Too Early Look at the BCS

NYCHawkeye74

Well-Known Member
As of Saturday's games:

Massey: 8th

Massey Ratings - CF

Sagarin: 21st (He uses ELO-Chess for BCS)

USATODAY.com

Colley: 19th

Colley's Bias Free Matrix Rankings

Anderson: 21st

AndersonSports: The Jeff Anderson & Chris Hester College Football Computer Rankings - Part of the BCS Rankings

Billingsley: 11th

http://www.cfrc.com/Ratings_2010/WK_5.htm

Wolfe: Not published until Oct 17th

Harris: Not published until Oct 17th

Coaches: 15th

Standings with the data available today (Wolfe and Harris are not included). To compensate, I doubled the weight of the coaches poll and increased the weight of each computer poll. While it is not perfect, it should be pretty accurate:

1 Alabama 1.13 2 Oregon 4.40 3 BSU 4.67 4 OSU 4.73 5 TCU 5.33 6 Oklahoma 5.87 7 LSU 7.73 8 Nebraska 8.87 9 Auburn 9.07 10 Arizona 9.73 11 Florida 10.80 12 Utah 12.53 13 Iowa 15.53 14 Miami 16.40 15 MSU 17.27 16 Stanford 17.27 17 Arkansas 17.73 18 Michigan 17.73 19 Oklahoma State 19.67 20 Nevada 21.40 21 Missouri 22.40 22 Florida State 22.67 23 South Carolina 23.00 24 Wisconsin 23.80 25 Northwestern 25.40
Others of note:

26 Kansas State
27 Texas
30 PSU
32 Va Tech
34 UCLA
41 ISU
 
Good stuff here. I see 4 of those top 10 getting knocked off sooner or later. I got to thinking about this last night, if Iowa heads into the Ohio St. game at 10-1, I wonder where they are ranked?
 
Good stuff here. I see 4 of those top 10 getting knocked off sooner or later. I got to thinking about this last night, if Iowa heads into the Ohio St. game at 10-1, I wonder where they are ranked?
We will be in the top 10 by then...or very, very, close. Beat OSU and we could vault into the top 8 for sure...BCS bowl still in the equation...with hopefully a trip to Pasadena.
 
We will be in the top 10 by then...or very, very, close. Beat OSU and we could vault into the top 8 for sure...BCS bowl still in the equation...with hopefully a trip to Pasadena.

Man, I was thinking if we knock off Michigan, Wisconsin, Michigan St we would be in that 7-8 range. Of course with some teams in the top 10 getting knocked off as well.
 
I suppose we have to cheer for ISU to take out Utah. It's silly to see Utah in front of the Hawks this projected BCS poll.
 
ISU can definitely help us this week. The computers will give ISU lots of love (helping our SOS) if they win and Utah will be out of BCS contention.

My fear remains, however, that we lose to tOSU and we are out. OSU to the BCS Champ game closes the Rose Bowl to us because of the outside AQ rule. The Orange won't want us back two years in a row. With Nebby likely in the Fiesta, would they want Iowa over a 10-2 Michigan or a Oklahoma, Florida, or LSU? That leaves the Sugar spot, and we'd better hope there are a lot of 3 loss teams at that point.

Win out and we are going to Pasadena.
 
im with blkngold...i think if we take down michigan, wisconsin and michigan state that we are in the top 10. assuming a couple other teams lose which may or may not happen, that buckeye game is still looking VERY interesting
 
Yup, when we win out we will go to the Rose Bowl, minimum. Hopefully we get lucky and go to the NC game though. I know lots of people think that's impossible, but there is definitely still a slim chance.
 
Because their wins against VaTech and Oregon St aren't looking as good now. Their computer rankings are only going to get worse as their schedule weakens. Don't see how Boise could get into the title game at this point.
 
ISU can definitely help us this week. The computers will give ISU lots of love (helping our SOS) if they win and Utah will be out of BCS contention.

My fear remains, however, that we lose to tOSU and we are out. OSU to the BCS Champ game closes the Rose Bowl to us because of the outside AQ rule. The Orange won't want us back two years in a row. With Nebby likely in the Fiesta, would they want Iowa over a 10-2 Michigan or a Oklahoma, Florida, or LSU? That leaves the Sugar spot, and we'd better hope there are a lot of 3 loss teams at that point.

Win out and we are going to Pasadena.

LSU and Florida will be nowhere near a BCS game. LSU still has to play Florida, Arkansas, Alabama and Auburn. They will lose at least three of those games. Florida will probably win the terrible SEC East but will lose to someone else along the way then go down to Alabama again in the SEC championship. Michigan is not that good, they will go 8-4 at best.
 
Because their wins against VaTech and Oregon St aren't looking as good now. Their computer rankings are only going to get worse as their schedule weakens. Don't see how Boise could get into the title game at this point.

Their VaTech win will look good by the end of the year. They will probably be 8-2 going into their game with Miami, and I'll take any team with a decent defense over Jacory Harris.
 
I suppose we have to cheer for ISU to take out Utah. It's silly to see Utah in front of the Hawks this projected BCS poll.

Absolutely! An ISU win helps the Hawks in two ways:

1. It knocks Utah out of the top 10 and almost surely below Iowa in the rankings.

2. An ISU win adds to Iowa's strength of schedule.
 
Absolutely! An ISU win helps the Hawks in two ways:

1. It knocks Utah out of the top 10 and almost surely below Iowa in the rankings.

2. An ISU win adds to Iowa's strength of schedule.

I don't think SOS is a component of the BCS rankings or as strong of a component like it is for basketball and the RPI.

I think 95% of it is based on the number of points you get in each poll and that is calculated into a formula, each team gets points based on the ranking of each voter and then they are totaled and placed 1 through 25 starting with the highest point total. For example, this week Iowa is 15th in the coaches poll with 643 points and Miami is 14th with 679, so if Iowa would have gotten ranked 10th instead of 20th by some that may have been a difference of 36 points and enough for them to jump Miami.
 
I don't think SOS is a component of the BCS rankings or as strong of a component like it is for basketball and the RPI.

The BCS Rankings themselves are 1/3rd Coaches Poll, 1/3rd Harris, and 1/3rd computers.

And while I don't believe all of the computer formulas are published, its likely that some of them take SOS into account. Not to mention, human voters can and will have their own views on SOS which factor into the rankings as well.
 
I don't think SOS is a component of the BCS rankings or as strong of a component like it is for basketball and the RPI.

I think 95% of it is based on the number of points you get in each poll and that is calculated into a formula, each team gets points based on the ranking of each voter and then they are totaled and placed 1 through 25 starting with the highest point total. For example, this week Iowa is 15th in the coaches poll with 643 points and Miami is 14th with 679, so if Iowa would have gotten ranked 10th instead of 20th by some that may have been a difference of 36 points and enough for them to jump Miami.

SOS is no longer a direct component of the BCS formula. Several years ago SOS was added to your score along with the rankings. Now it is an indirect component. Every computer inherently values SOS. Human polls do as well, to a certain degree (observe the meteoric rise of any team that beats ND the first half of the year), but computers devalue wins over falling teams (to different degrees). An ISU win moves ISU up the rankings in the computers, and they "revalue" our game against them when they do that.

The current BCS formula is as follows:

1/3 Harris Poll

1/3 Coaches Poll

1/3 Average of the 6 Computer Polls after removing the highest and lowest scores

For my formula I did not remove any polls since it would only leave 3 to average.
 
That is why I said probably 5% or less is based on SOS. It doesn't matter anyway, if Iowa just wins out that is all they can control anyway, if Iowa has another loss none of this matters because while Iowa will fall I think they would still stay in the top 12 (but no longer have a shot at the NC) and be eligible for an at large bid.
 
I think we are right where we were last year at this time if I am not mistaken....didn't we jump to 3 by the time we played Northwestern?
 
The actual BCS formula is:
1/3 Harris Poll=percentage of points received/total possible points
1/3 Coaches Poll=percentage of points received/total possible points
1/3 Computers=1st in ranking get 25 pts., 2nd gets 24 etc. Remove the high and low ranks, sum the other four and divide by 100.
Add the three percentages and rank in order.

It has been a few years since I read the methodology of the computer polls, but I they all have SOS as a factor. The weakness I saw in them is that some, if not all ,do not factor in whether a game is away or at home.

The following is from the explanation of the Massey Rating

Ratings Overview
In essence, each game "connects" two teams via an equation. As more games are played, eventually each team is connected to every other team through some chain of games. When this happens, the system of equations is coupled and a computer is necessary to solve them simultaneously.
The ratings are totally interdependent, so that a team's rating is affected by games in which it didn't even play. The solution therefore effectively depends on an infinite chain of opponents, opponents' opponents, opponents' opponents' opponents, etc. The final ratings represent a state of equilibrium in which each team's rating is exactly balanced by its good and bad performances.
 
I don't think SOS is a component of the BCS rankings or as strong of a component like it is for basketball and the RPI.

I think 95% of it is based on the number of points you get in each poll and that is calculated into a formula, each team gets points based on the ranking of each voter and then they are totaled and placed 1 through 25 starting with the highest point total. For example, this week Iowa is 15th in the coaches poll with 643 points and Miami is 14th with 679, so if Iowa would have gotten ranked 10th instead of 20th by some that may have been a difference of 36 points and enough for them to jump Miami.
If the BCS rankings don't take into consideration SOS then why does everyone talk about Boise State dropping in the poll when they get deeper into their schedule? Are you basing it on the views of the writers and coaches that will drop them?
 

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