[h2]So who is the real number two?[/h2]
Posted on: November 28, 2011 12:28 pm
Edited on: November 28, 2011 12:57 pm
Score: 132
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Posted by Tom Fornelli
There's an inherent flaw in the way we determine the champion in college football. When you let human beings decide which teams are the best, you allow our emotions and opinions to become involved in the process. Making matters worse, we're all pretty stubborn when it comes to how we think and feel about a certain subject.
I knew a kid in college who would only drink Mr. Pibb and refused to drink Dr. Pepper. They're the same thing. The only difference between the two is that Dr. Pepper has more student loans to pay off and has a real good time beneath underpasses. When I'd ask my friend why he insisted on drinking Mr. Pibb over Dr. Pepper he said that Mr. Pibb just tasted better.
Which is a lie, because they
taste the same, but in his mind Mr. Pibb was better. He had that preconcieved notion, possibly from having it in the house as a child, and there was nothing that could happen to convince him otherwise.
It's a lot like how we view college football teams. There's a group of people who feel that
Alabama is the second-best team in the country, and no matter what arguments you make on another team's behalf, that opinion's not changing. There are groups of people that feel the exact same way about
Oklahoma State,
Stanford, or
Virginia Tech. No matter what you say to them, they're already convinced that one of these teams is the team that deserves to face
LSU for a BCS title, and you won't change their mind.
Which got me to thinking around 2am on Saturday night/Sunday morning. What if there was a way to present a team's case without a person knowing who that team was? If I remove the names of the schools, I'm removing the bias. All a fan can see is "Team X" not Alabama, not Oklahoma State, not Conference USA, none of that. Just the letter "X" and some numbers.
So I decided to take a look at six different schools and compare them in five separate categories to get a better idea of who the better team really is. I'd like to share this data with all of you and then have you vote on which team you think is the team that should be playing LSU based on the numbers you see. There is no right answer, there is no wrong answer. It's still opinion, but what I've done is I've stripped any possible biases you may already have.
Here's the chart.
Now here's an explanation of the chart.
Top 20 W - This is the number of wins each team has against a team currently ranked in the top 20 of the Sagarin rankings, which are used as part of the BCS formula. Though I used Sagarin's Predictor formula, not the formula he has to use for BCS which removes point differential.
Top 40 W - This is the number of wins each team has against a team currently ranked in the top 40 of the Sagarin rankings.
Opp. Win % - Exactly what it looks like, the combined winning percentage of every FBS team each team has played. It's important to note that I did not count the games against that particular team. So for example, Team E's opponents had a .479 winning percentage in game not against Team E.
Av. Point Diff. - This is the average point differential in each team's games against FBS opponents. In other words, how many points are you winning your games by on average.
Av. Sagarin Rank - This is the average Sagarin ranking of the FBS opponents each team has played in 2011. The lower this number, the better.
So, now that you have all the info, which team is the one that should be playing LSU? Vote below, and once you vote the teams will be revealed.
http://eye-on-collegefoot.../entry/24156338/33566427
. 8-4, not even top 15. it's a factor *shrugs*
