A guy on ESPN Radio had some good points this morning: The Media (The AP pollsters include TV, radio and writers) don't have time for other games. They are watching the games they are paid to cover. The coaches are concentrating on their own games. They don't have time to watch other games. He recommends a panel made up of ex-players, coaches, officials, etc. be designated to follow all teams and come up with a ranking that is fair to all.(Edit: See Tejas' post, above) The present system (this is my opinion) is unfairly weighted to favor those teams picked in preseason. We are back to where we were.
Kinda like USC lost to an unranked Cal team and beat only one ranked team during last season. LSU lost to a ranked team, beat something like 5 top 25 teams, 2 being top 10, at least 3 were top 15. Then the voters looked at this and thought "Hey, LSU roomped through a tough schedule and USC did not. We now rank LSU above USC because of the tough schedule." Not a chance. You are thinking objective. The voters do not. This is why the strength of schedule portion of the BCS was so very critical. It provided the objective aspect which the voters could not. Rephrasing: which the voters would not.
USC played a weaker schedule than LSU last year and didn't have a conference championship game ... tell me again how the media will look at this objectively? If this is the new BCS formula, then I would suggest scraping the entire system and go back to the 2 human poll system. This new stuff is even more of a joke! And yes, a playoff is the only real solution .... but it ain't gonna happen!
Why are so many coaches and such against a playoff system again?? Someone had mentioned (on another post I believe) that they thought a playoff system would get much more money than a bowl system. I don't think that's true though. In a playoff system, there would be to many games. Only the fans from the playing schools would watch. Where as, with a bowl system, all college football fans will watch all the BCS bowls and selective other bowls... That's just what it seems like to me. Are coaches against it because how long it would last? How much work it is? What is it?
One thing I'm relieved about a little about the new poll is they take vote points into account and it's not just if you came out 2nd in the AP. What this translates into is each individual computer (not the lowest or the highest for a team, however) counts for 1/4 of the computer component, which in turn is 1/3 of the final count. This means each counted computer counts for 1/12 of your final points. For the coaches, it's 1/60 (because there are 60 voters) of the Coaches count and 1/180 of the overall count. For the AP, each individual voter counts for 1/72 (because there are 72 voters) of the AP count and 1/216 of the overall count. This may be a bit confusing, but what I'm getting at is the computer's can still overturn the human polls if the human polls are close enough. And actually, doing this for last year's, LSU was ahead of USC in this format as well. If you want proof, go to the bottom of the page in this link on the BCS website: http://www.bcsfootball.org/news040715.shtml
DarkHornet you are exactly right. In looking at the new BCS formula, I would at least give credit to the fact that they are looking at total votes in the AP and Coaches poll, and not just a simple ranking. Here is the example of what it would have looked like from last year: ..............AP.............Coaches..............Computers......................Total 1. LSU 1,580 (.972) 1,516 (.963).....24, 24, 24, 25, 24, 24 (.960)......965 2. USC 1,595 (.981) 1,542 (.979).....23, 23, 23, 23, 22, 23 (.920)......960 3. OU...1,491 (.918) 1,449 (.920).....25, 25, 25, 24, 25, 25 (1.000)....946 The computer polls will play a more prominent role than I expected. This is a good thing. If all of the computer polls took into account SOS, then I would not have as much of a problem with the BCS throwing out the SOS. But not all computer polls do. This is still a problem. I wish the BCS would have forced all computer polls to use SOS, that would have made sense. But how much of a difference can the computer polls make? Well if you look at the example above, OU would have had a solid 1.0 computer poll score and still not been in the top 2, because of their weak #3 spot in the AP/Coaches (remember some voters did not even have OU as #3....some had Michigan).
Looking at what happened last year, it appears the only reason the two human polls got trumped in the new formula is because the computer polls were unanimous with there selection. (Oklahoma #1, LSU #2, USC #3). The human polls were a lot closer, and that gives the opening for LSU to overtake USC. Of course we also look at the fact that Oklahoma was a unanimous No.1 by the computers, yet left out of the BCS title game by the new rankings <sarcasm>WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE?! How can a team be No.1 and still left out of the title game??</sarcasm>
Yeah I had just edited my post that reflected basically what you just said. Obviously we both "get" what the BCS is trying to do here. Basically if OU had been a strong #3 in the polls, then you would be looking at a near 3 way tie in the final BCS scores, since that would have taken away from LSU's poll scores somewhat. All 3 teams would have been around a 960 score.
This is definitely a much better system than what I was worried was going to happen. I figured they were going to be making something that just did the average of the polls on poll position alone. This is kind of like the difference between the electorial college verses popular vote in presidential elections. As much as I hate to admit this, it might actually have a chance at working.
