From USA Today (4/23): BCS group ready to begin discussions of future changesBy Kelly Whiteside, USA TODAY Just as most spring football games wrap up Saturday, officials from the Bowl Championship Series begin three days of meetings Monday in Phoenix to discuss changing the poll which determines the teams that play in the national championship game. After the meetings, the group — the 11 Division I-A conference commissioners, an athletics director from each of the 11 conferences, TV partner ABC and all four BCS bowls — will pass on its recommendations to school presidents and chancellors for approval. Changes to the BCS poll will be announced at the start of the summer. "I'd like to think that coming out of this meeting we'll be very close to where we want to be," BCS coordinator Mike Tranghese said Thursday. "We're hoping we can reconfigure the whole system so it simplified and more understandable, so that the computers will be there to help make a determination when there is conflict or confusion but of itself not make a decision." The changes will be in place for next season's national title game, hosted by the Orange Bowl. Last season ended with controversy when the computes delivered a BCS title game that left out Southern California, the No. 1 team in the coaches' and media polls. LSU and USC were crowned co-champions. "We broke the poll down in parts," said Tranghese, the Big East commissioner. "We've taken a long look at the human portion and candidly, even though the public will accept the human polls, we believe they're flawed because of their starting points. They start with one team ranked No. 1 and one team ranked No. 30 before a game is ever played." BCS officials first approached the Associated Press, the administrator of the media poll, to see if AP would start its poll in the fourth or fifth game of the season; AP officials declined. "We have taken the computer portion of it and have had it dissected in every imaginable way possible. I think our group has not heard the full presentation, but they will get it at this meeting," Tranghese said. "On the table we'll be re-weighting certain things. There is also going to be a discussion on how to weight games played on the road against games played at home. "I don't know if there is any support for this. But there may be a discussion for (incorporating) margin of victory in a very, very limited way. Then I think it will be about what value we give the human polls vs. the computers." "We will have a discussion about the team that doesn't win its conference championship not being eligible (for the title game). Though that sounds good on paper, we have shown examples where a team has not won its championship but clearly could be the No. 1 team in the country," Tranghese said. "There are people who have asked us to adopt a straight rule that if you're No. 1 in both (human) polls, that's it." The bowls bidding to be the fifth BCS game beginning with the 2006 season will also be discussed. "The one thing we have agreed to is whoever this fifth bowl is, we will craft it so it is not viewed as a bowl below our current partners. It has got to be an equal partner," Tranghese said.
What an absolute joke! Having USC ahead of LSU for half the season last year to no small degree because LSU had it's one loss ONE WEEK after USC's is a fu**ing joke, is totally subjective, and in no way reflects who was/is the better team. A simple reform that would help make their rankings more reflective of who really are the top 25 teams---not releasing rankings until early October---is rejected out of hand! These same fools would be in near-riot mode if the rest of the BCS itself wasn't reformed, but when asked to improve their own process they refuse. :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:
Now that I've gotten that off my chest, there are a few interesting nuggets in this article: --Weighing home and away games: I assume this isn't in the makeup of the current BCS computer rankings. If it is added into the mix somewhat, I hope it's not given much weight...sure, home teams have a general advantage, but it's still all about how you perform between the lines that counts. I'd give it a very slight weight, kind of like one of the rankings (I forget which) tosses in your own conference's overall W-L record versus non-conference teams. --Margin of Victory--Most BCS observers agree that, while the open-ended MOV bonus used in the past was excessive, throwing out MOV altogether was a mistake. I've heard of possibly capping a MOV boost (bonus pts awarded only up to a certain degree), which is what we may see used starting this year. Also, I doubt that they'll add a rule prohibiting non-conference champs from playing for political reasons and go instead with the NCAA basketball-like selection committee approach mentioned by Tranghese to make "common-sense" decisions when the computers spit out something bizarre. If this was in place last year, we'd have had LSU-USC. On the other hand, if OU had won the BigXII and we had had this in place last year, we'd have had a USC-OU Sugar Bowl, so it's hardly a fix-all solution.
The AP makes me sick. BCS: Could you (pretty please with sugar on top) not publish a poll until October? AP: Not on your lives, buddy. Do you think we'd actually give up the opportunity to have as much writing fodder as we did last season? What a self-important group of pompous talking heads. Yes, margin of victory should be factored. Yes, a team should have to win its conference to go to the BCSCG. Duh.
Tranghese is a joke. He caved to the AP and media whining and took the stance that the BCS needed major overhauling because USC was "left out" of the National Championship instead of defending the BCS. Instead of correctly pointing out that the biased AP poll was the one that was incorrect he was falling all over himself apologizing for the BCS. Instead of pointing out the fatal flaw of the AP poll, it's very foundation is the fact that the ENTIRE poll is based upon rankings that are issued before one game of football is played. Tranghese needs to grow a pair and state the facts. The BCS worked exactly as it should have and pitted the two most deserving teams against each other for the National Championship; Further proving the illegitimacy of the biased AP poll and the very reason the BCS was needed in the first place.
I have a solution that will resolve everything. It's amazingly simple and will be extremely effective. There is little chance that this will happen, but we can always discuss perfect world scenarios. Assuming that what happened last year doesn't happen again this year, this plan would work. The winner of the Orange Bowl (can't be USC) and the BCS Championship should publicly refuse to accept the AP National Championship Title and the Trophy. If the AP Trophy is delivered to the school it should be shipped back - this will force the AP to crown the runner up and immediately destroy the AP's credibility once and for all. Wouldn't it be great to see Skip Bertman "respectfully decline" on ESPN - what a story that would be. Hey AP, thanks, but no thanks... The AP would be destroyed and the paper championship would vanish forever. It could happen...
The AP is simply being hostile to change in this regard simply because "this is the way we've always done it." I don't really think the AP starting it's polls later is something that necessarily needs to be tweaked though. What I would definitely do is bring back margin of victory, but make the MOV value in regards to the overall formula very small and have graduated values for it, with the maximum MOV value at 28 points, or four touchdowns. This should discourage any attempts by BCS powers to shoot for 77-0 victories, but of course some piling on will still occur. I would also go with a rule that says you must be a champion of your conference to play in the championship game. Either that, or factor in bonus points for being a conference champion. I say go ahead and do this not only because of the principle and the fact that it makes sense, but do it because, with conference realignment, the day is soon coming where all conferences will have a championship game, so we might as well go ahead and put in a little impetus to get there faster. There is some merit to the argument that you don't deserve to be national champion if you aren't even your conference champion. Until we get a true playoff, that is the way things should be. I'm more skeptical about rules concerning weighting home and away victories and losses. I would have to see how they would do it before I could comment.
I'm just not one of these people that buys into the belief that just because you don't win your conference championship means to can't be national champion. They are two completely different systems. Each conference has different ways of determining who plays in their conference championship. The National Championship is meant to measure the quality of a team over the entire season. LSU, USC and OK all lost one game last year. Just because Oklahoma's was lost during their championship game, a game USC doesn't even have to play, doesn't mean USC is better than OK. Oklahoma would have wiped the floor with USC last year. The BCS system worked perfectly last year. Unless everyone is willing to give up al of the college bowls and all of the tradition and pageantry that goes with them, the BCS is the best system we have for determining the National Championship. It worked perfectly last year despite what major media outlets say. The AP and it's voters are just mad they don't have the power to decide who is National Champion any more as they had for so many years. The AP was replaced with a more accurate, fair, and unbiased system; The BCS. :champs: :champs: :champs: :champs: :champs: :champs: :champs: :champs: :champs: :champs:
The AP is never going to change because the sole purpose of the AP poll is to SELL NEWSPAPERS, bottom line. Football fans want to get a paper, look at the poll (no matter what time of the season it is), and see their team ranked. Rankings should not come out until at least 4 weeks into the season, by that time you should have an idea of what a team looks like. Before this time AP voters are just voting on word of mouth from other AP writers in other areas....look what that got Auburn, Virginia Tech, and Miami last year.......
