12-11-2002 00:47									#241
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While no poll or computer ranking is perfect, they do good approximations. Don't discount them.

	12-11-2002 00:53									#242
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Sure... they are "good approximations"... but if there are 5 or more teams at the end of the year, and all with one loss, and they all played resonably tough schedules... a "good approximation" isn't good enough. Computers are picking national championships, not games between the teams.

Again... every other major college sport allows the best teams to actually play to determine who the national champion is... why should college football be different... oh that's right, a bunch of old farts running the bowl system who only give a damn about money... that's why.

The BCS system is a joke and should be replaced by actual games being played.

	12-11-2002 01:00									#243
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I have to agree with Ming.

And btw, if it is Miami v. Ohio State and both are undefeated, I still would say that Washington State, Oklahoma, even Texas might be better than both! Just because you got one loss doesn't mean that you are any worse than the 'undefeated teams'. I don't buy that BS.

	12-11-2002 01:04									#244
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quote: Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui I have to agree with Ming.

	12-11-2002 01:04									#245
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i wouldn't even mind using the current BCS system to pick teams for a playoff system, instead of just the top 2 teams have either the top 4 or the top 8 BCS teams play

	12-11-2002 01:05									#246
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"a "good approximation" isn't good enough"

In my view it is.

Sometimes an approximation isn't neded. If Ohio State and Miami play, then I think we would all agree that this is a good outcome--indeed, an outcome better than a playoff would have provided.

"Again... every other major college sport allows the best teams to actually play to determine who the national champion is... why should college football be different..."

Why should college football look toward the other sports, when it is the most popular college sport? They must be doing something right. I love the fact that after about mid-year, the good teams are playing for the national championship each week.

	12-11-2002 01:07									#247
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Come on Ming, we don't disagree that much .

And most years, yeah, it'll work ok. But all it takes is that one year where the BCS turns to **** because you have 5 undefeated teams.

	12-11-2002 01:12									#248
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"But all it takes is that one year where the BCS turns to **** because you have 5 undefeated teams."

What do you think the chances of that are?

	12-11-2002 01:19									#249
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Pretty good actually.

I hate the BCS with a passion. The sooner a playoff gets here the better.

	12-11-2002 01:23									#250
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quote: Originally posted by DanS I love the fact that after about mid-year, the good teams are playing for the national championship each week.

That's where I dissagree. Only the good teams in "good" conferences are playing for a national championship. And ND of course.

And it's easy for a so called "good" conference to fool the pollsters. Let's say a regular conference (like the big ten) gets some good early spots in the polls PRIOR to the season and any games have been played. They mostly schedule puff games prior to conference play. So they rack up an impressive record against crappy schools, but since they're winning, they stay high in the polls. The occasional lose, is usually against a good school and doesn't hurt them much. Now they start playing each other. They beat up on the Illinois's and other weak teams running up their records, and an occasional lose to a ranked team doesn't kill them because of strength of schedule. It's a self feeding cycle. Then they send 5,6, or 7 teams to the bowls, and they're lucky to win one game. Hmmmm, maybe we overestimated how tough the conference was.

My point being, that some real good teams in bad conferences AREN"T playing for the national championship every saturday. Only the handful of "accepted" teams are. That's downright unamerican.

RAH

	12-11-2002 01:23									#251
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We may not get a season with 5 undefeated teams in the near future, but we are likely to see a season with one or none undefeated teams.

	12-11-2002 01:30									#252
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With a playoff, you would never get this amount of good copy. This is a funny one "[w]e have to put asses in seats. Notre Dame will fill us up."

http://espn.go.com/ncf/columns/maisel_ivan/1459169.html

	12-11-2002 01:37									#253
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quote: Originally posted by DanS "But all it takes is that one year where the BCS turns to **** because you have 5 undefeated teams." What do you think the chances of that are?

The last time that 5 or more teams were unbeaten was in 1973 when OK, ND, OSU, MI, Penn St., and Miami (Ohio) finished their seasons unbeaten (Though OK and MI each had a tie). Given that this was 29 years ago, I would put the odds at 1 in 29.

In 1969, you had 4 unbeaten teams: USC, Penn St., TX, and San Diego State.

	12-11-2002 01:46									#254
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Thank you, statsmeister. And how many games did these folks play in the regular season?

	12-11-2002 02:18									#255
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11 games, though Penn State went 12-0-0 and lost the N. Championship to an 11-0-0 Notre Dame team.

	12-11-2002 02:28									#256
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Until Penn State joined the Big Ten, it played a wussie schedule.

Re the chances then, wouldn't you agree that they are now substantially less than 1/29? ND is playing 13 this year...

	12-11-2002 02:30									#257
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Yeah... but what are the chances of having one or no undefeated teams at the end of the year. There are just too many ways that we end up with teams with equal records playing resonablly tough schedules being picked by a computer program.

	12-11-2002 02:42									#258
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Dan: The odds are way less, given the structual changes that have taken place in college football since 1973. Of particular impact is the decrease of allowable team members (85 is the current maximum, I don't think there was a limit in 1973) and scholarships (now limited to, I think, 25). This prevents the major teams from locking up a lot of good prospects which makes the field more equal.

In regards to strength of schedule, in 1973 it looked like this for the unbeatens:

Team, results, strength of schedule

Oklahoma, 11-0-1, 3
Notre Dame, 11-0-0, 34
Ohio State, 11-0-0, 38
Michigan, 10-0-1, 43
Penn State, 12-0-0, 54
Miami (Ohio), 11-0-0, 75

Nebraska had the #1 toughest schedule and finished 9-2-1. #2 was the 6-5-0 Colorado Buffalos.

In case you're interested, the page where I got this info has Oklahoma a clear #1 over Notre Dame.

	12-11-2002 02:54									#259
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Ming, the last time that there was no unbeaten team was 1996, when a 12-1 FL team won the N. Championship (schedule strength ranked #1). We also had a situation where no eligible team went unbeaten in 1993, though an on-probation Auburn team went 11-0-0.

Other years with no unbeatens: 1989, 1985, 1983, 1978, 1977, 1967. I only went back to 1960 for that info, though I should note that in 1964 and 1965 Princeton and Dartmouth respectively were the only unbeaten teams for those years (yes, they were division 1-A then).

I would be very interested if somebody could take the BCS formula and apply it to the above years and compare them to the actual poll results.

	12-11-2002 03:02									#260
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quote: Originally posted by DanS Until Penn State joined the Big Ten, it played a wussie schedule. Re the chances then, wouldn't you agree that they are now substantially less than 1/29? ND is playing 13 this year...

You know your absolutely right in the eighties they only played teams like Nebraska, Pitt (a perrenial top 20 back then) Syracuse, West Viriginia, Texas and Texas A&M, Notre Dame

Nothing teams. Give me a break.



A complete myth if you ask me.

Given the fact that they had problems being an independent lining up games with decent opposition I'ld say they filled their schedule with credible opponents (Considering they are not Notre Dame who by shear name recognition has a decent shot at having any conference team of their choice lining up to play them) I'ld say the athletic directors did a superior job scheduling PSU in those years.

	12-11-2002 03:06									#261
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Not a myth at all. Why do you think they ended up joining the Big 10, if not to put better teams on the schedule?

	12-11-2002 03:12									#262
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JohnT: So wouldn't you agree that Imran's "pretty good actually" wrt 5 unbeatens bears little resemblance to reality?

	12-11-2002 03:15									#263
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quote: Originally posted by DanS Not a myth at all. Why do you think they ended up joining the Big 10, if not to put better teams on the schedule?

PSU needed no credibility for their football program. The decision to enter the Big 10 was done solely in order to bolster the other programs specifically basketball. The possibility of having a few Rosebowls with the immense $$'s didn't hurt either.

Strength of football schedule was not the priority.

	12-11-2002 03:19									#264
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OK, let's approach this another way. Do you believe JohnT's reference to Penn State in '73 having the 54th toughest schedule in the NCAA? If so, do you think they deserved to be the national champs with that tough of schedule?

	12-11-2002 03:34									#265
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quote: Originally posted by DanS JohnT: So wouldn't you agree that Imran's "pretty good actually" wrt 5 unbeatens bears little resemblance to reality?

Oh yeah. As a matter of fact, 1973 was an aberration given that Nebraska and Oklahoma did not play each other that year, Michigan and OSU tied, and Notre Dame played an uncharacteristically weak schedule (though I should note that ND played relatively weak schedules from 1966-1976. It isn't until 1977 that they had a top-10 tough schedule (8th)).

Otoh, in the same period Penn State played a patsy schedule, only once in the top 20 (18th) and many times far, far less - #75 in 1970, when they went 7-3-0. Things were different in the 1980's when their schedule strength was the following:

1980, 6
1981, 1
..82, 2
83, 9
84, 1
85, 37
86, 17
87, 22
88, 25
89, 23

Except for 1985, they had top-25 schedule strength the entire decade and the reason they were so "bad" in '85 is because that was, I think, in the depths of the Gary Mueller years at ND (5-6-0 in 1985).

	12-11-2002 03:42									#266
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quote: Originally posted by DanS OK, let's approach this another way. Do you believe JohnT's reference to Penn State in '73 having the 54th toughest schedule in the NCAA? If so, do you think they deserved to be the national champs with that tough of schedule?

Noo I can't realistically argue strength of schedule for the 70's as I was a wee lad and not following as I did in the 80's. And for the record they weren't champs in 73. Only untainted championship years were in 82 and 86. In 82 they had a monster schedule and went undefeated and I might add all without Big 10 help.

I would recon tho' that the hey days of the late 60's and 70's gave them the credibility they needed in order to line up the schedules they did in the 80's (which I obviously take exception to as being called weak) .

Up until the 60's they were considered a regional power for Pennsylvania football but were not given National prestige. It took Joepa about 10 years to build the program to a perrenial contender and then the scheduling followed the strength of the program (another lag of 10 years). If memory serves scheduling was doen in the independent years about 5 years out.

	12-11-2002 03:49									#267
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Og:

As I've done a number of times in this thread, I direct you to the following site:

http://rhip.phys.utk.edu/Ranking/

It gives a wealth of information including the strength of schedule rankings for every team, every year since 1869.

For example, here is the strength of schedule rankings for 1973:

http://rhip.phys.utk.edu/cfr/cfr/ou...g_Schedule.html

Here is how Penn State fared that year:

http://rhip.phys.utk.edu/cfr/cfr/ou...Penn_State.html

Here's how the guys ranking system would've ranked the teams for that year:

http://rhip.phys.utk.edu/cfr/cfr/ou...nking_CWDR.html

Here is an explanation of how he came up with the rankings, and why he went through all this work (he doesn't like the BCS either, but wanted to come up with a comparable system). He even gives an analysis of the various polls that you see compiled in the BCS:

http://rhip.phys.utk.edu/Ranking/Do...tsteamsv01.html

Thanks to the wonderful technology of information retrieval (only been around for a few thousand years), you don't have to live in a particular era to learn about that era.

	12-11-2002 03:56									#268
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John T,

As I alluded to inmy earlier post I take no excpetion to the 73 season. I didn't witness it with any objectivity being but 8 years old at the time.

My objection was to the statemement made by DanS saying that PSU played a wussie schedule until they got into the Big 10. This is not true as the period of time inthe mid 80's speaks to the strength of schedule they put together as an independent.

Moreover as PSU one of the last hold out big independents( including to my mind only Miama and Notre Dame at the time as being perrenial football powerhouses) when they went inot teh big 10 the last bastionof independents fell. Miami and others formed the Big East leaving Notre Dame as the lone hold out.

PSU did not need to go to the Big 10 for football and inmany respects would have been better suited not going there as it locked them pre BCS to going to the Rosebowl where they may or may not have been vying for a national CHampionship (ala the split championship with Nebraska which to my mind was a farce).

	12-11-2002 04:30									#269
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Here is something to consider:

You get, in the BCS rankings a"quality win" bonus. Oklahoma gets one for Texas.

Should there be something like a "non-quality loss"?

Oklahoma, again, lost to an unranked Texas A&M team.

I'm not dogging Oklahoma or saying Texas should be ahead of them.

What I'm saying, is that, if strength of schedule means so much, shouldn't losing to an unranked team provide some kind of penalty, just like beating a ranked team provides a bonus?

ACK!

	12-11-2002 05:25									#270
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"My objection was to the statemement made by DanS saying that PSU played a wussie schedule until they got into the Big 10. This is not true as the period of time inthe mid 80's speaks to the strength of schedule they put together as an independent."

OK, there was a decade or so there where they didn't play a wussie schedule and weren't in the Big 10.