BCS Ineffectiveness: A Real Solution to the National Championship Problem

In the national championship picture, there are issues brought up by all sides trying to determine who the legitimate No. 1 and No. 2 are. These debates are fought over millions of dollars in revenue for the schools, prestige and notoriety. Everything relies upon a group of coaches, a number of sportswriters and a group of computers programmed by some super geeks in an office far away from football field. I had determined to make this debate much deeper, why not cause more trouble in a flawed system.

Let's begin with the sportswriters, people that write upon sports and some have never played the game. They all have a regional bias and therefore are fatally flawed in their voting. I know some of them, I've met a few others and the rest will not take my calls. I really don't care, but I don't think we should trust any of them. Do you?

The coaches, I would say trust them but then again they are also flawed with regional bias. The only choice is to throw the bums out! We don't need them to tell us who is the best. They can keep their silly little trophy and fill it with bean dip.

Let's look at the computers. What we need is somebody that can produce a computer program that can predict the outcome of a football game with 90 percent accuracy. I figure that 20 little computer geeks in a room can figure this out.  Use this program to determine the top 120 teams and then use a simple algorithm to pick the top two of the bunch. Why not? Short of a playoff this is the most reasonable, or schizophrenic solution to what we already have.

Per my example I have chosen to use the Congrove computer rankings.  This is not an endorsement nor critique of this computer rankings system. It is used is merely an example of a very good computer rankings system and how it can be flawed by people attempting to pick a national champion through data manipulation.  Actually, this computer rankings system has an outstanding record of picking the eventual contenders and sometimes the actual champion far in advance.

This computer system gives the ranking of the top 120 teams. I effectively flipped the ratings that the team in first place was worth 120 points in the last place team was worth one. So the victories of a team counted the current point value of each team they defeated and no points for any losses they incurred. The system is set up to reward those teams playing the toughest opponents over season and not necessarily deduct points for losses. Any team not on the list is considered rated at 120, therefore producing one point for the team defeating them. There are no points awarded for a loss.

The greatest part about this system is that there is nothing awarded for style points. The system defines a win is a win, a loss is a loss to matter how close or how far apart the scores are. No more need for teams to run up the score to outrageous amounts just to get attention.

Let's take for example Texas. Texas played Rice currently rated 105. That provided Texas the current point value for the victory of 16 points. Wyoming and Texas Tech are rated 101 and 50 respectively for total points 20 and 71. The losses to UCLA and Oklahoma give Texas zero points. The victory over Nebraska, currently rated 12 provides Texas with 109 points for total of 216 points. According to the computer Texas is rated 16th, after some small manipulation Texas gets a bump to 14th.

How crazy can it get, here's the complete list of points with teams according to my logical or illogical, depending on your viewpoint, manipulation of good data.

Score		Teams from 1 to 20
451		LSU
448		Auburn
447		Oklahoma
352		Alabama
348		Michigan State
299		TCU
298		Oklahoma State
263		BSU
262		Ohio State
256		Missouri
241		Stanford
220		Florida State
216		Texas
207		Iowa
205		Oregon
202		Nebraska
195		Wisconsin
151		Utah
91		Nevada
86		West Virginia

Therefore my pick for the national championship game at this time is LSU and Auburn. You can't deny that I'm right, the data supports me 100 percent.