Mack Invites BCS to Explain The Stupid System

Discussion in 'On The Field' started by jprizzle, Feb 27, 2009.

  1. wolfman

    wolfman 1,000+ Posts

    The NCAA just needs to pull the plug on the BCS and go to a playoff system.
     
  2. borna_horn

    borna_horn 1,000+ Posts

    The people who think th BCS computers are swayed by score margin or by a school's prestige are almost as stupid as the people who think the computers are more reliable than the human polls.

    First of all, the computers simply factor SOS. That's it. MOV counts for nothing. Prestige counts for nothing. The only way to improve your computer rating is to schedule better opponents, which may be impossible if your conference happens to be down a certain year.

    Second, the myth that OU got in over Texas for having better street cred or for running up the score is bogus. The human polls had Texas above OU in the poll that decided the Big 12 South Championship. The computers had OU above Texas simply because of SOS, nothing more.

    The computers do not tell you who the best team is. They simply tell you who played the toughest schedule. Some may think that is fair, but I do not. It is not fair to tell the kids that a factor totally out of their control ends up deciding their fate. At least with human polls, people understand the nature of them and the results. Everyone knows that OU surged ahead of Texas because of their impressive throttling of Tech. And everyone knows that the 45-35 campaign changed enough people's minds to put Texas back barely ahead. At least that is something people can understand. NO ONE can predict the BCS computers. That is the simple reason why it is wrong to use them. It is like flipping a coin. Mack is trying to enlist help in understanding something that cannot be understood. There is no common sense to it.

    If you think using the computers to decide any part of the BCS is a good idea, then you are an idiot, pure and simple. It would be more fair to have the teams draw straws then it is to put their fates in the hands of these goofy formulas.

    Wake up, idiots. Humans should be 100% in control of this process.
     
  3. hornpharmd

    hornpharmd 5,000+ Posts


     
  4. borna_horn

    borna_horn 1,000+ Posts


     
  5. The Horn Identity

    The Horn Identity 500+ Posts

    Drake - I'll assume you jesting, because there is no reasonable argument that Tech should have gone.

    I've already stated why Texas should have gotten the nod over OU. So, I do believe that UT should have made it to the Big 12 championship and would have likely beaten a badly fading Mizzou team. That would have put UT in the the NC game.

    But, I will concede to the Sooners that it should have been an UT-OU rematch for the NC. I know that's not what many would have like to seen, but we both had the best resumes in the beauty contest.
     
  6. X Misn Tx

    X Misn Tx 2,500+ Posts

    as strong (until January) as the B12 has been lately, i think the OOC schedule comments are relevant, but weak arguments. while technically true, no one knew OU's two OOC games would end up counting so well for them.

    everyone on here knows that the two human polls got "excited" for OU when they got hot late in the seaon and jumped us. The OOC games had already taken place. The OOC games were irrelevant to OU jumping us. Our October was great. OU had the great November and it trumped us.

    I think Mack wants the BCS people to say "the team you beat head-to-head got hot late in the season, and we like "hot" teams more than we consider head-to-head."
     
  7. keltablack

    keltablack < 25 Posts

    Seriously, I believe the OU- Chattanooga game didn't even count because Chattanooga was a really bad D-II team. If this is the case, then I believe UT would have had the "stronger" schedule over OU and goes to the title game...
     
  8. cehorn

    cehorn 25+ Posts


     
  9. Salt City Sooner

    Salt City Sooner 100+ Posts


     
  10. buckhorn

    buckhorn 1,000+ Posts

    Humans are in control 100%. They decide on the various computer calculations and then decide which sets get used. You cannot foresee what all outcomes are going to be, but if you could, you could simply sit down and do the math without the 'computers,' so to speak. Humans use all sorts of formulas, including those that do and do not explicitly involve computers.

    There is no consistency with the humans and they do not factor in 'fairness' anymore than they do 'hotness.' Some pollsters conflate the two. Some think of the best team as the squad playing most impressively over the last month of the season. Others take into account the whole season. Etc., etc.

    As has been noted. The problem is trying to push the lie that there is going to be a game between the two best teams. There is no reliable way to decide this questions, really, and certainly no reliable way to do so unless we all agree upon the criteria, which we do not. It's really a dumb conversation to be having, though often fun and cathartic. A playoff would me flawed, though much less flawed and based on a more modest, understandable criteria: the team that doesn't lose in the playoffs wins the MNC. Not the best, just the winner. The current system does this already as the best team doesn't always win the MNC game. The problem is the system of selection for the teams that get to play is byzantine, inconsistent from year to year, even week to week, and is altogether too narrow in scope (at least 8 teams should go, maybe 10 or 12 with some byes/playins).

    We the fans continually fall for the trap of arguing who is best or most deserving when the former question can't be totally answered in football, and the latter is as much about facts as it is about bias, both in the way of allegiances and in the way of preferred criteria.

    The only way to get a playoff is to boycott the current system by not tuning in. Latch onto DII. This will, of course, never happen. So the next best thing is to accept that the system purports to do one thing while actually doing another, and doing it poorly (bringing two teams together for a MNC game). It is not and has never been about finding out who is best. It is about setting up a game between two teams in a way that causes the least amount of gripe and then crowning the winner. Who is best is not addressed in any reliable way. Who is most deserving is not addressed in wholly reliable ways, though there are a range of criteria that get used regularly, though, depending on the year, the circumstances, the portion of the season in question, the region, the individual voters, tradition, etc., these criteria get weighted differently.

    Beyond this the affiant sayeth not.
     
  11. borna_horn

    borna_horn 1,000+ Posts


     
  12. Statalyzer

    Statalyzer 10,000+ Posts


     
  13. borna_horn

    borna_horn 1,000+ Posts

    cehorn,

    Maybe you can answer my question - if the human polls are so awful, then why did they end up putting Texas above OU on the final regular season ballot while the computers were the ones who put OU into the Big 12 Championship game. How do you defend that?

    I love all the fluff arguments about the fallacies of humans, but nobody can argue against the actual results. Again, go to my post above, and tell me a single year where the human polls did NOT get the championship game right. I showed you FOUR YEARS, including 2008, where the computers got it wrong. Show me even one year where the humans screwed it up.

    You can't.

    Game, set, match.
     
  14. I_Dont_Exist

    I_Dont_Exist 1,000+ Posts


     
  15. buckhorn

    buckhorn 1,000+ Posts


     
  16. Hpslugga

    Hpslugga 2,500+ Posts


     
  17. orangecat

    orangecat 1,000+ Posts

    answer is, make sure your loss is early. Also, that weird Tennessee-Chattanooga thing is something the NCAA could stop. If you are a D-1 team, you shouldn't be allowed to play a D-II team. If you want to play a D-1AA that's fine, but D-II? huh?

    The Cincinatti thing is a once in a lifetime lucky thing for OU, IMO. I watched them play against a ranked Pitt team late in the year, and Pitt didn't look good at all. PItt had the game close and just didn't look like they had a killer instinct. I could easily be wrong, but if Pitt wins that game, I think Cincy is out of the top 25, their SOS goes way down, and that might have been enough.
     
  18. Hpslugga

    Hpslugga 2,500+ Posts


     
  19. Texas___Fight

    Texas___Fight 2,500+ Posts


     
  20. mrTM

    mrTM 100+ Posts


     
  21. Valmy77

    Valmy77 1,000+ Posts


     
  22. borna_horn

    borna_horn 1,000+ Posts


     
  23. orangecat

    orangecat 1,000+ Posts

    thanks slugga, so I give the sooners a pass on this one.

    everytime I read about Chattanooga on this forum they referenced D-II.

    Since the games don't count, we should schedule Texas State, and Sam Houston rotate every other year. Make it a money game for them to come to Austin.

    Beats the heck out of scheduling North Texas or UTEP.

    It doesn't count, so it can't hurt our SOS, magnifies results of our other games.
     
  24. cehorn

    cehorn 25+ Posts


     
  25. borna_horn

    borna_horn 1,000+ Posts

    I love it when people make a point by pretending to be ignorant.

    cehorn, you know very well that if the BCS used only the human polls, then Texas would have gone to the Big 12 Championship game and, after beating Missouri, would have been voted into the BCS Championship game.

    The voters felt compelled to go with OU because they were the Big 12 Champion. If the BCS system did not rely on computers, then OU would never have been the Big 12 champion in the first place. There would have been no wrong for the voters to right.

    I said back in 2001, when Nebraska got into the BCS Championship game after losing by 30 to Colorado, that computers had no place deciding who should go to the championship game. Another absurd result occurred in 2003, and then another in 2008. It is time to wake up to the fact that the computers serve no purpose other than to detract from the legitimacy of the BCS.

    And for the record, the computers would have put OU and Texas in the BCS Championship game, which would have just as wrong as Florida-OU.

    Going just by human polls would have resulted in Texas vs. Florida. You cannot deny this except by feigning ignorance.
     
  26. buckhorn

    buckhorn 1,000+ Posts


     
  27. Texas Taps

    Texas Taps 5,000+ Posts

    Blame Texas for not being in the BCS title game. Any team that loses to tech doesn't belong
     
  28. cehorn

    cehorn 25+ Posts


     
  29. borna_horn

    borna_horn 1,000+ Posts

    cehorn,

    1) Texas WOULD have gone to the BCS championship game if only human voters were used in the BCS formula

    2) The computers are not a "check" they are an abomination. The humans would have pitted Texas vs. Florida. The computers would have had OU vs. Texas. No matter how you slice it, the computers got it wrong AGAIN. Just like 2000, 2001, and 2003.


     
  30. borna_horn

    borna_horn 1,000+ Posts

    bornahorn: Human polls give us the closest approximation of what the average person believes to be the best and fairest BCS matchup. Humans are capable of 10 times the ability of computers to compare different circumstances and come up with a fair result. Computers are inherently limited and frequently come up with results that do not agree with what an average person would conclude. This has been proven time and time again - 2000, 2001, 2003, 2008 - when the computers overrode the human polls and produced results that the majority of people did not agree with, creating controversy, frustration, and de-legitimizing the process.

    dumbfuck: Humans are emotional and biased, while computers just do what they are told. Therefore computers are more reliable.

    [​IMG]
     

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