Don't know if the following was ever posted up - boards have been busy these last few days. (Lots of
Tigers, though few
Lions or
Bears).
Jeff Amey -
BCS Report - Did it Work?
His main questions are worth asking - Did the BCS work? If not what's wrong with it?
Though I think he hits on some very valid points, particularly how the recent trend toward teams leapfrogging late in the season in the human polls has taken the BCS away from the original intent to secure an unbiased approach to selecting #1 and #2 in a match-up, I feel he misses one and only hints at a second correlated event that moved the selection process toward the present situation.
First a snippet with the central thrust of Amey's argument:
How about after the BCS was implemented in 1998? From 1998 to 2005, before the current BCS model, there were NO instances of teams being jumped without a loss in the poll right before the bowls. In the two years since the change, it has become virtually the norm..
In most seasons, there has been a tendency to be almost too rigid in the polls. It wasn't easy for a team to jump another in the polls unless the teams above them lost. There were cases of teams being jumped, but it was not the norm. Normally, the polls are a little more fluid at the beginning of the season, but become less and less so as the season wears on and more information is known. That information makes it a lot easier to accurately rank teams so movement at the end of the season should be more difficult. That has been what makes the polls what they are since their inception.
These past two seasons, and the shift in the power in the BCS from the formula (NOT just the computers as most believe) to the human polls, have indicated a dangerous shift in how the polls are conducted as well. Instead of movement in the the final poll before the bowls being much tougher than at any other time in the season, it has become a very biased tool being used to place two teams in the National Championship game.
Last season, I thought the current BCS model was terrible. This season, I feel it is bordering on being criminal and bad for the game in general. What justification is there for LSU jumping from #7 to #2 in the BCS with only a 21-14 win over Tennessee in which they struggled and trailed for more than half of the game to add to their resume?
So which events am I speaking of?
The hinted one - the "refinement" of the BCS model post 2004. Remember this took the AP Poll out of the BCS formula, at the behest of AP voters. Remember though this largely happened because of the perceived iniquity of Auburn, or to a lesser extent, Utah not getting into the Championship game. Recall also that the preceding year the split #1 between the AP and BCS rankings riled supporters of LSU, USC and the media (who sided with AP voters). Notably the outfall from this controversy drew down drastically the importance of the computer polls, essentially eliminated margin of victory as a consideration and diluted strength of schedule
when the BCS formula was totally rewritten.
The second, not mentioned at all, was the expansion of the schedule to 12 games.
Imagine if you will that strength of schedule and margin of victory were still given strong weighting in the BCS. Would we be guaranteed to have D-1AA teams populating schedules across college football? I think not. True, nobody would schedule multiple heavy-hitters post that expansion, but the likelihood is that the schedules resulting would have been more defensible. In the case of the Big 10, for instance, it may have lead us towards adding one more in-conference game.
There is also considerable irony here - as the media and others who attacked the BCS early on failed to recognize the wisdom of that sage aphorism: "Be careful what you wish for."
The media wanted to dilute the importance of schedule strength - well, guess what, in an example of the "free market" at work teams began scheduling accordingly. Those that were in a position to do so immediately (Big East, with all it's turmoils) immediately took the lowest road available. Other teams padded schedules when given an opportunity after the 12th game was added - citing, with some validity, the difficulty in arranging higher quality opponents on short notice.
The media wanted to see the BCS "improve" yet now they complain bitterly about the upshot of the very changes they sought to have take place. To paraphrase Darth Vader, "I find your lack of foresight disturbing."
It is past time that the media pundits be given a sharp poke in the eye and given a reminder that the perversion of the BCS, from the original and largely impartial model, was largely at their behest. You simply cannot have your cake, eat it too, then spit it back in the face of the system you clamored to see put in place. If the media were fundamentally honest they would support turning back the clock to something much closer to the original BCS - which applauded SOS, and offensive firepower while it diluted the influence of the very human voter polls now blamed for this leapfrogging. But, instead they clamor for a playoff - no doubt because confession of past errors on their part is something that is anathema to the journalistic soul.
Hypocrites - the lot of them.
