The Bowl Championship Series

or, you need a B.S. in BS to figure this sucker out


1999 :

After a 1 year "test run", the powers that be have tinkered with the formula AND the rules for the BCS.

(If you aren't familiar with the original plan, read the 1998 story below.)

The changes were announced at a time when they would draw the least attention... the week before the 4th of July.

The first change involves 'Part C' of THE FORMULA... the computer rankings.
Five more ranking services will have their numbers plugged into the formula...Matthews/Scripps-Howard, the Dunkel Index, and 3 guys I've never heard of before: Richard Billingsley, David Rothman & Kenneth Massey (actually, I HAVE heard of him, since he's a Hokie). This brings the total to 8. However, in order to prevent any 1 from throwing things off-kilter, each team will have their lowest ranking thrown out.
Then, you find the average of those seven rankings (no 'adjustments' necessary).

The second change makes it a little tougher to be an at-large team.
Now, a team MUST have at least NINE wins against Division 1-A teams AND be in the top 12 of the BCS' formula.
All this does is penalize a school for playing a smaller opponent (I wouldn't be surprised to see Va. Tech avoid JMU in the future).

The third tweak plays off of the second one... it involves the ranking of the conference champions.
Starting with the 1999 rankings, each of the six conferences involved must show that they are indeed a 'power conference'. The final BCS ranking of each conference champion will be recorded and carried forward. If, over any four-year period, any conference doesn't have an average of 12th place or better, it will be subject to review and MIGHT lose it's automatic bid.

(If you didn't know, Big East champ Syracuse didn't fare too well last year. Their 8 wins and #15 ranking wouldn't be good enough for them to quilify as an at-large team this year. Thankfully, those numbers won't count, and Va. Tech should get the Big East started off right with higher numbers this fall.)

The only down-side to these changes is that nothing was done to prevent a worthy team from being excluded from a top-tier bowl like #3 Kansas State was last year).

On a side note, mark Monday Oct. 25th down as the date the first rankings are released. Also, the championship game will be the Nokia Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on Tuesday, Jan. 4th (assuming the world doesn't collapse over the previous weekend).





1998 :

They've finally done it. A way to determine who is really the #1 college football team in America. No, not a playoff system, but something more intriguing. Something that makes you wish you had stayed awake during Stats class. It's ... (say this with your best monster truck voice) the Bowl Championship Series.

After only a few years of debate, the powers that be have come up with a plan that not only figures out who the top teams are, but also how to keep the bowl tie-ins that we've all come to know and love over the past century. However, they're not going to tell us who the top teams are until mid-November.

Why???? Mainly because it will take them all season to plug in all the numbers they need to make The Calculation.

But you can't wait that long, you say? No problem! I've got The Formula! Just grab a few thousand pieces of scrap paper, fire up your Pentium 400, and you're all set!!!

Let's start with the basics. It's really just a simple little mathematical formula with about a thousand variables that is divided into 4 parts, which I'll call A, B, C and D. (The key is that lower numbers are better.)

I'm no masochist, so I'll tell you that every component of the formula can be found easily on the web except for Part D... strength of schedule (see below).

Part A is the number of losses the team has.

Part B is almost as easy. Find the rankings in both the AP and the USA Today polls, add them together, then divide by 2.

Part C takes a bit more work. Find the computer rankings of 3 media outlets: USA Today (Jeff Sagarin), The Seattle Times (Hester), and The New York Times (which you have to register for).
For each team, take their 2 best rankings, add them, then multiply by .75 to get an 'adjusted' ranking.
Compare your 'adjusted' ranking to the media ranking you haven't used yet and use the best of these two as your third media number.
Add the three and divide by three to get Part C.
(For example... the media rankings for a team are 1, 2 and 3.
Add 1 + 2, mult. by .75, get 2.25, which is better than 3.
So, add 1 + 2 + 2.25, get 5.25, divide by 3, and 1.75 is Part C.)

Now comes the killer... the SOS, which has 2 parts:
Part 1 : Your opponents W-L record (weighted 2/3rds).
Part 2 : Your opponents opponents W-L record (weighted 1/3rd).
Don't EVEN try this at home. There's 2 ways this can be done, and I haven't seen anyone say which way is right.
Instead, use Jeff Sagarin's SOS rankings. They should be close enough.
Divide the ranking by 25. This will give you a number under 4.5 for Part D.

Now add the 4 parts and rank the teams using this number.

The 2 best teams (lowest point totals) go to the BCS title game!!!



So, what's the most important part of all this? The polls.
I really doubt the 'title game' will involve a non-Top 5 team.


If all this leads to the 'top 2 teams' playing one game, what makes it a 'Series'?

The best answer I can give is two-fold :
A. Because the 'title game' will be rotated among 4 Bowls : the Fiesta (1/4/99), Sugar (Jan., 2000), Orange (Jan., 2001), and Rose (Jan., 2002).
B. Because the other top teams will be playing in the other 3 bowls.


Howzat???

It basically works like this : the bowl tie-ins still exist. They are:

Rose : Big Ten & Pac-10 champs
Sugar : SEC
Orange : ACC or Big East champs
Fiesta : Big 12 champ

Plus 2 'at-large' berths that will be awarded, in order, to :
A. Notre Dame, provided they are ranked in the top 10 and went at least 9-2.
B. Any school whose BCS ranking is in the top 12 and wasn't one of the 6 conference champions listed above.
C. Any school.

The Bowl that hosts the 'title game' forgets its tie-ins, but the other 3 don't.
For example, the SEC champ will play in the Sugar Bowl unless :
A. It is a top 2 team and the 'title game' is somewhere else
B. They aren't a top 2 team, and the 'title game' is at the Sugar.

So, if FSU & Florida are the top 2 this season, they go to the Fiesta, the Rose Bowl will be the same as we're used to, and the Big East champ, Big 12 champ, and 2 at-large schools will make up the Sugar and Orange Bowls (I'm not sure if the Orange would be committed to the Big East, but my guess is NO). I also don't know in which order the Bowls will pick their teams.


What's interesting is that a conference runner-up could end up in the 'title game'. Say FSU's only loss was at UT, then the Vols get trashed the night before Homecoming and losses to U-AB. Tenn. would win the SEC, but FSU could be one of the top 2 teams.


So, will this give us a true national champion?

Are you kidding???? The USA Today/ESPN Coaches Poll will automatically make the BCS title game winner it's #1 team. Meanwhile, the sportswriters can still vote however they want to in the AP Poll.

Of course, it's also possible that an undefeated team (like Marshall, who, btw, plays at VPI in 2002) could be left out of the BCS altogether.


A great piece of commentary can be found at CNN/SI and from the ESPN story page.
Other notes :

Anyone got some stock in Disney they want to get rid of?
Geez, look at what they're doing in sports now. First, the Anaheim NHL francise and controlling interest of the Angels, now ABC-ESPN's takeover of NHL and football telecasts. Did you know that all 4 of the BCS games will be televised by ABC? They guaranteed each one $19 million per year!
And while we will continue to hear about the Rose Bowl, what we will actually see is "the Rose Bowl, presented by AT&T". Give me a break!
The only good thing I see is now the Monday night games will actually end before midnight, thanks to the 8:20 kick off. But that only made matters worse here in DC, as game traffic overlapped with rush hour.

And what happened to CBS??? This year's Cotton Bowl will be on FOX!!! I'm really gonna miss Pat Summerall in Dallas. The only Bowl Game they have this season is the (yawn) Sun Bowl.

Can you believe the #6 team in the SEC gets a bowl game??? In NASHVILLE???

And what's up in Hawaii??? Tha Aloha Bowl is now a double-header... the "Jeep Aloha Christmas Football Classics". Both games will feature a middle-of-the-Pac-10 team.

This season's bowl lineup can be found at Rizzo's site.

(If you didn't hear, Disney stock hit a 52-week low of $23.25 in mid-Sept.)

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