Why the College Football's Coaches' Poll is a Joke
by Jeff Zimmerman on Sep 28, 2009 12:37 AM EDT
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PrintI am trying to keep the football posts to a minimum, but I have to get this gripe out of my system. I just don't understand how the USA Today's Coaches' Poll is used at all to determine who plays in the national championship game considering how stupidly the coaches vote. I know the coaches (or their assistants) could spend a total 10 minutes come up with a somewhat reasonable ranking, but they just can't do it. This week's rankings just came out and here are 3 cases where a undefeated team (or in Oregon's case, one loss to #5 Boise State) beat another team on the field, but the winning team was ranked lower than the winning team. In each case though, the AP poll had the winning team ranked higher.
| Winner | Loser | Winner's Coaches' Rank | Loser's Coaches' Rank | Winner's AP Rank | Loser's AP Rank |
| Oregon (3-1) | California (3-1) | 25 | 19 | 16 | 24 |
| Iowa (4-0) | Penn State (3-1) | 17 | 13 | 13 | 15 |
| Houston (3-0) | Oklahoma State (3-1) | 15 | 12 | 12 | 14 |
This methodology, along with other problems, annoyed the AP pollsters that ask and were removed from the BCS process. Now the AP Poll crowns' their own national champion. All I can think of is that the coaches don't care (probably), are pretty dumb (some of them) or figure if they screw up the voting process so bad that the NCAA will have to scrap the bowl system for a playoff system (we can only wish).
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Basic agreement.
However, the USA Today Poll is the only one that Missouri currently ranked, so it’s my current one that I value. ;)
"What we do in life, echoes in eternity!"
This assumes teams should be ranked based on performance on the field and not perceived talent. Penn State is a better team than Iowa, just not in that one game sample.
I also kindof agree with this, but that plays into the whole playoff thing.
If two teams face off on the field, the better team (that day) always wins.
The problem is that they’re voting on perception and not always on reality. They’re really just trying to market the biggest money-making schools that allow them to do so.
"What we do in life, echoes in eternity!"
I disagree with this:
If two teams face off on the field, the better team (that day) always wins.
You can define “the better team that day” as “the team that won”, but then your statement is a tautology. If you try to take some other route to “better team that day” you can certainly find that the losing team displayed more talent.
For example, take baseball. Let’s say one team had 8 hits, 2 doubles, 4 walks, and yet scored zero runs. The other team had two hits, one double and one single, and scored one run. Because timing matters, the second team managed to pull out the game. But based on performance of that game, who played better? I think there’s a strong argument for the first team, especially if you view it as “based on performance, who would you predict to win a re-match?”
The only way the second team looks like the better team in that game is when you credit them with their ability to hit in the clutch/make the most of things. That’s not really a skill, so to call that team better because they demonstrated this ability seems faulty to me. “Winner” and “better team” aren’t the same thing.
There’s also strength of schedule, home field advantage, and injuries to take into account in voting.
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by Sky Kalkman on Sep 28, 2009 10:20 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
I disagree with both of you.
You can’t compare football and baseball this way. I am sure we would love to have a team play football 6 days a week, but the bodies can’t take to begin with, so you have to except less games.
Also, in football there are more than the 8 hits in the first second of every play. With each play there are probably 11 or more person interaction that can determine the result of the play. Each player is involved in each play so there sample size is much large. In baseball you have a crappy center fielder and in a game he might make 8 plays throughout a game. Maybe. In football, if you have a shitty center, he will be required to make the correct play in 8 straight plays.
In football, the sample size of determining which player is better is determined faster than in baseball.
Another difference is that in football coaching matters, while in baseball it is quite useless.
Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.
by Jeff Zimmerman on Sep 29, 2009 1:06 AM EDT up reply actions
From Brian Burke:
The article that Tommy linked on wins has less holes in it than those articles.
Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.
by Jeff Zimmerman on Sep 29, 2009 11:44 AM EDT up reply actions
And those holes are...
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by Sky Kalkman on Sep 29, 2009 11:50 AM EDT up reply actions
I truthfully don't have time right now, but have added it to my to do list.
If I don’t have something written by the end of the football season, I will let you choose my avatar.
Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.
by Jeff Zimmerman on Sep 29, 2009 12:15 PM EDT up reply actions
If we’re going to ignore the small samples of 1-game match-ups in football, then what do you propose?
And now at Beyond the Boxscore and Project Prospect!
No, they're not
How can you even make that claim? They were beaten on their own home field by an Iowa team that is 4-0. They haven’t beaten ANYBODY with a pulse yet. The only reason they were rated higher than Iowa is that they started the year rated higher than Iowa. If you think Penn State was a top 5 team prior to the Iowa game, I have to water view land in Florida to sell you.
10 years ago, Boise State wouldn’t have been a top 5 team had they started the year 4-0, even in the fashion that they’ve done so. Why? Because pre-season rankings are all about subjective expectations, and more often than not, they’re bullshit.
"I just wish that the late Harry Caray were still around so I could hear him mispronounce 'Kosuke Fukudome' every fukun' night" -- Dennis Miller
You more than anyone should understand the value of sample size. What would a power ranking like that have looked like after four baseball games this season? Would it have literally any bearing on reality?
It's sort of like the idea of mixing performance with pre-season PECOTA to form power rankings...
except that I’d probably trust PECOTA more than pre-season polls.
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The Polls Don't Matter.
Unless the arguement can be made that these slighted teams will miss out on a deserved shot at the National Championship Game, their ranking won’t matter. Only the NCG contenders should fret about the polls because everything else (almost every other bowl berth) comes down to conference standings.
"A player who conjugates a verb in the first person singular cannot be part of the squad, he has to conjugate the verb in the first person plural. We. We want to conquer. We are going to conquer. Using the word 'I' when you're in a group makes things complicated." ~ Wanderley Luxemburgo, 1999
You are right. Polls don't matter. What matters is the revenue generated by these polls, right?
A main reason that the BcS ‘system’ is in place is greed…them that has gets more.
To be charitable, sometimes teams are ranked high because of the strength of their recruiting class(es).
Often teams are ranked, IMO, with relevance to their TV market numbers (read contracts with big media.)
Is this fair? Just like the smell of us ancient senior citizens…Depends.
You own stock in the company? You got a kid in a program? Money? Kids? What’s in your wallet? # or pics?
One game in football tells you a lot more than one game in baseball, so the sample size thing here is kind of irrelevant.
If you want the best 2 teams fighting for the national championship, just take the highest-odds teams on NCAAF championship futures.
Polls and the BCS are way more stupid.
I'll answer
because in baseball, one game is 1/162th of a season. In college football it’s somewhere between 1/12th and 1/14th of a season.
Goes beyond that
Here’s the link I got from Tango regarding the issue.
Comes down to possessions/occurrences per game. Here’s the quote I found helpful.
"That’s for one PA. But, there are 80 PAs per game, more or less (hitters and pitchers). The var(random) drops down to .053^2.
So, it all depends on the number of "trials". In football, you probably have around 150 possessions? Basketball is what, 200? Hockey likely in the 100+ neighboorhood? Tennis, 4 matches x 9 games x 6 to 8 points = 250?"
Because each game has a different number of “instances,” each sports’ game has different weight.
Marlin Maniac, a Florida Marlins blog
Check me out at Beyond the Box Score as well.
This is one of my favorite "statistical nuggets":
Here’s how long seasons of other sports should be to tell you as much about the talent of teams as a 162 games of baseball:
24 NFL games (currently more luck in football seasons than baseball seasons)
35 NBA games (the better team almost always wins)
82 NHL games (right on par with baseball)
So if 162 MLB games say as much as 24 NFL games, that means 1 NFL game is worth about 6.5 MLB games (i.e. a week of NFL games is as meaningful as a week of MLB games).
http://sabermetricresearch.blogspot.com/2006/08/on-correlation-r-and-r-squared.html
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/true_talent_levels_for_sports_leagues/
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I agree that the coaches’ poll is a joke, but there are several better reasons (which you already mentioned in your post) than “head to head winners are ranked lower than the teams they beat.” I think we would all agree that, depending on the location of the game, previous schedule, and other factors, the winning team is not necessarily the better team.
Thing C
I agree that it begins getting pretty complex as it is the case with BYU.
But in each of the 3 case I brought up the winning team has played a as tough or a tougher schedule than the team it beat and in the cases of Iowa and Houston, they both went on the road for the win. I can’t see any reason in these 3 case the losing team should be ranked higher.
Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.
by Jeff Zimmerman on Sep 28, 2009 10:44 AM EDT up reply actions
The BCS really isn't a flawed process
The fact that they use the AP Poll and the Coaches Poll is a flawed tactic, because those polls rank teams in the preseason and are generally worthless until around Nov. 1st…..which also happens to be the time the BCS standings come out. Hmmm…
Here’s how you solve this problem, imo:
- There are no national polls with preseason rankings that are used in the BCS process.
- You have two polls, one AP, the other “coaches”, that start ranking teams on the first week of the BCS rankings, not before. All members of these polls will have their ballots made public, so if you’re going to be a douchebag and rate the top five teams in your conference 1,2,3,4,5, you’re going to get called out on it. Steve Spurrier, I’m looking at you…
- You have one computer ranking of teams, and one strength of schedule ranking of teams. College basketball does this, why doesn’t football?
- The two polls are weighted as half of the equation, and the computer poll (or RPI) is the other half.
- All conferences MUST have a championship game. F*** you Big 10 (I mean, Big 11), get with the program. No more of this 3 way tie with 12 different tiebreakers bullshit. Does anyone think that the Big 10 basketball tourney is a BAD thing?
- You cannot play for the national title unless you are your conference champion.
The key is getting rid of the pre-season polls. They’re horseshit, and they are nearly every year. Look at the turnover in the top 10 just this year! There are clearly 3 top 10 teams this year, and then about 15-20 teams after that who really aren’t much better than anyone else in that group of 20 on any given weekend. Usually by the time the BCS standings come out, the polls are rounding into form, but they always have that stupid rollback from where teams were ranked and how they’ve “moved up” or “dropped” in the polls since the pre-season. With all the parity in the FBS now, nobody knows anything until about week 8 of the season. For example, it’s clear that neither Ole Miss or Okey State belonged in the top 10, but that Houston is probably at least a top 15 team. Yet both Ole Miss and OSU started the year in the top 25 and Houston was back in the mid fifties, because nobody looked at their team at all during the preseason.
"I just wish that the late Harry Caray were still around so I could hear him mispronounce 'Kosuke Fukudome' every fukun' night" -- Dennis Miller
I agree with everything except the must be conference championship
the Big 11 is crap, but how about the Pac-10 where they play a true round robin, which actually makes for a great regular season. A lot less what ifs.
Jeff Zimmerman - Protecting the world from RBI's and Wins from my mom's guest house.
by Jeff Zimmerman on Sep 28, 2009 2:07 PM EDT up reply actions
There will never be a playoff system.
Too much money in bowl games.
Now, if people stopped going to/watching bowl games, then they’d change it. But people won’t stop going to bowl games.
The bigger travesty is the fact that there is no playoff system in Div I college football. They need something similar to this.
vr, Xei
Show me how a playoff system would make schools/conferences more money than the current system would.
The simple fact is, as I stated above, they’ve been given no incentive to change the system. If people continue to go to the games and watch them, then why would they change the system?
In theory
You could probably have the same slate of bowl games, just where some are involved in the playoff and some aren’t.
by stevesommer05 on Sep 29, 2009 9:10 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Cha-Ching
Yes, the major bowls could be a part of the playoff system, most likely semi-finals and finals. The quarter-finals (or first rnd in an 8 team playoff) could be hosted by the higher seed. These minor details could easily be tweaked, but you are correct that the bowl games would remain. Then the lesser bowls could just grab teams that didn’t qualify for the playoff.
Currently, all the bowl games except for the Natl Title game are meaningless exhibitions in the sense that they aren’t likely to have an impact on who wins the National title. With a playoff system and having 3 (or more) of the major bowl sites as hosts for a playoff game, you’d actually have a meaningful game at those sites, instead of an exhibition game. Those playoff games, even at neutral sites are still going to sell out.
The current system is setup as a “cash cow” for the BCS conferences. They realize that in a “fair” playoff system you’d likely get a Boise St, Utah or BYU type in the playoff more times than not and they’d have less of the pie to themselves. The total revenue should remain the same or even be higher, but the BCS conferences would most likely receive less of the pie than they currently do. Which conferences do you think have all the power? Which conferences do you think are against a playoff system of 8 teams or more?
vr, Xei
Yes
“…the BCS conferences would most likely receive less of the pie than they currently do.”
This is exactly why it won’t change.
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