy today's games.

And, GO HOGS!