04/19/24
January 08, 2009
Stats Guru Bill James dissects the BCS: A precise encapsulation of all that is wrong with College Football rankings.
The summary seemed pretty accurate to me.
That aside, James makes several good points, including what likely would have happened if the NCAA had mandated a tournament and forced money to go to schools that aren't contributing meaningfully to the pot. Also, the point that the computer rankings keep getting manipulated in order to mirror the human polls as much as possible is valid.
The removal of the margin-of-victory component is especially ridiculous. It's one thing for a school like Florida to wallop the Citadel, but it's another when they trounce Georgia. The computers (or more correctly, their programmers) should be allowed to distinguish between a dominating victory and a squeaker, a dominating victory over a cream puff vs. a dominating victory over a good team, as well as between home and road victories. Putting those sorts of restrictions in place defeats the point of using the computers.
posted by TheQatarian at 09:09 PM on January 08, 2009
Good article but not what your summary says. This is an analysis of why the computer rankings used in the BCS are BS and why the NCAA schools are happy with the status quo.