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December 3, 2007

MRI Football 2007 - Rankings Week 11

It is the end of the regular season, and amazingly, if the MRI had its way, the opponents in the National Title game would be Oklahoma and LSU. Both schools won their conference championships, knocking the former #1 team in the MRI, West Virginia, down to #3.

For its part, West Virginia lost what was the biggest numerical upset of the year. That is not measured by the point spread in the game (almost four TDs), or some perceived disadvantage by the 'stached one's team. This is purely measured by the difference in MRI score between the two teams, along with a home field advantage. Prior to that game, the biggest upset of the year was Notre Dame beating UCLA, back when UCLA was still playing somewhat decent football.

The BCS has given us Ohio State (MRI #6) and LSU (MRI #1) for its title game. I haven't heard much moaning about the actual title game, yet. I am sure it is coming. Everyone believes that this season is the perfect reason to move to a playoff system in college football. While I used to be on the playoff side, the BCS has somewhat won me over.

I am not saying the system is perfect, but it is the best thing we have. With a playoff, I see too many upsets occurring, too many teams that are "hot" at just the right time, that didn't prove themselves during the full season, making their way to a "championship". No matter how mythical you think the LSU-Ohio State winner is a champion, you could have to say that a team like a Georgia winning the entire thing would be just as crazy. Georgia would for sure be in the playoff, they made the BCS games after all. However, they didn't win their own division in the SEC, and therefore, they didn't even have a chance to win the title of the conference. How (and I will allow you to look back at 2003 here) can a team that doesn't win its division or conference expect to be considered the National Champion, in a sport that has a season so short?

People have often pointed to college basketball, where March Madness entrances the nation. Keep in mind that March Madness would be a shadow of itself if it weren't for the massive amounts of betting on the tournament in the form of the ever present "brackets". While I have no doubt that betting on the college football tournament would also be as huge, it is not the same. You would not have 6 games in 3 weeks, or a massive first weekend of 48 games. You would have 4 games stretched over 4 weeks. The ever present nature of the basketball tournament allows it to stay in the public eye over 3 weeks, not like a college football tournament which would be over-analyzed and dull by the time each week's games came around.

People seem to think that there are a number of teams who should have access to the championship each season. They think that most years, there could be 9 - 12 teams which deserve a chance to win it. I pick out 9 - 12 because that would, as some people say, equate to the #3 seed in the NCAA tournament winning it all. I disagree. While 9 - 12 sounds like a #3 seed in the brackets in football, it really isn't. With 3 times as many teams in college basketball as in football, the top 16 teams equate to only the top 4-5% of teams in the country, a reasonable number which probably deserves some shot at winning the title. Since 1985 when the tournament expanded to 64 (now 65) teams, there have only been two occurrences when the champion has not come from those 16 top teams. Both of those occurred early on after the expansion. I could almost contribute that to the committee not being familiar with how to expand and seed the tournament properly. Most of the champions have been from the top 4 teams in the tournament, the top 1% of the teams in the country over the course of the season.

The top 5% of the teams in football would be only 5 or 6 teams. The top 1%, only 2. Two teams, picked to play for the championship, by a committee of men, and augmented by some computers. That sounds very similar to a process which would pick a tournament of teams, aided by some computer statistics, and seed them appropriately, putting the best teams at the top.

You can see, we have our tournament, picked in a similar manner to the NCAA basketball tournament.

Yes, I know there are other games which give out a ton of money to the conferences of the teams that are picked for them. Remember though, that past the top 2 teams, the other bowls have quite a bit of leeway in how they pick their participants, much like the other bowls in the country. They can pick, other than their tie-ins and some win restrictions, however they want to get the best game they want. Otherwise, we would never see a modern Notre Dame team in those bowls. Sure, there is a disproportionate amount of money in those games because of the BCS, but there is a lot of money in other bowl games which never gets spoken about. If you really want to complain about money, talk about how Notre Dame, at 3-9, is still being paid $1.3 million dollars by the BCS this season (look at the decisions in 2005 to see details).

And so I will stand by the BCS process for now. Until someone comes up with a better system (not a playoff) for picking the two top teams (our top 1%), it is the best system we have. It is a system that has only been in its current format for picking those 2 teams for the last 3 seasons, including this one. I don't think it has been wrong yet, even if this season, I could have seen any of 3 championship games, and still thought it was a good decision (Ohio State-LSU, Oklahoma-LSU, or LSU-Virginia Tech (again)).

And with that, let's go to the full rankings in this, the final regular season rankings, of the football MRI.

Posted by bmiraski at December 3, 2007 1:30 PM

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