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2006 BCS, polls, Bowl Predictions and computer ratings

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IMO If the BCS was perfect there would be no fun in all this debating going on because there wouldn't be anything to debate.
The human element is what makes it fun to enjoy, cajole, whine and complain about, the system.
Other than that as Dryden said "The fact that Ohio State already beat Michigan ends all arguments."
eat dirt scum .
 
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big ten has to get a lot better of scheduling the games for both football and basketball. They were out done by the SEC. If the osu/mich game were at the same time as florida/arkansas or a championship final game. rematch would have been picked

The big ten basketball tournament is at the end of the NCAA tournament selections so it can't be used to help a bigten team.
I really hope they fix that because, it would suck for OSU if that ever happened.

I'm happy we get to smack Florida for the title.
 
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Thump;678210; said:
BTW, who would have gone to the Title game had there been a BCS point total tie?

What's the tiebreaker, conference record?
Click to expand...

I was discussing this in another thread yesterday and somebody pointed out that they probably just keep moving out decimal places, a true statistical tie is nearly impossible.
 
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Thump;678210; said:
BTW, who would have gone to the Title game had there been a BCS point total tie?

What's the tiebreaker, conference record?
Click to expand...

was that in reference to that possible BCS title /playoff that they were talking about on ESPN. SAYING like the top 4 go to 2 bowls and winner play in another bowl for the title.

It just was talk about what the BCS/coaches/colleges might have to come about on for the future of college football if the BCS keeps not being the answer.
 
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Here's the tool that voted OSU #2:

Coach who voted Gators No. 1 'can't stand them'

Jim Walden, a former head coach at Washington State and Iowa State, was the only voter in either college football poll that matters to pick Florida No. 1 Sunday.

Why'd he do it? Let the Harris Interactive voter explain:

"No. 1, I've been eating Alka-Seltzer every hour since I did it. I spent four years coaching at Miami and if you think I like voting for that damn team to be No. 1, you're crazy. They are the least liked team out there. I can't stand them.

"But when I look at it and when you look at who should be No. 1, look at their schedule they are the best team. Hell, I don't care about the No. 2 team. Everybody is talking about Michigan and Florida as the No. 2. I looked at it and then looked at Ohio State and said, 'Wait a minute, Florida is the best team. How can we even be debating Florida and Michigan? Michigan was the No. 2 team in a three-team conference.'

"Even though the SEC is full of people with inflated egos and they constantly think they are getting screwed over, Florida deserves to be the No. 1 team. Ohio State is one of the weakest No. 1 teams in 25 years. Look at who they played. They played one of the softest schedules of any No. 1 team in memory. They had all summer to get ready for Texas. Then they had 11 weeks to get ready for Michigan.

"I'll give you nine reasons why Florida is No. 1 – Georgia, LSU, Tennessee, Auburn, Kentucky, South Carolina, Alabama, Southern Mississippi [and Arkansas]. Then you add Florida State to that and 11 out of 13 weeks you had to play as a good as you could play.

"When I signed on for this poll, the instructions were to vote for the team that is the best team that week. I'm supposed to say Ohio State is better than Florida? Forget it. Those schedules don't compare.

"I started to make the move two weeks ago but I said, 'Wait a minute, Ohio State is playing pretty good and let's just see what happens.' Then Florida did what it did and there was no way they weren't the No. 1 team."
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DDN

Why Florida? Voters explain their logic

An independent BCS analyst estimates that 65 of the 175 Harris and 'USA Today' voters moved the Gators past Michigan in the final ballot.


By Richard Rosenblatt
Associated Press

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Avoid a rematch. Stronger schedule. Conference champion.
Those were the main reasons cited Monday by many poll voters for jumping the University of Florida football team over Michigan on their final ballots, setting up a Gators-Buckeyes matchup in the Bowl Championship Series national title game Jan. 8.
"If you beat a team one time, why do they get the national championship if they win the second time?" said Earle Bruce, the former Ohio State coach who votes in the Harris Interactive poll and moved Florida ahead of Michigan. "I mean, they've already played one time and lost."
The Gators (12-1), who beat Arkansas to win the Southeastern Conference title Saturday, moved from fourth to second in the final BCS standings Sunday. The Wolverines (11-1), who lost to the Buckeyes 42-39 Nov. 18, remained third, while Southern California dropped to fifth from second after losing to UCLA.
"At the end of the day, Florida won its conference championship. Michigan did not," said Harris poll voter Ray Melick of The Birmingham News. "Because there's not a playoff, I think a conference champion ought to carry more weight than a conference runner-up at the BCS conference level."
Strength of schedule carried weight with voters, too.
It was such a big deal for Jim Walden, a former Washington State head coach, that he picked Florida No. 1 in the Harris poll, calling Florida's schedule "murderous."
"In my heart of hearts, I believe that neither Ohio State or Michigan could get through Florida's schedule with only one loss," Walden said.
Tom Luicci, a Harris voter who bumped Florida up to second, said he made his assessment based on Florida's body of work ? not one game.
"Michigan has quality wins over Wisconsin, which played no one, and Notre Dame, which won the Commander's-in-Chief trophy (a reference to wins over the service academies), which I don't consider a major coup."
"Michigan had its shot," said Harris voter Joe Biddle of The Tennessean. "If you replayed that game it would be nothing more than a Big Ten championship ? and I don't think you get mulligans in college football.
"If there's a viable alternative, I stay away from a rematch, and I think Florida gives them a viable alternative."
Jerry Palm, an independent BCS analyst, estimates that 40 of the 113 voters in the Harris poll and 25 of the 62 in the USA Today coaches' poll moved the Gators past the Wolverines. The teams were tied in the computer ratings, the third component of the BCS standings.
The Associated Press media poll is not used in the BCS rankings, but 25 of the 65 voters moved Florida ahead of Michigan.
Illinois coach Ron Zook, who used to coach Florida, was among the voters who elevated the Gators. He also was the only Big Ten coach to vote Florida ahead of Michigan.
"Believe me, it's no slight to Michigan at all," Zook said. "I thought you were supposed to vote the way you feel. One vote wasn't going to make the difference. A bunch of people turned and flipped and voted Florida ahead of Michigan. For me, it was the fact that they played a 13th game."
And then there were those who stuck with Michigan.
"I kept Michigan second even after they lost to Ohio State, and felt nothing has changed for me since that loss for Florida to jump over them," said coaches' poll voter Brian Kelly, the former Central Michigan coach who accepted Cincinnati's job Sunday.
David Glazier, Detroit Lions senior vice president who votes in the Harris poll, said he had problems with the "politicking that people in the media did, trying to steer people away from a rematch."
He also had the novel idea of voting for the better team.
"Did I want to see a rematch? No," he said. "But my job was to vote for the top 25 teams, not who should play who, and after watching as much college football as anybody, I believed Michigan was the second-best team."
The last rematch in the national title games was in 1996, when Florida beat Florida State for the national title after losing to the Seminoles in the final game of the regular season.
South Carolina's Steve Spurrier, who coached the Gators to the '96 national championship, moved Florida past Michigan in the coaches' poll.
His reasoning?
"Heck, I'm a Gator," he said. "I went there. So I had a lot of reason to vote for them right there."
 
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Link

 [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Rematch worked against Michigan[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]BY JIM NAVEAU - Dec. 5, 2006[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The rematch between Ohio State and Michigan was never going to happen unless there was no way the poll voters could avoid it.
That?s the bottom line. That?s why the Buckeyes are playing Florida, not Michigan, in the Bowl Championship Series national title game on Jan. 8 in Glendale, Ariz.
Two-thirds of the formula for picking the two teams in the title game is human voting in the USA Today coaches poll and the Harris Interactive poll. One-third of the formula takes an average of several computer rankings.
There simply was no way voters around the country were going to let the numbers say two Big Ten teams would play for the national championship.
OK, some voters had other reasons, such as they thought a league champion like Florida had a better claim on a spot in the title game than a team like Michigan, which didn?t win its own league.
Some thought Florida played a tougher schedule. Others just went with the momentum that seemed to be trending Florida?s way.
But it kept coming back to the desire not to have a rematch. At least that?s the way it looks when you study the votes.
Two weeks ago, Michigan was 69 points ahead of Florida in the Harris poll and 40 points ahead of the Gators in the USA Today rankings.
Sunday, when the final polls were announced, the Wolverines were 68 points behind Florida in the Harris poll and were 26 points behind the second-place Gators in the USA Today poll.
Michigan was No. 3 last week behind Ohio State and Southern California in the BCS standings. But when UCLA beat Southern California last Saturday, the Wolverines remained No. 3 and Florida jumped from No. 4 to No. 2.
The voting in the USA Today poll shows most of the country was lined up solidly against sending Michigan to Arizona to tee it up again against Ohio State, a 42-39 winner when the two teams met Nov. 18.
The Wolverines? support in the USA Today poll came from 10 states, with coaches from Indiana, Illinois and Michigan accounting for eight of their 18 first-place votes.
Florida, on the other hand, drew first-place votes from coaches from 28 states.
Neither of the Ohio coaches with a vote gave it to Michigan. Ohio State coach Jim Tressel abstained from voting, a move which Michigan coach Lloyd Carr called ?real slick.? And Bowling Green?s Gregg Brandon, who was an assistant coach for Florida coach Urban Meyer when he was at BGSU, cast his vote for the Gators.
Michigan?s support didn?t divide strictly along geographic lines, though. Texas coach Mack Brown and Oregon coach Mike Bellotti were in the Wolverines? camp. Central Florida?s George O?Leary also voted for them.
Maybe the most interesting vote for Florida came from LSU coach Les Miles. He is a former Michigan player and assistant coach who has been mentioned in the past as a possible successor to Carr when he decides to retire.
In the Harris poll, many of the voters who rated Michigan ahead of Florida also had Michigan or Big Ten ties, such as former Wolverines player Jim Mandich, former Michigan assistant coach Bill McCartney, former Wisconsin athletic director Pat Richter and former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.
It probably didn?t matter how impressive Michigan?s credentials were. As long as there was another once-beaten team from a power conference out there, a certain percentage of the poll voters were going to cast their ballots against an Ohio State-Michigan rematch.
[/FONT]
 
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bkochmc;679075; said:
OMG, I can't believe he wrote about tOSU like that!!!1!!1!! Everyone needs to email him and tell him how stupid he is!!!1 He're his email: [email protected]

EMAIL HIM NOW!!!1!11 [sarcasm off]

I could care less but it makes Walden seem like a bitter man with an axe to grind.
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I FOUND A NEW BITCH.

hOW CAN ESPN keep showing Tressel talking about his non-voting and make that a bigger deal of this tool. I just hope the score does him in being a loser against the big ten.
 
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I'm just sick of the new way of deciding if a team is good or not. Jut look at their schedule. No good teams can play easy schedules. That's impossible. If the 1985 Chicago Bears played Temple every week they would automatically suck.
 
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The Walden boy will get an education in early January.

But I do find it interesting that Coach T. is raked over the coals for not voting when Steve Spurrier can use the "I'm a Gator" rationale for voting Florida #2 and no one even seems to notice.

The exact quote was, "Heck, I'm a Gator," he said. "I went there. So I had a lot of reason to vote for them right there."

So tell me, where are the people who are so worried about the integrity of the poll?
 
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Didn't see this elsewhere, but the Master Coaches Survey (MCSPoll) had Michigan #2 and Florida #3.

http://mcspoll.com/features.htm

Master Coaches Buck Trend
Michigan voted No. 2, Florida No. 3

By MCS Staff

ATLANTA (Dec 3, 2006) -- As the college football regular season comes to a close, Ohio State remains on top of every poll, including the Master Coaches Poll, and will play for the national championship January 8, 2007 in Glendale, Arizona. Florida received the nod to face Ohio State in the championship game by winning the USA Today Coaches Poll, the Harris Poll and tying Michigan for the No. 2 spot in the computer polls. With the intent of all the polls, including the Master Coaches Poll, being to select the two best teams to compete for the national championship, the Master Coaches bucked the trend of the other polls and selected Michigan as the number two team in the country.

Although the Master Coaches feel that there should not be a rematch between Ohio State and Michigan, they believe that Michigan is still the second best team in the land based on their evaluations. West Virginia legend Don Nehlen said, ?A rematch would be totally unfair to Ohio State. If Michigan won the rematch, which of the two games would determine which team was the best? That being said, I still believe Michigan is a better football team than Florida.?
Two days before his death, Master Coach Bo Schembechler was emphatic that the loser of the Michigan ? Ohio State game shouldn?t get a rematch in the national championship game. He added that when the season sorted itself out, he would not be surprised if Ohio State and Michigan were still the two best teams.

Washington Hall of Fame coach Don James said there would be no controversy this year if the BCS had instituted the rule that a team must win their conference championship to be eligible for the title game. ?After Nebraska lost so badly in the BCS championship game, the BCS should have placed qualifying standards on teams like it does for Notre Dame.?
Former USC coaching great John Robinson feels that the Coaches Poll and Harris Poll voters were swayed toward Florida for reasons other than which team is the best. ?The television folks and the fans don?t want a rematch, and voters might be trying to make amends to the SEC due to the absence of undefeated Auburn two years ago. But the fact of the matter is that our coaches (Master Coaches Poll) think Michigan is the better team than Florida. If we were asked which game might be more appealing, I think the Big Ten ? SEC match up would have great appeal, since those teams rarely play one another.?

ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit stated in a Sportscenter interview tonight, ?If (voters in the Harris Poll and USA Today Coaches Poll) are going to make a judgment on Florida having only seen them play Arkansas, that?s not right. It happens every year where these voters say ?They have really looked good these last two weeks.? What about (how Michigan or Florida played in) September?? The voters in the Master Coaches Poll receive a weekly packet containing DVDs of the top teams in the country and are among the select few pollsters who have seen both Michigan and Florida play each week.

The Master Coaches rated Florida third, followed by SEC rival LSU. Wisconsin finished fifth. Louisville, USC, Oklahoma, Auburn and Arkansas round out the top ten.
Click to expand...

http://mcspoll.com/WeeklyQAwithCoaches.htm

The Master Coaches (including John Robinson, Don James and Don Nehlen bucked the trend and voted the Michigan Wolverines No. 2 over SEC champ Florida

Compare Michigan with Florida based on the talent level of each squad.
Robinson, James and Nehlen offered the following evaluation:

Quarterback ? Advantage Michigan. Chad Henne is the more stable quarterback and is a consistent performer. Chris Leak can?t run the option very well and doesn?t look very comfortable back there.

Running Back - Advantage Michigan. Mike Hart is the best running back on either team, hands down. Florida does not run the ball in conventional ways that lead to stability.

Wide Receiver ? Advantage Even. Percy Harvin and Dallas Baker are very good. Mario Manningham is their equal, but has a better quarterback.

Offensive Line - Advantage Michigan. Bigger and stronger. Better pass protection.

Defensive Line ? Advantage Michigan, but very close. LaMarr Woodley gives Michigan a slight edge.

Linebackers ? Advantage Michigan. Prescott Burgess is very good and David Harris is almost as good as Woodley, which gives the Wolverines the edge over Florida standouts Brandon Siler and Earl Everett.

Defensive backs ? Advantage Florida. Ryan Smith and Reggie Nelson combined for 14 interceptions this season.

Kicking ? Advantage Michigan. Florida kicked just four field goals all year, which led to too many close wins.

Special Teams ? Advantage Florida. Florida blocked eight kicks this season. This unit almost single handedly beat South Carolina by blocking an extra point and two field goals in a 17-16 Florida win.

Overall Speed ? Advantage Florida. Percy Harvin and defensive unit are exceptional.

The total is 6-3-1 in favor of No. 2 Michigan. The Master Coaches Poll is the only poll that is equipped to give reasons for their decisions. If the Poll is supposed to pick the two best teams, the Master Coaches Poll pronounces Ohio State and Michigan as number one and number two.
Click to expand...
 
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