Not so much that it looks like a PAC-10 team is going to be represented in the national championship game, we've seen that a lot, though rather exclusively with one team in recent history. But it does look as if Oregon is going to be making its first ever appearance in the BCS Championship game. The biggest questions, and possibly the most history making answer, will come in who is going to be their opponent?
I went to school in Washington, so I knew a lot of people who were very passionate about Oregon college football, but it has really been a long time since I have had a team to care about. As a kid, growing up in Colorado, I definitely had a thing for CU, and remember watching the amazing Orange Bowl game in which CU won its first, and only, national championship. That lasted up until the days of Kordell Stewart, and the Miracle in Michigan, and Rashan Salaam winning the Heisman Trophy. Since then Colorado College football has been kind of boring. I do always like to watch the bowl games on New Years, and saw the Oregon vs. Ohio State game last year. Even though Oregon lost that game last year, I could not get over how much fun it was to watch that team. So, since then, Oregon has become my college football team of choice. So I am quite happy to see Oregon sitting atop the college football rankings.
Now, if I had my choice of teams to pick for who I would want to play against Oregon in the national championship game, it would be Boise State. Not a hugely flashy team, but they do have some very fun trick plays up their sleeves that just makes things fun to watch. I mean, who can forget that hook and ladder play against Oklahoma that put them on the map. They still pull out some gems every now and their unpredictability, against the speed and excitement of an Oregon team would make for the most interesting game.
The most likely game to happen, and this pretty much depends entirely on what happens this week against Alabama, is Oregon vs. Auburn. Now, Auburn's QB, Cam Newton, has been in the news a lot recently about possible violations while he was at Florida. Depending on the outcome of these allegations, as well as whether or not they are able to beat the defending national champs, could definitely affect whether or not Auburn makes it that far. We must, of course, remember that Auburn does still need to play a South Carolina team that handed Bama its first loss of the year in the SEC championship. Auburn, while I believe the most likely choice, is still far from a sure thing, and will have to continue to play its impressive brand of football in order to get there, especially if they may end up without their team leader at QB. It's definitely hard to picture Auburn winning out without Cam Newton.
Now, should Auburn lose, we could see TCU end up in the national championship game, which would still provide us the history that so many people are aching for when it comes to the BCS system never giving non-automatic teams the time of day, but it lacks quite the following that Boise State has. TCU is a great team, but just aren't quite as sexy as Boise State is. I mean, it isn't like TCU plays on purple turf or anything like that.
Potential darkhorse teams. Other than Boise State and TCU, the only other team that really has much of a chance to squeak in, and they would need a lot of help from all the teams in front of them, is Wisconsin. Wisconsin is looking to assure themselves of the Big 10 Title with a win over Northwestern this week. If nothing else, Wisconsin, with a win, will manage to make it back to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 2000. Considering that Northwestern is a far inferior team, there is not much of a reason for Wisconsin to not claim the Big 10 Title this year, but most likely will fall short of the national championship game.
Whichever way it ends up, the road up to the national championship game is going to be one that is filled with twists and turns, and some seriously exciting football! I know that I am looking forward to it.
Showing posts with label BCS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BCS. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
BCS Drama...Already!?
It's no secret that most people in the world of college football cannot stand the BCS ranking system. Every year there seems to be somebody left out, or just completely screwed over, for lack of a better term, by the BCS. This year, we've only had one poll brought out by the BCS, and there is already controversy.
Even though they are ranked #3 by both of the "important" human polls, Oklahoma has managed to grab the #1 ranking in the BCS system, with Oregon #2 (but #1 in both important human polls), and Boise State (#2 in both important human polls) rounding out the top 3. People say it every single year, but this BCS system makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and people have been calling for its head almost since it began! The original intent was that it would get rid of the controversy and provide a clear cut national champion every single year. Well, that hasn't happened.
Why does this happen, you might ask. Well, that's a fantastic question. I've actually been trying to pay attention to college football this year so that I can be a better informed sports writer, and I've looked into the whole system for creating the BCS ranking. If you dare read on, I warn you, you will be confused by the end of this.
As best as I can understand it, the BCS ranking is figured by averaging 3 rankings. One coming from the Harris Interactive Poll. The second coming from the coaches poll. The third from the computer ranking system. They will then take all 3 of those rankings, and average them. Seems straight forward enough, I suppose, but here's the problem, none of the 3 of these use the same criteria. Some of these polls are influenced by things like margin of victory, or rank of your opponent. Others are not.
Then, the big issue that jumps out at me with this is that the computer rankings take 6 other people's ranking systems, which are also not the same, and use those to calculate its rank. Plus, the explanation for it is ridiculous and incredibly difficult to follow. Here is the explanation I got from a web page saying it was explaining all of this for us all to understand.
"The computer rankings percentage is calculated by dropping the highest and lowest ranking for each team and then dividing the remaining total by 100, the maximum possible points. (Example: the 6 rankers have Team A ranked 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, and 4. Take away the 2 and 4 which leaves an average of 3rd place. The BCS quotient of this component would be 0.92. (23 / 25 = 0.92)."
Here's what I understand. Each rank has a qualifying number of points to go along with it, 1-25. Rank #1 has 25 points, and the points descend by 1 until they get to the #25 team, which only gets one point. So, how does this relate to the BCS computer formula. Well, let's look at it this way. Back to the same problem. We have the ranks as follows from our 6 computer guys. 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4. 2 & 4 get dropped for an average of 3. Meaning out of the 25 possible voter points, they get 23. 23/25 = .92. Then we get to average the others out here. So if they are #1 in the other polls, they would get the solution of 25/25, which is 1. So, 1 + 1 + .92 / 3 = .973. Then, whoever has the highest point total is the #1 rank.
Now I know what you're thinking. How can something this clear possibly cause any type of controversy whatsoever? Seriously, this thing is insane!!! How can anybody possibly understand this!? There are far too many cooks in this kitchen! 3 polls, with multiple pollsters in each of them using different criteria to rank the teams. There is no way this can match up.
Solution? There's a few. First, since college football will almost never go to a playoff system, which would be the clearest way to fix this, means there just needs to be a better way of ranking these. Now, I have no idea why there are so many polls, but one of the simplest solutions, to me anyways, seems like we should just get rid of, or at least not recognize officially, some of these polls. For years there was the Coaches Poll and the AP Poll, which created several split championships. Why not just trust the coaches? Aren't they the ones that know the most about all of this? If you just went by the coaches poll, then you only have one team to recognize. You can keep the whole national title game where #1 plays #2, but that way there aren't any convoluted formulas, which vary by person and computer, to screw you up. Or maybe just go with the AP, but come on, people want a clear cut, no questions asked, national champion. You could even throw a special clause in for a just in case and 1 game.
All I know is that fans of college football, and of sports in general, are sick and tired of the garbage that the BCS has put us through several times. The BCS will never, EVER, give love to teams that deserve legit shots at the national title like Boise State and TCU and others because it doesn't take into account things it should. So let's get something that is straight forward, transparent, can be understood by everybody, and that gives all schools an equal shot at things. Come on NCAA, it's long past time.
Even though they are ranked #3 by both of the "important" human polls, Oklahoma has managed to grab the #1 ranking in the BCS system, with Oregon #2 (but #1 in both important human polls), and Boise State (#2 in both important human polls) rounding out the top 3. People say it every single year, but this BCS system makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and people have been calling for its head almost since it began! The original intent was that it would get rid of the controversy and provide a clear cut national champion every single year. Well, that hasn't happened.
Why does this happen, you might ask. Well, that's a fantastic question. I've actually been trying to pay attention to college football this year so that I can be a better informed sports writer, and I've looked into the whole system for creating the BCS ranking. If you dare read on, I warn you, you will be confused by the end of this.
As best as I can understand it, the BCS ranking is figured by averaging 3 rankings. One coming from the Harris Interactive Poll. The second coming from the coaches poll. The third from the computer ranking system. They will then take all 3 of those rankings, and average them. Seems straight forward enough, I suppose, but here's the problem, none of the 3 of these use the same criteria. Some of these polls are influenced by things like margin of victory, or rank of your opponent. Others are not.
Then, the big issue that jumps out at me with this is that the computer rankings take 6 other people's ranking systems, which are also not the same, and use those to calculate its rank. Plus, the explanation for it is ridiculous and incredibly difficult to follow. Here is the explanation I got from a web page saying it was explaining all of this for us all to understand.
"The computer rankings percentage is calculated by dropping the highest and lowest ranking for each team and then dividing the remaining total by 100, the maximum possible points. (Example: the 6 rankers have Team A ranked 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, and 4. Take away the 2 and 4 which leaves an average of 3rd place. The BCS quotient of this component would be 0.92. (23 / 25 = 0.92)."
Here's what I understand. Each rank has a qualifying number of points to go along with it, 1-25. Rank #1 has 25 points, and the points descend by 1 until they get to the #25 team, which only gets one point. So, how does this relate to the BCS computer formula. Well, let's look at it this way. Back to the same problem. We have the ranks as follows from our 6 computer guys. 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4. 2 & 4 get dropped for an average of 3. Meaning out of the 25 possible voter points, they get 23. 23/25 = .92. Then we get to average the others out here. So if they are #1 in the other polls, they would get the solution of 25/25, which is 1. So, 1 + 1 + .92 / 3 = .973. Then, whoever has the highest point total is the #1 rank.
Now I know what you're thinking. How can something this clear possibly cause any type of controversy whatsoever? Seriously, this thing is insane!!! How can anybody possibly understand this!? There are far too many cooks in this kitchen! 3 polls, with multiple pollsters in each of them using different criteria to rank the teams. There is no way this can match up.
Solution? There's a few. First, since college football will almost never go to a playoff system, which would be the clearest way to fix this, means there just needs to be a better way of ranking these. Now, I have no idea why there are so many polls, but one of the simplest solutions, to me anyways, seems like we should just get rid of, or at least not recognize officially, some of these polls. For years there was the Coaches Poll and the AP Poll, which created several split championships. Why not just trust the coaches? Aren't they the ones that know the most about all of this? If you just went by the coaches poll, then you only have one team to recognize. You can keep the whole national title game where #1 plays #2, but that way there aren't any convoluted formulas, which vary by person and computer, to screw you up. Or maybe just go with the AP, but come on, people want a clear cut, no questions asked, national champion. You could even throw a special clause in for a just in case and 1 game.
All I know is that fans of college football, and of sports in general, are sick and tired of the garbage that the BCS has put us through several times. The BCS will never, EVER, give love to teams that deserve legit shots at the national title like Boise State and TCU and others because it doesn't take into account things it should. So let's get something that is straight forward, transparent, can be understood by everybody, and that gives all schools an equal shot at things. Come on NCAA, it's long past time.
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