I will start this post with a disclosure; I am a Baylor
graduate, and therefore regard the BCS with more than a small measure of
mistrust. Having seen how large schools
with money and influence have used a great deal of immoral influence to
essentially buy championship trophies over the years, I doubt the claims from
media and those same self-anointed feudal barons of football that the system works
very much at all in a fair and reasonable fashion. The simple fact that after more than a
century of organized football there is no national championship for FBS
football built off a playoff system, even though literally every other major
sport has a functional playoff system, including the ‘lower’ divisions of
football.
But it’s one thing to be cynical, and another to dive
into the deep end without a thought to the process. We are in the last year of the BCS system for
– allegedly – determining the national champion of college football, to be
replaced by a skimmed-milk version of a playoff system next year. This post
examines elements of both the BCS and the 4-team playoff system starting next
year.
So far as I am concerned, college football has never had
a true national champion. There were
teams so dominating that they were the champion by consensus, there are schools
with trophies in showcases that claim championships, which in truth prove only
that school’s ability to manipulate voters and a corrupt system, and there are
schools which played well enough to deserve a place in the decision but which were
wrongly denied for any number of subjective reasons, such as belonging to the ‘wrong’
conference, not beating the ‘right’ opponents, or some other excuse. The BCS system was allegedly going to
correct this, but in practice the façade quickly failed. Fans did not accept the BCS as valid, even
though in most years the championship placed favorite contenders against one another
and produced a credible result.
The simple fact is that fans demand playoffs for FBS
football. Not some ‘+1’ system or
another contrived means to keep fat cats happy, a legitimate playoff where the
champion proves themselves on the field against the top contenders. The BCS simply does not pass the smell test.
For this essay, I did some looking into the BCS system,
primarily using the official BCS site and a very helpful blog called BCS Know
How.
The basics of the BCS are pretty simple; the system uses
a formula to determine a 1st and 2nd team for BCS rankings,
which play each other for the championship.
The problems start with the way those rankings are determined. The short version of the BCS formula is that
two human polls, the USA Today Coaches Poll and the Harris Poll count for
two/thirds of the formula, with four selections from six computer polls making up
the remaining one/third. The human polls
are the heavy movers.
The Harris Poll, according to the New York Times, is a “motley
group of voters in the poll — which includes former financial consultants,
television executives and Internal Revenue Service employees”
I’m sure we all are glad to know that one/third of the
decision to rank the top college football team have a base of voters who often “have
nothing to do with football”. Particularly troubling about the NYT story is
the observation that most Harris Poll voters know only about the teams they see
on network TV; if a team is not nationally televised, the voters will not be
able to know much at all about them, and will rely on secondary impressions.
The other human poll, the
USA Today Coaches Poll, might at first appear to be a more reasonable look at
the best teams. But there’s maggots in
the cheerios here, too. First, the
voting panel is just 62 coaches from the American Football Coaches Association;
this means that dozens of FBS coaches are denied a vote for purely arbitrary
reasons. But the bias goes far deeper.
A 2011 empirical study by Doctors
Michael Strodnick and Scott Wysong determined that coaches tend to favor their
own teams and conferences, and were consistently biased in favor of large and
traditional schools and against smaller and non-traditional schools.
Essentially, the Harris and Coaches Polls both rely on
emotional preference, something not used in NCAA Basketball RPIs or valid
playoff systems.
Recognizing this flaw, the BCS committee decided to add
the results of six computer polls; the polls from Jeff Anderson & Chris Hester,
Richard Billingsley,
The Colley Matrix,
Kenneth Massey,
Peter Wolfe,
and Jeff Sagarin.
At first these polls may seem very scientific and
trustworthy, but problems show up pretty quick.
First, of course, is the point that the computer polls only make up
one/third of the BCS score – the subjective human polls are twice as heavy in
weight as the computer polls. Second,
the BCS formula rejects the highest and lowest computer ranks, for no valid
reason. The argument might be made that
the BCS is trying to eliminate outliers, except that with only six computer polls,
rejecting two of the results would mean rejecting fully one/third of the data,
comparable to rejecting the votes of 21 coaches or 35 of the Harris Poll
voters. Further, any valid poll
methodology eliminates outliers, so again there is no valid reason to reject
any of the poll results, unless doing so is a tacit admission that the poll is
invalid. But since selected results from
any of the polls are rejected by the BCS process, this indicts the entire poll
spectrum.
A closer look at the computer polls reveals reason for
concern as well. For example, Massey Wolfe and Sagarin include FCS schools in
their rankings but Anderson & Hester, Billingsley and Colley* do not. This alters the population sample of the
various polls, preventing a genuine apples-to-apples comparison.
(* Colley does not list discrete FCS schools in its
rankings, but includes ranks for ‘FCS Groups’ without explanation or member
identification)
At the express
direction of the BCS committee, margin of victory may not be considered in the computer
polls. Pollsters like Sagarin and Massey
have shown a polite dissent by releasing not only the official BCS rankings
using an ‘approved’ formula, but also a set of rankings using margin as a valid
consideration. Sagarin goes to the point
of listing a formula called ‘PREDICTOR’ which include victory margins, and has
commented that he considers those rankings more valid in projecting actual game
winners. I understand the desire to
eliminate manipulation of a process by dumping points on an opponent, as
Alabama did to Baylor in 1979 for example, by using their starts to score 28
points in the fourth quarter to make their win look more impressive. However, when a team controls the game
throughout, pulls its starters in the third quarter and still wins by a
crushing margin, that fact is a salient indicator which should be considered. I found the refusal by the polls to reveal their
exact formula/algorithm a bad sign, as this prevents the replication which is a
requisite condition of any valid scientific case.
In 2010, BCS Know How did a series on the
computer polls and revealed some specific by each poll:
Anderson & Hester:
Does not consider previous years results. For SOS counts opponents and opponents of
opponents. Sets a ‘conference strength’
then uses that as a benchmark to set specific SOS. Ranks according to wins, losses, SOS by
formula, wins against poll top 25, losses to poll non-top 25.
Billingsley: Does consider previous years as a starting
point for rankings. Premium awarded for
staying undefeated. Considers the SIZE
of the attendance where the game is being played as a factor in game quality,
which is bias in favor of larger schools.
Colley Matrix: Based
on winning percentage and SOS. Does not
consider previous years in rankings.
Punishes teams for playing ‘weak’ opponents.
Kenneth Massey:
Claims to base rankings on ‘equilibrium
point for probability model applied to binary (win or loss) outcome of each
game’. That seems to mean you get
points for winning when you are not supposed to win, and lose points for losing
when you are not supposed to lose. Previous
years are considered, and so is date of the game as well as venue.
Peter Wolfe:
Eats small children then spits out their bones to find the results. Well, maybe not, but Dr. Wolfe does not say
much at all about how he determines his rankings. All he
will say is that he tries to create a “maximum
likelihood estimate” of a team winning a given game. Wolfe counts results from 730 different
schools, by far the broadest population sample, but his limited explanation
seems to suggest a modified transitive property theory, mitigated by not
counting margin. He does not say, but the
explanations imply that prior years are considered when determining
expectations. Finally, Dr. Wolfe is a professor
at UCLA, which may or may not influence his initial assumptions.
Jeff Sagarin: Counts preseason rankings, ratings compound
both opponent records and records of opponents’ opponents. The preseason ranking factors are removed
when the BCS ranks are first released.
Undefeated and single-loss teams gain a premium value, and road wins are
considered especially important.
Now, let’s have a
look at the playoff system starting next year.
According to BCS Know How,
The playoffs will use a six-bowl system using three ‘contract’
bowls and three ‘host’ bowls for the abridged playoff system, using four
teams. The highest-ranked champion from
five minor conferences (CUSA, Mountain West, Sun Belt, AAC, and MAC) gets one
of twelve spots in a system suspiciously similar in appearance to the BCS, with
champions from the six major conferences and five ‘at-large’ positions to be
determined by a selection committee, which also announces the rankings.
The selection committee will release a ‘Top 20’ ranking each
week beginning in Week 8 of the season, very much like the BCS rankings. Two semifinal games will be held either Dec.
31 or Jan. 1 of each year, with a championship game the first Monday in January
that is at least six days after New Year’s Day.
The committee will have absolute authority in selecting
the four teams in the playoffs, and although they “will
be instructed to weigh strength of schedule, win-loss record, head-to-head
victories with other teams in contention and whether the team won its own
conference“, it’s impossible to know how objective that process will prove
to be in practice.
No
information has been released about who will be on the Selection committee, or
what criteria will be used to choose the members.
No
metric has been announced to determine which teams should be chosen for the
playoffs.
No information
has been released regarding whether polls will play a role in the playoff team
selection, or if so how they could be used.
