UM Top 10 in simulated post-season BCS

Submitted by michelin on

As noted in a prior thread, no official post season BCS rankings exist.*  However, correctly calculated, UM finished in the top 10 in the BCS.**

Sweet.

 

*http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/when-do-final-bcs-standings-come-out

**The author of the calculated rankings said he would “for fun” include USC, using their AP poll finish in place of the Coaches Poll, for which they were ineligible.  He found USC to be #10, ahead of UM, but USC would not have been included in any real BCS poll.  Furthermore, this calculation was invalidly based on the wrong (AP vs. Coach’s) poll.

http://www.bcsknowhow.com/post-season-bcs-rankings-simulation-alabama-a…

turd ferguson

January 12th, 2012 at 10:14 PM ^

It seems kind of weird that there wouldn't be a postseason BCS poll, no?  I guess if its only purpose is to identify the two teams that play in the championship game, that's fine, but why not publish one just for fun?

michelin

January 12th, 2012 at 10:25 PM ^

but the BCS thinks in strange ways.

Possibly, the BCS people worry that the final poll could contradict the results of the BCS game--for instance, if LSU lost to ALA narowly, then in theory, LSU could end up ranked number one in the final BCS poll. 

Interesting.  Does the BCS consider their ranking method valid only before and not after the final game?

 

Picktown GoBlue

January 13th, 2012 at 1:51 AM ^

the mysterious Harris Poll.  It is intentionally set up to not be done after the MNC game.  I've been working with my own spreadsheet that uses the Coaches poll, the 6 computer polls (drop the high and the low), and substitutes the AP for the Harris poll.  But I hesitated posting it due to the weirdness that USC presents in the AP poll.

It should be noted that USC appears in all of the computer polls.  In addition, 3 of the 6 computer polls (Massey, Sagarin, Wolfe) include schools beyond the Div. I-FBS schools.  If any schools that are ineligible for FBS post-season make the top 25 on a computer poll, they are ignored and everyone below them moves up one spot.

Thus, the way to properly include the AP poll in this Pseudo-BCS would be to re-calculate the point totals for all 60 ballots, moving up all the schools on each ballot that are below USC (or North Dakota State, although their 2 votes were both for 25th place).  There would still be the issue that this would mean that only a Top 24 or 23 would appear on each ballot (since, unlike computers, the AP pollsters do not rank all 120 teams or even the 26th team), but that would just eliminate some of the "others receiving votes" at the tail end and maybe rejigger the last couple of places in the top 25.  As it turns out, the ordering is still the same, but it makes the % of perfection (points/1500) more accurate for teams that are eligible for post-season in FBS.

As a note, in the AP, USC votes were between 4th and 12th and averaged around 6th place.  Michigan votes were between 8th and 18th and averaged around 12th place.  Only one AP voter out of the 60, Desmond Connor, had Michigan rated ahead of USC (9th vs. 12th).  So Michigan would have picked up 59 points.  Same story for Baylor and Wisconsin.  South Carolina would have picked up 55 points.

I couldn't find a site that had a nice spreadsheet with all the ballots together - Pollspeak came the closest, but you either get the data for one school or one voter, not the whole collection at once.  There are fewer schools than voters, and I think I got all the data to get this calculated.

So, let's call this PseudoBCS v1.0 for the 2011-2012 season.  Here's the top 25, and the others receiving votes.  After making the adjustments to the AP calculations, the only changes it made were to swap #22 and #21 Clemson and Texas.  Sigh.  But this is certainly more true to the BCS calculation than that purported site that knows listed above. (Apologies ahead of time if this table formatting doesn't work ideally).


Final - Jan. 9 PSEUDO BCS AP Top 25 Adj AP USA Today Computer Rankings
RK TEAM AVG PVS  RK PTS % RK Adj Pts Adj % RK  PTS  % AVG A&H RB CM KM JS PW  %
1 Alabama 0.9889 2 1 1495 0.9967 1 1495 0.9967 1 1475 1.0000 1 3 1 3 2 1 1 0.97
2 LSU 0.9573 1 2 1425 0.9500 2 1425 0.9500 2 1404 0.9519 1 1 2 2 1 2 2 0.97
3 Oklahoma State 0.9265 3 3 1399 0.9327 3 1399 0.9327 3 1367 0.9268 3 2 3 1 4 4 3 0.92
4 Arkansas 0.8343 6 5 1198 0.7987 5 1226 0.8173 5 1188 0.8054 4 4 6 5 3 3 4 0.88
5 Oregon 0.8146 5 4 1250 0.8333 4 1274 0.8493 4 1290 0.8746 9 9 4 9 9 9 5 0.72
6 South Carolina 0.7423 9 9 1013 0.6753 8 1068 0.7120 8 1084 0.7349 5 6 10 6 7 7 6 0.78
7 Boise State 0.7242 7 8 1127 0.7513 7 1162 0.7747 6 1162 0.7878 10 11 7 11 11 13 10 0.61
8 Stanford 0.7144 4 7 1167 0.7780 6 1190 0.7933 7 1106 0.7498 11 13 5 13 10 10 11 0.60
9 Baylor 0.6016 12 13 780 0.5200 12 839 0.5593 12 775 0.5254 8 8 14 7 6 8 9 0.72
10 Michigan 0.5886 13 12 839 0.5593 11 898 0.5987 9 925 0.6271 12 10 11 8 15 15 14 0.54
11 Wisconsin 0.5468 10 10 905 0.6033 9 964 0.6427 11 911 0.6176 14 18 15 14 20 17 16 0.38
12 Oklahoma 0.5381 14 16 572 0.3813 15 631 0.4207 15 610 0.4136 5 5 8 4 8 6 7 0.78
13 Kansas State 0.5374 8 15 621 0.4140 14 681 0.4540 16 602 0.4081 7 7 9 10 5 5 8 0.75
14 Michigan State 0.5299 17 11 873 0.5820 10 932 0.6213 10 912 0.6183 15 17 12 18 18 16 18 0.35
15 Houston 0.4605 19 18 518 0.3453 17 578 0.3853 14 673 0.4563 12 12 13 12 13 19 12 0.54
16 TCU 0.4256 18 14 653 0.4353 13 713 0.4753 13 710 0.4814 17 19 16 16 21 21 15 0.32
17 West Virginia 0.3334 23 17 547 0.3647 16 607 0.4047 18 554 0.3756 21 20 20 20 25 22 19 0.22
18 Georgia 0.2951 16 19 439 0.2927 18 497 0.3313 20 345 0.2339 17 14 21 17 12 20 22 0.32
19 Virginia Tech 0.2928 11 21 329 0.2193 20 389 0.2593 17 574 0.3892 19 16 17 15 22 29 28 0.23
20 Southern Miss 0.2749 21 20 411 0.2740 19 471 0.3140 19 429 0.2908 21 21 19 19 32 23 13 0.22
22 Clemson 0.1320 15 22 188 0.1253 21 233 0.1553 22 237 0.1607 26 28 22 24 24 25 23 0.08
21 Texas 0.1248 24 30 15 0.0100 29 22 0.0147 28 29 0.0197 16 15 32 21 14 12 20 0.34
23 Nebraska 0.1177 20 24 143 0.0953 23 188 0.1253 24 144 0.0976 24 22 18 22 23 24 25 0.13
24 Auburn 0.0952 25 27 40 0.0267 26 55 0.0367 29 28 0.0190 19 24 24 27 16 11 17 0.23
25 Florida State 0.0908 28 23 154 0.1027 22 200 0.1333 23 205 0.1390 28 31 27 34 33 34 33 0.00

 

Coastal Elite

January 13th, 2012 at 8:35 AM ^

This might be a dumb question, but is USC ineligible to receive a ranking in the Coaches' Poll / BCS just because they're ineligible for postseason play, or is it a special sanction they were given?

I'm wondering if Ohio will be similarly unranked for all of next season due to their own postseason ineligibility.

Picktown GoBlue

January 14th, 2012 at 8:12 PM ^

to get back with the reply, but here's the official details.

The USA Today Coaches Poll (Presented by Allstate (tm)) has this footnote this year:

 

Because it is serving an NCAA-imposed bowl ban, Southern California is not eligible to receive votes this season under AFCA policy.

 

Thus, osu will likewise be ineligible to receive votes next season in this poll.

Had not noticed it before, but right above this statement was the last voter alphabetically in the list - Ron Zook.  I guess ex-coaches get to vote as well (didn't study the whole list but there are probably a few others in there).