The Stupidity of the BCS Computer Rankings

Okay, if we can't have a playoff for college football, can we at least have a fair ranking system?

Apparently not.

The BCS rankings are a combination of three ranking systems - the Harris Interactive Poll, the USA Today Coaches Poll, and the computer rankings.  The first two rankings are made by humans, who actually watch the football games with a pair of eyes.  The computer rankings, however,  have only the influence of six mathematically computed rankings, one of which only takes into account wins and losses, not margin of victory.

The latest victim of oblivious computers is none other than Oregon, a school that famously got screwed by the BCS in 2001 when its undefeated season was passed on for the title game in favor of Nebraska's one-loss campaign (Nebraska went on to be crushed by Miami, 37-14; Oregon beat up on Colorado, who beat Nebraska, 38-16).

In this week's human rankings, Oregon stands at #1 with a significant percentage of #1 votes in each poll.  The computers, however, rank Oregon at #8, behind one-loss schools LSU and Oklahoma.  I guess those losses haven't registered yet.  Meanwhile, Auburn, a consensus #3 school in human minds, was given a .9800 (out of 1.000) rating from the computers, and used that to leap-frog to #1.

So that's the main stupidity.  But there are a couple of other interesting computer ratings:

• Alabama, who many believe to still be in the title race, is left at #12, six spots behind LSU.
• Missouri, who was ranked #18 by the  Associated Press before its upset of #1 (and overrated) Oklahoma last week, is the second best team in the nation according to the computers.
• The only school everybody agrees on is #4 TCU, who was ranked at #4 in all three polls.

It looks like it's going to take another couple upsets to get Oregon or Boise St. in their rightful rankings (#1 and #2), and that might not be enough either.  Don't count out a one-loss SEC champion - it only makes sense that the strongest team from the strongest conference should have a spot in the title game.  And let's try to stay away from the possibility that both Boise St. and TCU go undefeated, a situation that would cause all hell to break loose.  I'm not even going to try to explain it.