Bill James on the BCS

5 months ago R.J. Anderson Comment 14 comments 0 recs |

Comments

I agree, not so much with the boycott, but that we need a Good Playoff System. The current system is a joke. The lame arguments about the seasonal games mean more is shallow. With four weeks left in the season this year, there were only 6 or 7 teams left who had meaningful games left.
vr, Xei

by Xeifrank on Jan 8, 2009 10:58 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Agreed

A playoff system would be so much better.

by Brendan Scolari on Jan 8, 2009 3:17 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Disagreed.

And That Happened: Sports with a Hint of Sarcasm

by philkid3 on Jan 8, 2009 8:26 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I love the bowl system and wouldn't want to move to a play-off

But the problem I have with it is the formulas the computers use are a joke.

by Gina on Jan 8, 2009 12:27 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Don't have to be mutually exclusive

This is one of my biggest pet peeves with the Bowl vs Playoff discussion. Bowls can coexist with a playoff. In a playoff scenario, 8 to 16 teams would be in the playoff (I prefer 8 or 10-12 with byes, BTW) and all of the remaining bowl-eligible teams would go to the San Diego Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, etc. The real question is, what do you do with the 4 to 8 bowl games that would be replaced by a playoff? If it’s an 8 team playoff, simply play the first round at the home field of the higher seed, and the remaining three semifinal and championship games would be assigned to three of the current BCS bowls on a rotating basis.

If something like this was done, what is it about the current bowl system you love that would prevent you from going to a playoff?

Agree that the formulas used by the computers are a joke. Margin of victory and home-away should definitely be considered. It would seem that defining a cutoff for the win margin (20 points? 30?) would be sufficient to prevent teams from running up the score against patsies. Plus, additional penalties in strength of schedule could provide incentive not to schedule the patsies in the first place.

by Adam Peterson on Jan 8, 2009 2:21 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

That destroys the bowl system I love.

That definitely does not preserve it in any way at all.

And That Happened: Sports with a Hint of Sarcasm

by philkid3 on Jan 8, 2009 8:24 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Care to expand on that?

I’m really not up on my NCAA football computer algorithms, but I really find that the human ballots are jokes. Except for schools in non-major conferences, teams are basically ranked by order of record. Teams rarely get flip-flopped unless one of them loses. Losses early in the season are worth way less than losses later in the season. Etc, etc.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Jan 8, 2009 6:26 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I don't mean the idea of a computer

I mean literally the formulas the computers use are ridiculous, as well as what they’re explanations of what they intend to measure. Personally I wish they could get rid of the human ballots, or at least the coaches poll and just make the others weigh less. But I don’t mean they should do away with the computers I mean they’re formulas need to be completely reworked.

Most of them from what I’ve seen don’t take point differential into account. Some of them rely to heavily on the human polls, one of them in particular I can’t remember the name, didn’t take anything a team did after a game into account. For example if lets say USC was ranked number 5 and they played Texas or someone who was #1 in the first week and beat them and Texas went on to go like 3-9 or something it wouldn’t affect USC’s strength of schedule they’d still be credited as though they had beaten the #1 team in the nation. Some of them go entirely off the game scores/wins and losses and nothing that actually happened in the game, like first downs, 3rd down conversation percentage, turnovers, offensive efficiency and what not. One of them, and this I thought was really weird, has a strict head to head rule where if two teams played the team that won would always be ranked ahead of the team that lost of at least one week. And just a lot of things like that that makes me wonder how much research actually goes into the formulas of the 6 computers and how much accurate they are. Plus most of them don’t provide much, if any, explanation or detail about their formulas.

by Gina on Jan 8, 2009 8:16 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Computers are in there for effect only

I’m parroting some thoughts from BBTF but ones that I’ve agreed with.

Any time the computers disagree with the pundits and pollsters they tweak the computers. That’s the equivalent of changing Dewan’s +/- to have Jeter be the best SS in the bigs.

If everyone disagrees with the computers, you might want to look into why, but you shouldn’t necessarily assume it’s the computers fault.

by Dan Turkenkopf on Jan 8, 2009 10:56 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

This is one of the most intelligent things ever written.

And That Happened: Sports with a Hint of Sarcasm

by philkid3 on Jan 9, 2009 1:05 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Thanks for expanding on that.

I literally do not know how the computer systems tend to work. SOS seems to be the main way they can be MUCH smarter than human voters.

A big breakthrough would be an ability to tell the difference between two good teams playing to a 24-17 score and two bad teams playing to the same score. I know that’s really difficult to do, but would be awesome. It would also allow detecting if a typically good team had a bad game or if they got beat by a much better team.

Beyond the Boxscore // Calling BJ Upton lazy is lazy.

by Sky Kalkman on Jan 9, 2009 11:47 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

This.

I’m glad there’s no playoffs, but I want a major BCS overhaul. I like the idea, it’s the execution that sucks.

And That Happened: Sports with a Hint of Sarcasm

by philkid3 on Jan 8, 2009 8:21 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Oh wait. I just noticed who I was replying to.

And That Happened: Sports with a Hint of Sarcasm

by philkid3 on Jan 8, 2009 8:22 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Bill James has an interesting point

Regarding what he thinks would have happened if a playoff were instituted long ago. The big schools / conferences were (and are) reluctant to give money to the smaller conferences.

Also, with any playoff system there would still be a push for computer rankings to determine the at large teams and seeding, meaning college football would still have to resolve James’ basic problems with the BCS formulae.

by Adam Peterson on Jan 8, 2009 2:33 PM EST reply actions 0 recs