While SOS is not an explicit component, it is important non the less. Calculating SOS is one royal pain in the ass and Rick Tellshow provides an excellent service by calculating it for us. His site is at: http://www.tellshowbcs.com/ Tellshow projects SOS by going thru all the schedules and assuming the higher ranked team always wins. His projected SOS shows what many suspected; LSU is in good shape wrt our competitors. This is important because whoever wins the SOS will probably win the computers and they can't be hammered for playing a 1AA team in the human polls. Personally, I think the gap between LSU and TX will narrow by the end of the season. However, the gap is large enough that I'm confident it will hold. If we are able to stay in the race (a big, big if at this point), the fundamentals show that we are in good shape.
I was wondering if he was going to start doing this again this year. The immediate difference I see between what he's doing and what I'm doing is that he's doubling the Coaches poll to substitute for the Harris poll. That's probably a pretty good indicator of what the polls would look like had the Harris poll been released already. Tellshow does a great job, I wish I had the time to spend on this that he does.
I've just made some quick modifications to do what he does and doubled the score for the Coaches poll to sub for the Harris poll.
Does he put as much weight on road games as the computer polls do? The ASU game being moved to Tempe will help us a lot with some of those SOS formulations like Sagrin's(sp?). Who says you can't be hammered for playing a 1-AA team by the polls? It's pretty much up to the voters to do what they want.
I believe that Tellshow's SOS uses the same calculation that the old BCS use to use for it's extra component. This was that your oppenents' combined record counts for 2/3's and your opponents' opponents' record counts for 1/3. That formula doesn't use home/away, so the computer polls will give LSU an even more favorable view in SOS because we will have one more road game than most teams in the BCS. (Texas has the same number of home/road as LSU, USC has one more home game than LSU.) You're right there, but I think the human voters will be a lot more leniant with that one than the computers will. It's really our only out of conference blemish this year, so I think we will be fine. North Texas will put up a little more gaudy of a record than they are actually worth, so that will help us out.
A. The old BCS is all about wins and losses and nothing else. The computers all do something different. The old SOS is a very good proxy as to how they will sort teams with similar records in the aggregate, not any specific poll. B. Yes it is true they can do whatever they want as individuals, but in aggregate, when it counts, the polls are pretty rational. If a team has a higher SOS than another even though it played a 1AA, what does that tell you about the rest of their schedule? Before someone pulls out a silly AU argument, AU had the lowest SOS of the three schools last year. Because of this they finished third in the computers. If AU had a higher SOS, they would have finished higher in the computers and people hammering them about the Citadel would have looked silly.
Voters are fickle, and are also very short-sighted. Any sort of hit LSU will take for playing Appy State ---still a terrible decision, IMO, but I digress---will be long gone come December 3, when an undefeated LSU playing either Florida or (better still) Georgia in Atlanta will look far more impressive than a Texas playing some Big XII North scrub in a 99% pro-Longhorns crowd in Houston.
When's the first BCS poll coming out? I expect to see USC's ranking skyrocket in relation to where their current BCS projections have them due to the fact that they'll have played Az St, Cal and Notre Dame by the end of Oct.
I thought I remember seeing somewhere that the first BCS poll should be out either the 4th or 5th week of the season I dont remember which.
Harris Poll should be out after this weekend. The BCS is usually out after the first weekend in Oct. As long as the win, USC will most likely be #1 in the BCS. Unless they struggle badly in several games, it's unlikely they will lose enough in the human polls to change this. Personally, if we make it thru the season to be one of the two teams, I don't care if it's because we were #2.
