For the past decade, the Bowl Championship Series unfailingly provided the matchup for college football’s national title game that reflected the public consensus. (In the six years prior to that, the BCS’s record was spottier, but after 2003-04, its formula was wisely streamlined, and its subsequent results were impeccable.) This year, that BCS selection process, which involved 167 polls voters and six computer rankings (one of which was the Anderson & Hester Rankings, which Chris Hester and I co-created), was replaced by a subjective committee of 13 people. And in its penultimate rankings of the season, the committee has now declared that Florida State, which is the nation’s sole unbeaten team and has more 1st-place votes in the A.P. poll than any other squad, wouldn’t get to play in the national championship game if the committee were deciding such things. In fact, the committee doesn’t even rank Florida State third, instead relegating the undefeated Seminoles to fourth, behind three 1-loss teams (Alabama, Oregon, and TCU).
Thankfully, there is a 4-team playoff this year, which gives the committee the margin of error it seemingly needs.
So what would the old BCS Standings have yielded? The mock BCS standings that have been published in various places this season are not particularly accurate, for they invariably include two computer rankings (Jeff Sagarin’s and Kenneth Massey’s) that now incorporate margin-of-victory and would not have been allowed to be a part of the BCS formula in that form. The BCS explicitly banned margin-of-victory-driven computer rankings after such computers ranked four 2-loss teams ahead of 1-loss Oregon (#2 in the polls) in 2001, a year after those computers had ranked 1-loss Washington outside of the top-5 in 2000. (Sagarin’s margin-of-victory-driven computer rankings currently rate (6-6) Arkansas ahead of (12-0) Florida State.)
Approximating the BCS Standings, therefore, necessitates using only the four former BCS computer rankings that don’t incorporate margin of victory. (The Anderson & Hester Rankings, which have never incorporated margin of victory because it isn’t the object of the game, rank Florida State #1 and Arkansas #34.)
The BCS dropped the high and the low computer rankings each week and kept the middle four. Having access to only four of the old BCS computer rankings, however, those four might or might not have been among the ones dropped in any given week. The most sensible way to approximate the BCS Standings, therefore, seems to be to tally the computer rankings with the high and low rankings dropped, tally them a second time without dropping any of the four, and then average those two tallies together. Meanwhile, the A.P. poll is the best stand-in for the Harris poll, which was created by and for the BCS and no longer exists.
Putting all of this together, here is an estimate of how the BCS Standings would have looked this week, with each team’s point value listed (one of the beauties of the BCS was that the spacing between teams was apparent):
1. Florida State (12-0), .975
2. Alabama (11-1), .965
3. Oregon (11-1), .935
4. TCU (10-1), .858
5. Ohio State (11-1), .836
6. Baylor (10-1), .789
7. Arizona (10-2), .711
8. Mississippi State (10-2), .677
9. Michigan State (10-2), .658
10. Kansas State (9-2), .641
So, under the BCS, if the regular season were to have ended today, Florida State and Alabama would have been invited to play in the National Championship Game. Moreover, this would have been the consensus choice — as both polls and three of the four computer rankings would have called for that matchup. The only outlier would have been the Anderson & Hester Rankings, which would have called for Florida State to play Oregon (which edged Alabama for #2 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings this week).
Yet the committee ranks Florida State — #1 in the estimated BCS Standings — not only behind Alabama and Oregon, but also behind a TCU team that wouldn’t have been anywhere near the Seminoles (.975 to .858) in the BCS standings.
Florida State is undefeated, and TCU is not. To be fair, however, one must also look at the other side of the ledger: each team’s wins. By the committee’s own rankings of the top-25, Florida State has beaten current-#18 Clemson and current-#21 Louisville, having beaten the latter on the road. TCU has beaten current-#9 Kansas State and current-#20 Oklahoma, both at home. There’s essentially no daylight between the quality of those wins, which leaves one undefeated team, one 1-loss team, and one head-scratcher of a ranking by the committee.
Rather than rewarding the Seminoles (who have routinely come from behind in the fourth quarter) for their remarkable knack for winning games, the committee seems to be looking at something else. It seems to be focused, in part, on such nonsense as the utterly pointless notion of “game control,” a term heretofore unknown but now parroted on ESPN ad nauseam. Do you want to know the only aspect of “game control” that matters? Which team controls the scoreboard when the final horn sounds. Who cares if a team leads throughout a game and wins by 1 or trails throughout and wins by 1? Only a committee could decide that the latter, which requires grit, is somehow distasteful.
The committee does, however, deserve credit for ranking TCU ahead of another 1-loss Big 12 team, Baylor, even though the Bears have beaten the Horned Frogs. Baylor played TCU and West Virginia (#32 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings) and went 1-1, with one game at home and one on the road. TCU played Baylor and West Virginia and went 1-1, despite playing both games on the road. If anything, TCU has the slight edge there. Beyond that, TCU has beaten five above-average teams (according to the Anderson & Hester Rankings) to Baylor’s three. With that said, however, if Baylor beats Kansas State (a top-10 team) on Saturday, the gap between the Bears and Horned Frogs will narrow significantly.
And if Florida State loses on Saturday night versus #12 Georgia Tech on a neutral field — a result that wouldn’t be at all shocking — then the Seminoles would arguably (but only arguably) not belong in the 4-team playoff field. But to determine that they barely belong even now — when they alone, out of all the teams in the nation, have yet to lose — is something only a committee could conclude.
With the caveat that no one knows what the committee will do (it might come down to what the caterers serve), here’s one man’s guess as to what each contending team likely needs to do this weekend to get one of the four playoff spots:
Alabama (#1 in this week’s committee rankings): beat Missouri, or lose respectably and hope as many other top teams lose as possible
Oregon (#2): beat Arizona, or hope Florida State, Ohio State, and Baylor all lose (so that Oregon can join a potential field of Alabama, TCU, and Arizona)
TCU (#3): beat Iowa State (#102 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings) by an expectedly wide margin
Florida State (#4): beat Georgia Tech (and hope the committee decides the Seminoles have demonstrated enough “game control” to complement their then-13-0 record)
Ohio State (#5): beat Wisconsin in something other than ugly fashion and hope for a loss by a team ranked above, or an ugly performance by TCU
Baylor (#6): beat Kansas State and hope for two teams above to fail to do what they need to do
Arizona (#7): beat Oregon (for a second time) and hope to be vaulted above Ohio State and Baylor on the basis of having played a schedule (six games versus the top-25, after this weekend’s games) that’s tough enough to justify a second loss
Kansas State (#9): beat Baylor, hope Florida State, Ohio State, and Arizona all lose, and hope to be picked by the committee over Georgia Tech and Florida State (to join a potential field of Oregon, TCU, and (win or lose) Alabama)
Georgia Tech (#11): beat Florida State, hope Ohio State, Baylor, and Arizona all lose, and hope to be picked by the committee over Kansas State and Florida State (to join a potential field of Oregon, TCU, and (win or lose) Alabama)
Missouri (#16): blow out Alabama (piece of cake!)
Jeff Anderson is co-creator of the Anderson & Hester Computer Rankings, which were part of the BCS throughout its 16-year run and are now published by the Dallas Morning News.
