Stanford: Just because you suck, and have little/no chance of beating the teams on your schedule doesn't mean it's the toughest in the country.

Arizona: A 1-AA team was on their schedule. That was the knock on LSU in '03, but Zona still gets ranked #3 toughest?

Where's Ole Miss on this list? They played a 4-7 1-AA school (same as 'Zona).
But also played Missouri (Bowl team from Big XII) Wake Forest (ACC champ), LSU (top 3 team but washes out against 'Zona playing us as well), Arky (SEC West champ), Auburn (Top-10 ), Georgia, Kentucky, Bama (all bowl teams from SEC)

The guy that runs that poll has some West Coast bias. He was from there and went to some college there.

Now you're reaching. Birthplace and college of choice don't equal absolute determination in terms of bias. If that were the case, I could easily dismiss your opinions since you're an LSU fan. Now read this from Sagarin's explanation:

For the first few weeks of the season, the starting ratings have weight
in the process(BAYESIAN), but once the teams are all CONNECTED, then
the starting ratings are no longer used and all teams are started equaland the ELO-CHESS is then done in an UNBIASED manner from that point on.
RATING and PREDICTOR are now unbiased and the ELO-CHESS is also unbiased now.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In ELO-CHESS, only winning and losing matters; the score margin is of no consequence,

A more user friendly explanation looks like this:
One system, "Elo chess", is presumably based on the Elo rating system used internationally to rank chess players. This system uses only wins and losses, with no reference to the victory margin. The other system "Predictor", takes victory margin into account. For that system, the difference in two teams' rating scores is meant to predict the margin of victory for the stronger team on a neutral court. For both systems, teams gain higher ratings within the Sagarin system by winning games against stronger opponents, factoring in such things as home-field advantage. For the Predictor system, margin of victory (or defeat) factors in also, but a law of diminishing returns is applied. Therefore, a football team that wins a game by a margin of 7-6 is rewarded less than a team that defeats the same opponent under the same circumstances 21-7, but a team that wins a game by a margin of 35-0 receives similar ratings to a team that defeats the same opponent 70-0. This characteristic is positively regarded among many as it recognizes "comfortable" victories, yet reduces a team's incentive to run up the score.

Yep, sure looks like a ton of bias to me. And by the way, here's his eductional background:
Sagarin received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970 and a Master of Business Administration degree from Indiana University in 1983.

Last time I checked Massachusetts and Indiana weren't on the West Coast.

Accoring to your link, these were updated AFTER all the bowl games. (All rankings according to your link)
U-Conn SOS = #22

• 1 Top 10 (Louisville #5)
• 3 Top 15 (UL, WVA #10, Rutgers#12)

Arky SOS = #26

• 4 Top 10 (Florida #1, USC#2, LSU#3, Wisconsin#9)
• 6 Top 15 (UF, USC, LSU, UW, Auburn #11, Tennessee #15)
• 7 Top 25 (all of above plus So. Carolina#24)

Arky was only team to face Top 3 teams in country last year. Both teams had a 1-AA team on schedule. Wanna try to explain to me how U-Conn's schedule can be considered tougher than Arky's?

This stuff drives me crazy about the BCS almost more than anything else. Looking at the layout, there is no way anyone would say that U-Conn has a greater strength of schedule than Arkansas. Yet, Sagarin in not called to task and asked to clarify. I know there is a lot of number crunching/statistics, etc. This just allows it to go on. No one except those figuring this in the first place have a clue how it was derived. If you ask them to explain, you end up with an answer that looks like someone was trying to figure E=mc2. I am really :cuss: sick of it. Sure is a good conversation starter though.

For starters, UConn played some good teams, (Lousiville 12-1, West Virginia 11-2, Rutgers 11-2, Wake Forest 11-3), in fact UConn's four best pponents lost the same number of games that Arkansas did (8).

Arkansas opponents won a combined 85 games last year while playing 13 different teams. UConn's opponents won a combined 84 games last year while they played 12 different teams.

Now add in, UConn playing more games on the road than Arkansas, along with UConn's opponents playing more on the road than Arkansas' opponents. Arky played 7 teams with losing records and/or 1-AA for the year, 1-11 Utah State, 1-AA S.E. Missouri State, 3-9 MSU, 4-8 La Monroe, 4-8 Ole Miss, 4-8 Vanderbilt and 6-7 Alabama. When you combine playing those 7 teams AND playing every OOC game at home, AND 3 of your opponents playing every OOC game at home (Alabama, Auburn and LSU) your SOS takes a significant hit in the formulas.

Quite frankly, that was pretty simple to figure out, if you know just the basics of SOS.

But Arkansas's schedule is harder than U-Conn's. Arkansas plays better teams, it cant be debated.

All I can say is what I already said, there is more to the SOS formula/rankings than listing your four toughest opponents. Where you play is a factor, Arkansas played every OOC game at home and that cost them in the SOS formula. Playing 7 teams with losing records was a factor, as was 3 of their opponents all playing 8 home games factored into it.

I'm not debating that Arkansas played some better teams than UConn, what I'm saying is that Arkansas also played weaker opponents, more home games along with their opponents playing more home games than UConn, and that brought their SOS scores down to below that of UConns'.

Just to give you an idea of home vs. away games, in the NFL where every team plays 8 home, 8 road games every year, the home team won 68% of the time. In MLB with 50% of games played at home/away, the home team won 67.4% of the time, add in the NBA, they were nearly identical to the NFL and MLB in win percentages last year at 67.5%.