At least the Civil War game should be good this year.

I'm so glad college football* determines its championship based on which two teams look the best according to com

Puters...

/stupid phone

Obligatory.

Im a Oregon State fan, but these computer rankings are stupid.

Thanks for NOTHING, Femputer...

#1 is too high but Oregon State appears to be the real deal this year

Alabama has a bye week this week, OSU should hit up Tuscaloosa.

TheTrashcanMan: Im a Oregon State fan, but these computer rankings are stupid.

Eh. They've beaten three good, but not great teams, by small margins. It's unsustainable long-term*. They're also getting a boost by their game with Nicholls State being posponed. It's not particularly surprising this early, especially since they've only played three games, whereas most teams have played four or five.

*does not apply to teams coached by Bill Snyder

Well, the computer rankings aren't allowed to use margin of victory (for some stupid reason that I'll never understand)... so if you don't let them take that or "how good do we think this team is in the pre-season" into account, you're left with strength of schedule as the only way to distinguish between unbeaten teams... and they have the best SoS. So it's not really that shocking, it's just a way for humans to laugh at how stupid computers are when artificially handicapped as to what information the algorithms can use.

Isn't BCS rankings invalid prior to ~8 games?

revrendjim: [i823.photobucket.com image 200x163]

no wedding ring, not canon

I'll kick the machine right in the mouth.Roll tide motherfarker(s)

Please come back in a few weeks when the computers that don't rely on arbitrary fudge factors have enough info to be useful. This early in the season they just aren't, but are actually doing it right, while computer rankings that favor 'Bama at this point are doing it wrong.

Indices, not indexes, just sayin'.

Gdiguy: Well, the computer rankings aren't allowed to use margin of victory (for some stupid reason that I'll never understand)...

Because Steve Spurrier kept running up the score on cupcakes and wasn't shy about telling everyone he was only doing it because it gave Florida a better ranking in the computers. Before then there was a sort of gentlemen's agreement* that if you schedule cupcakes, once the game was out of hand, you'd bring in the benchwarmers. Also if one of your traditional opponents was having a bad year, you didn't run up the score on them so they wouldn't do it to you next time you had a bad year. Human polls tended to take this into account but the computers only looked at numbers and when there was a BCS bid worth millions on the line, you pretty much had to run up the score. So the BCS banned using margin of victory before it got too far out of hand. Of course that has created its own problems but you can always check out the Sagarin ratings to see both versions of computer rankings.

* Apparently Bear Bryant use to run up the score no matter what, even in charity games, but I'm pretty sure he was the product of someone having sex with a football so he gets a pass.

Lol. My dream match-up would be an ACC vs. Big East BCS title game the next two years. Send out the BCS with yet two more giant turds of a "national title game" to remember it by.

Let's look back at some of the amazing "title games" the BCS has given us:

1999 - Florida State 46, Virginia Tech 29
2000 - OU 13, FSU 2 (not just a boring-ass game; biggest problem was taking FSU over Miami after the Seminoles had already lost to the Hurricanes)
2001 - #1 Miami 37, #4 Nebraska 14 (didn't even win the Big 12 North)
2003 - #1 LSU 21, #3 Oklahoma 14 (after KSU destroyed OU in the Big 12 title game)
2004 - USC 55, Oklahoma 19 (while undefeated Auburn went to the Sugar Bowl)
2006 - Florida 41, Ohio State 14
2007 - LSU 38, Ohio State 24
2008 - Florida 24, Oklahoma 14 (not as close as it looked)
2009 - Alabama 37, Texas 21
2011 - Alabama 21, LSU 0 (rematch, and an overall shiatty game)

EngineerAU: Gdiguy: Well, the computer rankings aren't allowed to use margin of victory (for some stupid reason that I'll never understand)...

Because Steve Spurrier kept running up the score on cupcakes and wasn't shy about telling everyone he was only doing it because it gave Florida a better ranking in the computers. Before then there was a sort of gentlemen's agreement* that if you schedule cupcakes, once the game was out of hand, you'd bring in the benchwarmers. Also if one of your traditional opponents was having a bad year, you didn't run up the score on them so they wouldn't do it to you next time you had a bad year. Human polls tended to take this into account but the computers only looked at numbers and when there was a BCS bid worth millions on the line, you pretty much had to run up the score. So the BCS banned using margin of victory before it got too far out of hand. Of course that has created its own problems but you can always check out the Sagarin ratings to see both versions of computer rankings.

* Apparently Bear Bryant use to run up the score no matter what, even in charity games, but I'm pretty sure he was the product of someone having sex with a football so he gets a pass.

Yeah, but that should be something that gets fixed fairly quickly; the difference between a 40 point victory and a 70 point victory should have zero predictive value, so if you do something like sigmoid transform the margin of victory that feature should get weighted to basically nothing AND should help the predictor (so it'll get incorporated).

Either way, it's still stupid, since the human polls still take it into account anyway (e.g., everyone thinks LSU is terrible if they don't beat random no-named team by 50)

Man, I'm tired of all these threads anout Unskewedpolls.com

BCS sucks.
///That is all.

Meanwhile, TCU has agreed to stoop to playing The Little Sisters of the Poor in 2018 and 2019.

rcf1105: Really, what caused the margin of victory to be dropped was OU being sent to the BCS championship in 2003 after losing the Big XII championship, because that was the kind of thing that was offensive in 2003.

Margin of Victory was dropped in the summer of 2002. Bill James (and others) speculate that it was because of Nebraska's selection in 2001.

I'll just let him speak for himself with respect to why the computer ratings suck:

"Throughout the 11 years of the BCS, whenever the "computer" rankings have diverged markedly from the polls, the consensus reaction has been, we have to do something about those computers. And they have; whenever the computer rankings don't jibe with the "human polls," they fix the computers. In 2000, the computers didn't pick Miami as one of the top two teams. The coaches and sportswriters thought Miami should have been there, so they changed the computer system.

In 2001, according to Stern, "the BCS selected once-beaten Nebraska over once-beaten Oregon despite the fact that Nebraska had lost badly in their last regular season game. Popular perception this time was that the computer ratings paid too much attention to the large margin of victory in Nebraska's early season triumphs while not putting enough value on Oregon's steady but unspectacular performances." What did they do? Fix the computers. In 2003, the computer rankings once more disagreed with the coaches' and the fans' and the writers' perceptions, and so, once more, the computer rankings were fixed to prevent a recurrence of whatever the problem was."

rugman11: rcf1105: Really, what caused the margin of victory to be dropped was OU being sent to the BCS championship in 2003 after losing the Big XII championship, because that was the kind of thing that was offensive in 2003.

Margin of Victory was dropped in the summer of 2002. Bill James (and others) speculate that it was because of Nebraska's selection in 2001.

I'll just let him speak for himself with respect to why the computer ratings suck:

"Throughout the 11 years of the BCS, whenever the "computer" rankings have diverged markedly from the polls, the consensus reaction has been, we have to do something about those computers. And they have; whenever the computer rankings don't jibe with the "human polls," they fix the computers. In 2000, the computers didn't pick Miami as one of the top two teams. The coaches and sportswriters thought Miami should have been there, so they changed the computer system.

In 2001, according to Stern, "the BCS selected once-beaten Nebraska over once-beaten Oregon despite the fact that Nebraska had lost badly in their last regular season game. Popular perception this time was that the computer ratings paid too much attention to the large margin of victory in Nebraska's early season triumphs while not putting enough value on Oregon's steady but unspectacular performances." What did they do? Fix the computers. In 2003, the computer rankings once more disagreed with the coaches' and the fans' and the writers' perceptions, and so, once more, the computer rankings were fixed to prevent a recurrence of whatever the problem was."

Or, in other words, "The computers don't say the traditional powers are the traditional powers, so the computers must be wrong!"

What's amusing to me is that instead of using an objective measure, the to tier of college football uses subjective polls. It's odd they they don't just have an end-of-year tournament among the conference champions.

meanmutton: What's amusing to me is that instead of using an objective measure, the to tier of college football uses subjective polls. It's odd they they don't just have an end-of-year tournament among the conference champions.

That would be Too Easy to use Regional Rankings, say in 8 regions. You take the top 8 teams & they go to a field of 64. WIN or go home.

IF you are wondering why they don't do this, then get off my REAL CHAMPIONS LAWN!

Is this the same computer who gives directions on a GPS that turns you Left into a lake? yeah thought so.

I sent this to several of my Oregon friends (Beaver and Duck fans).

Facebook is actually fun right now ;-)

BlameMabel: Please come back in a few weeks when the computers that don't rely on arbitrary fudge factors have enough info to be useful. This early in the season they just aren't, but are actually doing it right, while computer rankings that favor 'Bama at this point are doing it wrong.

This. It's correct given the current information, it's just that the current information is very limited so far. We'll see where OSU is later in the season.

There's a reason they don't actually release BCS rankings in week three.

That said, the computers are more trustworthy then the human voters.

UNC_Samurai: Meanwhile, TCU has agreed to stoop to playing The Little Sisters of the Poor in 2018 and 2019.

...but they added St. Marys' School for the Blind!!!

I don't trust any of these polls.

What does Nate Silver have to say?

velvet_fog: 2008 - Florida 24, Oklahoma 14 (not as close as it looked)

Yeah, it looked more like a tie game. Stoops decides with Sam Bradford as QB, and with a hurt running back to...run right up the middle 4 straight plays and get shut down from a 1st and goal situation.

And, on another goal-to-go, decides not to kick the field goal, and comes away empty-handed.

(while undefeated Auburn went to the Sugar Bowl)

Maybe Auburn would have been given a shot if it had been the case that when they played USC the prior time (just the season before), they could have moved the ball over...you know...mid-field. Evidently Auburn thought you got points by punting the ball into the end-zone.

Oh wait, no they didn't. They didn't even do that. It's hard to punt the ball in the end-zone if you can never make it past your own 41 yard line.

Think about this, Auburn fans: if you couldn't even punt the ball into the end zone, how bad would USC have destroyed you? USC beat OU bad, and OU was a much much much better team. USC beats Auburn by probably 100. Well, actually, USC would be putting their band members in at skill positions in the 2nd, so the bleeding probably would have slowed around 77-0 or so.

#1 LSU 21, #3 Oklahoma 14 (after KSU destroyed OU in the Big 12 title game)

A 7 point game, and OU has a goal to go with less than 2 minutes to play in the 4th. Yeah, this was a terrible game.

Gdiguy: Well, the computer rankings aren't allowed to use margin of victory (for some stupid reason that I'll never understand)... so if you don't let them take that or "how good do we think this team is in the pre-season" into account, you're left with strength of schedule as the only way to distinguish between unbeaten teams... and they have the best SoS. So it's not really that shocking, it's just a way for humans to laugh at how stupid computers are when artificially handicapped as to what information the algorithms can use.

Because margin of victory is a bunk stat. You're forced to run up the score in order to improve your poll positioning rather than do things like get your second, third, and fourth team some experience so you can win all your games next year, too.

It's far too early for anybody to be thinking about the national title. Certainly I'm not buying LSU after the last couple weeks, but it's not hard at all to imagine Bama, Oregon and FSU slipping up. Bama's injuries will be a problem if they keep up. Oregon and FSU each have a couple opponents who could beat them left (even setting the aside the random victories big underdogs sometimes pull off in college ball).

Won't shock me if two of those three play for the title. But it wouldn't shock me if two other teams not in the Top 4 did either. Seems to be a lot of great-but-not-dominant teams this year.