BCS Rankings 2011: Wisconsin and Teams Getting No Respect from Computer Rankings

The method to BCS rankings is very imperfect as a system and it especially shows in the computer rankings.

Computers tend to underrate certain teams throughout the season for certain reasons and it simply isn’t fair.

A team being ranked within the top 5 of a human poll and outside the top 15 in a computer poll is simply bizarre and proves that the system is not perfect and needs to be reworked or a playoff system must be implemented.

Let’s take a look at some teams being screwed by the computers in the first BCS rankings.

No. 6 Wisconsin

Wisconsin is four in the Harris Interactive Poll and four in the USA Today Coaches Poll. This makes sense. The team is rolling over every single opponent they have faced and look absolutely unbeatable right now.

But the six BCS computers have them ranked at 10, 8, 14, 17, 6 and 12. That is simply ridiculous. It puts them behind teams like Arkansas, Kansas State, Virginia Tech and one even has NEBRASKA who they BEAT ahead of them.

That alone shows that some of these computer polls are an absolute joke.

No. 8 Stanford

The Cardinal has arguably the best QB in the nation on their roster and are ranked No. 7 and 5 in the human polls.

They have yet to lose but are ranked behind one-loss teams like Oregon and Arkansas and even two-loss team like Texas in certain computer polls.

How could a system rank a team coming off two-straight losses ahead of an undefeated squad? Makes no sense.

No. 16 Michigan State

Ranked 15 and 13 by humans, the Spartans are barely scraping the top-25 in certain computer polls and unranked in others.

Thank god the BCS took a lot of emphasis off these inane polls a few years back because a team like Michigan State, who has one of the best defenses in the country and pulled out a signature win on Saturday, would have no chance of proving themselves to these stupid things.

Rank	Team	BCS Points
1	LSU	.9522
2	Alabama	.9519
3	Oklahoma	.930
4	Oklahoma State	.857
5	Boise State	.803
6	Wisconsin	.771
7	Clemson	.758
8	Stanford	.748
9	Arkansas	.626
10	Oregon	.619
11	Kansas State	.569
12	Virginia Tech	.505
13	Nebraska	.497
14	South Carolina	.491
15	West Virginia	.373
16	Michigan State	.329
17	Texas A&M	.308
18	Michigan	.300
19	Houston	.286
20	Auburn	.265
21	Penn State	.231
22	Georgia Tech	.197
23	Illinois	.152
24	Texas	.135
25	Washington	.087