This is from a friends site http://www.ustupidass.com/ Thanks, Ben for doing all that research. Should LSU be #2 in the BCS? Can they make it to #2 and play in the Sugar Bowl down the road in the New Orleans Superdome? And what the hell is the BCS doing to come up with the rankings it is giving us? Well, the BCS is a quite involved deal. The BCS system started in 1998. For the first 3 years, 4 components comprised the system. For each component a numerical value, or rating, was obtained for each of the Division 1A college football teams. The lower the number, the better. For each team, these four numbers were added together to yield a final number, which I'll refer to as a team's BCS rating. Four sites (the Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta) hosted the four "BCS bowl games" with the championship game rotated among them. The two teams with the lowest (best) BCS ratings earned a berth in that championship game. The champion of each of the "power" conferences --- SEC, ACC, PAC-10, Big East, Big 12, Big 10 --- is guaranteed a berth in a BCS bowl, with teams within the top 12 of the BCS standings being eligible for the remaining 2 berths. Back to the components. The first involves determining a "human poll average". This involves utilizing the ballots cast by the 72 sportswriters who make up the AP poll and the 60 coaches who comprise the USA Today poll. Again, the goal is to arrive at a numerical rating for each top team by using this data. The second component involves determining a "computer poll average" The first year 3 computers were employed. Then 8 were used. Prior to the start of the 2002 season, the BCS mandated that the computer rankers eliminate "margin of victory" from consideration, causing David Rothman and Herman Matthews to remove their respective rankers from the mix. The New York Times replaced them, thus reducing the number of computers involved from eight to seven.) As each human pollster is to do, so does each computer system turn in rankings (1,2,3,...) of the division 1A teams. Currently, for any given team, its lowest (best) and highest (worst) computer ratings are dropped, and the remaining 6 are then averaged. The third component is called the "strength of schedule", or SOS, component. It involves trying to gauge the difficulty of each team's schedule and to assign a numerical rating accordingly. The more difficult a team's schedule is, the lower (better) its SOS rating. The fourth component is quite simple. I'll refer to it as the "loss" component. The numerical rating assigned to this component for each team is simply the number of losses that the team has incurred. So, each component generated a numerical value, and these were added together to produce the "BCS rating". Generally these computations were made weekly from about the 7th week until the end of the season, with the only one that truly mattered being the final one. In 2001, an additional feature was added to the mix. It is applied after the previous 4 components have been generated and added together. It is known as the "quality win" (QW) component, because it tries to reward teams for having quality wins. It works as follows: after the BCS ratings are initially determined, a team is then allowed to deduct 1.5 points from its total for a win over the BCS #1 team, 1.4 points for a win over #2, and so on down to .1 point for a win over #15. (Example: if a team has wins over the # 7 and #11 teams, it would receive a 1.4 total point reduction --- .9 points for beating #7 and .5 points for beating #11). After the quality win component has been calculated and applied, we arrive at the final BCS ratings. Ok - so back to LSU playing the Sugar Bowl. Assuming USC finishes the regular season ranked one spot ahead of LSU in the polls, the Tigers' best chance of catching the Trojans in the BCS Standings is to make up a significant amount of that deficit in the quality-win component. At 10-2, Washington State would have essentially eliminated that possibility, but the Cougars' third loss leaves the door slightly open for LSU. The Tigers are currently getting a quality-win bonus for their victory over Georgia, and they can't afford to lose it. This means LSU needs the Bulldogs to finish 10-2 but not reach the SEC championship game. If UGA does get to Atlanta, the Tigers would lose most (if not all) of that bonus by beating the Dawgs a second time. Therefore, LSU needs help. Florida must beat Florida State and move ahead of Tennessee in next week's BCS Standings to prevent Georgia from reaching the SEC title game. A Vols' loss at Kentucky would be ideal for LSU. If they don't lose, LSU must hope the Kentucky game weakens Tennessee enough in the BCS for the Gators to make the leap. USC's final opponent, Oregon State, has a 7-4 record that includes a win over I-AA Sacramento State. LSU must still play 8-3 Arkansas and then either a 9-3 or 10-2 team in the SEC championship game. The Tigers are currently 22 spots behind the Trojans in the schedule strength column, but these remaining opponents along with the games listed above could help LSU finish with a stronger schedule. Currently, LSU is ahead of USC in only the BCS version of Kenneth Massey's rankings, but the Tigers appear to be within range of jumping the Trojans in a few other computers, too. If LSU can get on top of USC in five of the seven ratings systems, that would translate to an advantage of half a point in average computer ranking, assuming the teams were within one spot of each other in every computer. If USC stays one spot ahead in both polls, and LSU is able to keep its advantage of .4 in the quality-win component while chipping away another .5 in the computer element, then the Tigers would only need to finish three spots ahead of USC in schedule strength to make up the difference and finish No. 2 in the BCS. Here is a list of games that could make a difference in the race for the #2 spot More important (opponents' games) USC needs: LSU needs: Hawaii over Alabama Alabama over Hawaii Notre Dame over Syracuse Arizona over Arizona State Hawaii over Boise State Georgia over Georgia Tech Florida over Florida State Louisiana Tech over Rice Less important (opponents' games) USC needs: LSU needs: Pittsburgh over Miami (FL) Georgia Tech over Georgia Miami (FL) over Pittsburgh Syracuse over Rutgers Texas over Texas A&M Stanford over Notre Dame Virginia over Virginia Tech Boise State over Nevada Ole Miss over Mississippi St. Florida State over Florida SMU over TCU UNLV over Wyoming UAB over Houston Tennessee over Kentucky Oklahoma over Kansas St. Oh, by the way - I only scratched the surface of the BCS. There is so much crap involved that I got overloaded and gave up. "Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." -Joe Theismann
I agree with this assessment, except for two errors. At least I believe they are errors. Please correct me if I am the one who is wrong. I believe that only the worst (highest) computer rating is dropped. I believe that a win over the 1st ranked team is worth 1 point, then 0.9 for a win over #2, and so on down to 0.1 points for a win over #10.
