How about some BCS bashing

The computer rankings, for example, are not allowed to take into consideration margin of victory. A 63-0 victory is the same as a 6-3 win. Jeff Sagarin, the most famous of the computer rankers, calls his BCS rankings the “politically correct” version and says they’re “less accurate” than another version he calculates. It includes margin of victory, and the BCS won’t let him use it.



“You’re asked to rank teams that don’t play each other, that don’t play long seasons, and you can’t include margin of victory?” said Kenneth Massey, another of the handpicked mathematicians, who also provides a “better version” on his Web site. “It’s a very challenging problem from a data-analysis standpoint. It does require sacrificing a bit of accuracy. It’s not the best way to do it.”

“This isn’t a sincere effort to use math to find the answer at all. It’s clearly an effort to use math as a cover for whatever you want to do. I don’t even know if the people who set up the system are aware of that.



“It’s just nonsense math.”

“I’m not a mathematician,” Billingsley said.



A nonmathematician who uses a numbers-based formula to rank teams. A nonmathematician who, accordingly, uses the previous year’s rankings as a starting point for the next year’s, even if a school graduates its quarterback, running back and middle linebacker, and loses its coach.



“I don’t know that the powers that be even know what he’s doing,” Stern said. “I’m not saying he’s bad. But … he’s bad. It’s clear it’s not what the BCS should be doing.”



“I’m not even a highly educated man, to tell you the truth,” Billingsley said. “I don’t even have a degree. I have a high school education. I never had calculus. I don’t even remember much about algebra. I think everyone questions everything I do. Why is he doing that? Does he know what he’s doing, a crazy kook in Oklahoma? I had a guy tell me in an email once that I’m a crazy Oklahoma hillbilly. Well, it’s true, but it has nothing to do with my ranking skills.”

Y12 wrote:
It was either Brent Musberger or Gary Danielson (CBS) who I heard recently defend the decision to not use margin of victory. He said it penalizes teams that build themselves on strong defense. I can accept that this has some merit, but my question is why can't you have an elite defense and an elite offense?



It used to be that only one or two teams were undefeated or had just one loss, but now with 5 teams finishing undefeated, you need some way to choose between them. Margin of victory should matter, but there should be a cap on it, IMO. If you win by 50 or 35 it doesn't really matter, but if you win by 10 or 25 it does mean something.

Mingjai wrote:



If they're going to use margin of victory, it should be a percentage of the points scored by the winning team--similar to how operating profit margin is a operating profit's percentage of total revenue. So in our examples above, margin of victory would be as follows:



24 / 59 = 40.1%

24 / 24 = 100%



Notice this puts a cap of 100% on this factor, but that creates the problem of winning 6-0 being as good as winning 59-0. While this is an admitted weakness of the metric, I have no problem with rewarding shut outs.



On the other hand, this metric does serve to prevent running up the score in its extreme. If you are winning 56-3, there's little incentive to push the score to 63-3, because the difference between 94.6% and 95.2% is so little.



That said, I'd think that keeping points for and points against as separate factors in rankings is the best way consider raking teams.

tmoney35 wrote:
Being that we're all rooting for an unranked team this year, the BCS subject hasn't really come up, but I just read an article that highlighted a few reasons why the BCS is ridiculous that I was unaware of.



http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=ys-deathtothebcs101310



These are quotes from the people who make the formulas used in the computer rankings

The computer rankings, for example, are not allowed to take into consideration margin of victory. A 63-0 victory is the same as a 6-3 win. Jeff Sagarin, the most famous of the computer rankers, calls his BCS rankings the “politically correct” version and says they’re “less accurate” than another version he calculates. It includes margin of victory, and the BCS won’t let him use it.



“You’re asked to rank teams that don’t play each other, that don’t play long seasons, and you can’t include margin of victory?” said Kenneth Massey, another of the handpicked mathematicians, who also provides a “better version” on his Web site. “It’s a very challenging problem from a data-analysis standpoint. It does require sacrificing a bit of accuracy. It’s not the best way to do it.”

This one really took me by surprise. The formula's can't take margin of victory into consideration? That's just stupid. Team A beating Team C by 40 in NOT equal to Team B beating Team C by 7, but according to the BCS it is...

“This isn’t a sincere effort to use math to find the answer at all. It’s clearly an effort to use math as a cover for whatever you want to do. I don’t even know if the people who set up the system are aware of that.



“It’s just nonsense math.”

The actual statisticians who make these formula's admit that the rules the BCS gives them aren't designed to find out who the best team is, it's designed to keep the little guys out.





Here's a good one, Richard Billingsley is actually one of the people who derive one of the formulas used in the BCS system:

“I’m not a mathematician,” Billingsley said.



A nonmathematician who uses a numbers-based formula to rank teams. A nonmathematician who, accordingly, uses the previous year’s rankings as a starting point for the next year’s, even if a school graduates its quarterback, running back and middle linebacker, and loses its coach.



“I don’t know that the powers that be even know what he’s doing,” Stern said. “I’m not saying he’s bad. But … he’s bad. It’s clear it’s not what the BCS should be doing.”



“I’m not even a highly educated man, to tell you the truth,” Billingsley said. “I don’t even have a degree. I have a high school education. I never had calculus. I don’t even remember much about algebra. I think everyone questions everything I do. Why is he doing that? Does he know what he’s doing, a crazy kook in Oklahoma? I had a guy tell me in an email once that I’m a crazy Oklahoma hillbilly. Well, it’s true, but it has nothing to do with my ranking skills.”