How I Broke the Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech Tie

As my regular readers know, I have been developing a new system to judge the end of year BCS beauty contest.

It's a points based system that awards a sliding scale of points for wins against ranked teams and deducts a sliding scale of points for losses against ranked teams. The higher ranked team you beat, the more points you get and vice versa.

Points are doubled for wins on the road and an extra MOV point (for margin of victory) is awarded for dominant wins and for narrow losses, which means you get some credit for barely losing.

A full description of how the points are awarded, including examples, can be found here.

Here are the records of Texas, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma against ranked teams. I have included where the opponent was ranked at the time they played, whether it was a home or road game, how many points I awarded or deducted, and whether or not an MOV point was awarded or subtracted.

Texas

W Oklahoma (1) neut +4.5

W Missouri (11) home +2 (+1 MOV)

W Oklahoma State (7) home +3 (-1 MOV)

L Texas Tech (6) road -3 (+1 MOV)

Texas Tech

W Kansas (19) road +2 (plus 1 MOV)

W Texas (1) home +3 (minus 1 MOV point)

W Okla State (8) home +3 (plus 1 MOV)

L Oklahoma (5) road -1 (- 1 MOV)

Oklahoma

W TCU (24) home +1 (+1 MOV)

L Texas (5) neut -4.5

W Kansas (16) home +2

W Texas Tech (2) home +3 (+1 MOV)

W Okla State (12) road +4 (+1 MOV)

Point Totals

Oklahoma.........8.5

Texas................7.5

Texas Tech........7.0

This system, using an entirely different method, came to the same conclusion as the BCS rankings. Oklahoma wins the division by a very narrow margin of one point.

Of course, the season is not over. Missouri is currently ranked 19th. If Oklahoma loses to Missouri on a neutral field, they will lose one-and-a-half points. That would reduce their point total from 8.5 to 7.0 and put Texas in the National Championship game by half a point.

However, if Oklahoma loses to Missouri in overtime or by less than seven points, then they will gain a margin of victory (MOV) point (for a narrow loss), which would give them eight points and put them into the NC game over Texas.

In other words, Missouri has to beat them convincingly to knock them out.

One final factor, though.  The system is based on how highly teams were ranked when they played.  Alabama, for example, got 5.5 points for beating Clemson when they were 8th ranked at the beginning of the season.  Clemson was clearly over ranked at the time and I am going to have to reduce Alabama's points.  I have to wait until the end of the season to make these adjustments, which are based on how Clemson finished.

This end of season adjustment process affects Oklahoma because they creamed Cincinnati 56-25 at home on September 6th.  Cincinnati was unranked at the time and Oklahoma received no points for the victory.  However, Cincinnati went on to win the Big East and receive a end of regular season ranking of 13th.

Oklahoma would have earned 2 points for beating a 13th ranked team at home.  I'm going to award them an adjusted 1 point to reflect the fact that Cincinnati was grossly under ranked at the time.  On top of that, they get an additional MOV point for the lopsided victory.

Here are the adjusted final standings for these three teams

Point Totals

Oklahoma...........10.5

Texas................7.5

Texas Tech........7.0

Now Oklahoma goes to the NC ahead of Texas even if they lose by more than 2 touchdowns to Missouri.

I find it very strange that using a completely different methodology, this system is sorting the tie out almost exactly the same way as the BCS.

Next week I will post the final standing for all teams and see if the two highest point teams are the same teams invited to the BCS final.