The BCS isn't the problem, it's Pre Season Polls

[Buckeyeskickbuttocks]

Here's a look at the AP preseason poll, end of season results (OK... some have 1 game remaining) and current rank (that is current rank in the AP).
Key:
Blue teams have fallen 10 or more spots or are no longer ranked
Red Teams have risen 10 or more spots
Black teams have stayed reasonably the same

AP Preseason

Rk..Team........Record...Rnk
1. Georgia........9-3....17
2. Ohio State....10-2....10
3. USC...........10-1.....5
4. Oklahoma......11-1.....4
5. Florida.......11-1 ....2
6. Missouri.......9-3....19
7. LSU............7-5....NR
8. West Virginia..7-4....NR
9. Clemson........7-5....NR
10. Auburn.........5-7....NR
11. Texas.........11-1.....3
12. Texas Tech....11-1.....8
13. Wisconsin......7-5....NR
14. Kansas.........7-5....NR
15. Arizona State..5-6....NR
16. Brigham Young.10-2....20
17. Virginia Tech..8-4....NR
18. Tennessee.....5- 7....NR
19. South Florida..7-4....NR
20. Illinois.......5-7....NR
21. Oregon.........9-3....16
22. Penn State....11-1 ....6
23. Wake Forest....7-5....NR
24. Alabama.......12-0.....1
25. Pittsburgh.....8-3....23

Consider that for a moment.... 14 teams began the season over ranked. That is 56% of the schools rated in the preseason top 25 were 10 or more spots over ranked. An astounding 11 of them aren't even ranked at all, 4 of which began the year top 10! 2 teams, Penn State and Alabama were surprises, and in fairness to pollsters, I think most of us will agree that going in to 2008 big things were not necessarily expected of either squad. That leaves us with 9 teams that lived up to preseason expectations, more or less - 4 of whom fell (Ohio State, Oregon, BYU and Pitt) and 4 of whom went up (USC, Florida, Texas, and Texas Tech) and 1 of whom remained the same (Oklahoma)

A very blunt tool.

How did the Coaches fair?

CoachesRk..Team........Record...Rnk
1. Georgia........9-3....19
2. USC...........10-1.....5
3. Ohio State....10-2....10
4. Oklahoma......11-1.....2
5. Florida.......11-1.....4
6. LSU............7-5....NR
7. Missouri.......9-3....17
8. West Virginia..7-4....NR
9. Clemson........7-5....NR
10. Texas.........11-1.....3
11. Auburn.........5-7....NR
12. Wisconsin......7-5....NR
13. Kansas.........7-5....NR
14. Texas Tech....11-1.....8
15. Virginia Tech..8-4....NR
16. Arizona State..5-6....NR
17. Brigham Young.10-2....18
18. Tennessee......5-7....NR
19. Illinois.......5-7....NR
20. Oregon.........9-3....14
21. South Florida..7-4....NR
22. Penn State....11-1.....6
23. Wake Forest....7-5....NR
24. Michigan.......3-9....NR
25. Fresno State...7-5....NR

The Coaches foolishly ranked Michigan and did not have Alabama listed at all. And, it gets worse.... 16 Teams ended the season ranked 10 spots or more lower than they began (64%) with an astonishing 14 of those being un-ranked today (56%).

With the mistake of Georgia beginning the season at number 1, however, both the AP and the Coaches did reasonably well predicting the top 5. While Ohio State began the season over rated by some 7 positions, they do not fall outside the 10 spot criteria (Which was, admittedly, arbitrarily choosen).


So.... there ya go.... draw your own conclusions.

 

[BB73]

OK, they weren't very accurate. But why is that a problem? I don't think the preseason rankings had any affect on how the teams are ranked now.

 

[Buckeyefrankmp]

The BCS isn't the problem, it's Pre Season Polls

I agree with the second part. Get rid of the pre-season polls. They should not rank teams until at least the first week of conference play. Of course, just like a playoff, this will never happen. The TV networks like to sell the rankings in the preseason games. Number 2 Ohio State vs number 3 USC. Thats good hype.

 

[FCollinsBuckeye]

So.... there ya go.... draw your own conclusions.

The conclusion is this: The highest level of college football employs a system to choose the NCG opponents which relies significantly on 'judging', much like figure skating or gymnastics.

 

[IronBuckI]

Only 1/3 of the BCS even has preseason rankings, and that's the one that's most flawed anyway. The Coaches Poll is a joke, and should be removed.

 

[JXC]

OK, they weren't very accurate. But why is that a problem? I don't think the preseason rankings had any affect on how the teams are ranked now.

I agree completely. It's not the preseason polls that cause late season biases...it's preseason thinking. Unless you can shut down all thinking and all talk of college football during the offseason, then you can't have an unbiased poll. It's not like if there were no preseason poll, Utah would all of a sudden have a chance.

I think this shows the exact opposite of what you were trying to prove. To me it shows that the preseason polls change A LOT. That it doesn't matter if you were not in the top 25 to start, you can still move up. Alabama was 24th and unranked. It didn't take them very long to move up into the top 2 this year. Everybody had Georgia as their #1. Look where they are now.

The BCS IS the problem. Not having a playoff IS the problem. Have to choose just TWO teams after 12/13 games, to play for a national championship, with many of these teams never playing each other or common opponents IS the problem. It didn't matter how good a team like Utah did this year, or Boise State. Either of those teams could be the best team in the country (not that I am saying they are), but they could be. You could have put the 2005 Texas Longhorns in Utah or Boise State's uniforms, and they wouldn't have been in the NCG. So it really isn't even a "national" championship. It's a 'BCS conference' championship. And even at that, there may even be some BCS teams that have NO shot of going to the NCG, even if they are the best team in the country. And it's because the way the system is built, we never get a chance to truely know, and we just have to judge teams based on how they play lesser teams.

Not fair. Never will be. The BCS national championship is the easiest major college title to win in sports for the teams that actually have a shot to win it.

 

[3074326]

I agree that the preseason polls are worthless, but they don't even mean anything until week 8, right? By then, we have an idea of how good most teams are.

There will always be preseason polls, it's one of the biggest topics of discussion. I see no solution to this problem. Unless you make preseason polls illegal. :tongue2:

It is kind of insane how far 'Bama moved up, despite playing a weak schedule.

 

[Buckeyeskickbuttocks]

OK, they weren't very accurate. But why is that a problem? I don't think the preseason rankings had any affect on how the teams are ranked now.

A valid point. Perhaps I overstated the point in my thread title.

JXC - I'm not sure what I was "trying to prove" in the context that you say I've "proved" the opposite. I disagree with the notion that a playoff solves anything. As I've said in other contexts, as long as College football is worried about who is the BEST team, a playoff will not establish that. The New York Giants were NOT the best team in the NFL last season. New England was. New York is your Champion, and no one disputes it. Even I call it a "legitimate" championship.... but... I do not say the Giants were the best team in the NFL in 2007.

A Playoff establishes who is the "hottest" team at some arbitrary point in a calander year. In College basketball we accept Villanova 1985 as NCAA Champion... but.. at 19-10 going in to the tourney, they were a far cry from the "best" team in the nation.

 

[TGfan06]

The problem this year is NOT the BCS it is the voters and the Big Twelve. Everyone always clamors for a plus one game to decide a champion. WE GOT ONE!!!

OU v. Texas
Alabama v. Florida

This should have been one of the more quiet years when it comes to the BCS championship, but the voters went out of their way to fuck it up once again.

To everyone that asks for a playoff, how can we take you seriously anymore? You want a playoff to settle games on the field. They gave that to you this year and you threw it away

 

[Buckeyefrankmp]

This should have been one of the more quiet years when it comes to the BCS championship,

It's never quiet when Pete Carroll is left out.

 

[3074326]

The problem this year is NOT the BCS it is the voters and the Big Twelve. Everyone always clamors for a plus one game to decide a champion. WE GOT ONE!!!

OU v. Texas
Alabama v. Florida

This should have been one of the more quiet years when it comes to the BCS championship, but the voters went out of their way to fuck it up once again.

To everyone that asks for a playoff, how can we take you seriously anymore? You want a playoff to settle games on the field. They gave that to you this year and you threw it away

The problem isn't us, it's the fact that the Big 12's three best teams all beat each other and didn't have a clear winner. No system is going to fix that problem. It doesn't mean one side is better than the other.

What you can't argue is that a playoff gives us a better chance of crowning the best team. Will it work every time? No, but it's better than guessing if the team that wins the title game is better than the team that wins the Rose Bowl/Fiesta Bowl/etc.

How can we take you seriously if you want to use the OU/Texas game in an argument, yet disregard the Texas Tech/Texas game? That game was played too, and still counts for something.

 

[methomps]

Not really sure that I can agree. If you compare the AP Poll (which uses a preseason ranking) to the Harris Poll (no preseason ranking), you don't see a lot of disagreement. They agree on the top ten, flip Boise/TCU at 11/12, flip GaTech/Oregon at 15/16. Outside the top 15 there is more disagreement, but not substantial.

Even if you say that the AP and Coaches polls can't have preseason rankings, you're still going to have twenty-dozen of them on the internet. CFN will have one. ESPN will have 4. The networks want them. The fans want them.

The problem this year is NOT the BCS it is the voters and the Big Twelve. Everyone always clamors for a plus one game to decide a champion. WE GOT ONE!!!

OU v. Texas
Alabama v. Florida

This should have been one of the more quiet years when it comes to the BCS championship, but the voters went out of their way to fuck it up once again.

To everyone that asks for a playoff, how can we take you seriously anymore? You want a playoff to settle games on the field. They gave that to you this year and you threw it away

Huh? How did the voters and/or playoff proponents fuck it up or throw it away?

 

[Buckeyeskickbuttocks]

No doubt about it, Methomps.... they think it gives us something to talk about... and, truly, it does.

I guess I'm just pointing out the absurdity in preseason rankings. No one knows who's gonna be good and who's not. Likewise, and thinking about BB73's comment about how it doesn't have any effect... well... it does a little... for a couple reasons.
1 - Voters are likely to try and keep their preseason rankings as in tact as possible ("See, I told you so!")
2 - When a team like Utah beats a team like Michigan, it gives Utah an undeserved bump. "Hey! Look, Utah must be pretty good, they beat ranked Michigan!" Except that Michigan shouldn't have been ranked.

Granted, the ratings do tend to work themselves out over the long term, so it really doesn't matter.... The data is still pretty interesting in and of itself, confirming that preseason polls are little more than throwing darts.

 

[Jake]

They're BOTH problems.

Preseason polls give two teams the inside track to the title game. If they run the table, good luck passing either one of them. If I start at #1 and you start at #7, and we both go undefeated, you're not passing me. Why? The preseason polls. The BCS is flawed because it relies on these polls.

I love when people say "a playoff wouldn't solve anything". Why wouldn't it? It works in every other level of football, not mention every other team sport, but for some mystical reason it just couldn't possibly work in Division IA college football. That makes no sense to me.

"Well, if we have a playoff someone will still complain that they didn't get in." People complain in every sport about that, you'll hear it this season in the NFL. Some teams are going to miss the playoffs despite having better records than some division winners. Does that mean the playoff doesn't work? Do we just blow it up, have a vote and go home?

The point of a playoff is not to have a system where no one complains. The point is to have a defined system absent of the arbitrary, subjective rules we have in the BCS, that can (and often do) change from year to year. Consistency, not perfection, is the goal of a playoff system.

 

[FWBuckeye]

They're BOTH problems.

Preseason polls give two teams the inside track to the title game. If they run the table, good luck passing either one of them. If I start at #1 and you start at #7, and we both go undefeated, you're not passing me. Why? The preseason polls. The BCS is flawed because it relies on these polls.

I love when people say "a playoff wouldn't solve anything". Why wouldn't it? It works in every other level of football, not mention every other team sport, but for some mystical reason it just couldn't possibly work in Division IA college football. That makes no sense to me.

"Well, if we have a playoff someone will still complain that they didn't get in." People complain in every sport about that, you'll hear it this season in the NFL. Some teams are going to miss the playoffs despite having better records than some division winners. Does that mean the playoff doesn't work? Do we just blow it up, have a vote and go home?

The point of a playoff is not to have a system where no one complains. The point is to have a defined system absent of the arbitrary, subjective rules we have in the BCS, that can (and often do) change from year to year. Consistency, not perfection, is the goal of a playoff system.

+1