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Tibbetts Tidbits

Bring the Computers Back Out

The College Football Selection Committee has come out with their second end of the year ranking of the top four teams in college football. After studying the 128 teams in the FBS, the 12 committee members decided on Clemson, Alabama, Michigan State, and Florida in a much less controversial decision than in their inaugural year.

I still question the committee's system, though. I like the expansion of the playoffs to four teams, but it I dislike how the four teams are being chosen. I believe that the computers used to create the BCS rankings were more accurate in ranking the most deserving teams. I would rather go back to having the computers determine the top teams in the country.

Pro sports have it easy when it comes to deciding who makes the playoffs. They decide how many teams will make it, and then the teams with the best record move on. No thinking, no controversy, no struggle. College sports, however, can not do this. The strength of schedule that the teams have vary so much that with conferences and choosing your own non-conference schedule, it would be unfair to to just take the team with the best record. That is why every legitimate college football ranking takes into account strength of schedule as well as record. And that is where it should stop.

But, the selection committee decides to keep going with new factors. Like later results counting more than earlier results, conference champions, game control, head to head, results between common opponents, and (the worst one of all) the eye test. Has any American sport up until this point cared how good you looked in your loss! It sounds like something your mom would say to you after a game. 'That was a tough one buddy. But, at least you kept the game and close and you looked really good out there.' Instead of coming up with a ranking they can't explain, the committee should keep it simple. Use only the two factors that actually matter. Everything else is just a tiebreaker. The committee's rankings would be more accurate if they didn't even watch the games. If they just saw Notre Dame's (ranked 8th) 10-2 record with a best win against Navy, would they really put them 8 spots ahead of Oklahoma State (ranked 16) who has a 10-2 record with a win over TCU?

The committee says they are doing their best to find the best teams. I am sure they are. They also say that these factors, like the eye test, are needed to reach this goal of finding the best teams. I agree with that too. However, I disagree that the committee should be trying to find the best teams. Instead, they should be finding the most deserving teams.

Finding the best teams goes against everything we love about sports. There are no underdogs, no importance in comebacks. It replaces wins and losses with point differential. Teams would run up the score to show their dominance. Worse teams would be glad about close losses, and better teams would get punished for winning by less than they should have. A touchdown at 21-0 would mean the same as a touchdown at 6-7. By this method the Heat would have won 4 championships with LeBron James, and the Patriots would have been wining almost every super-bowl in the last decade and a half. Of course, this is if we went completely by the best teams idea. Luckily, even the committee doesn't do that.

Finding the most deserving team, though, is about winning games. At the start of the season, Temple and Alabama are at the same level. Underdogs would have a chance. Teams that do well under pressure wouldn't be thought of as lucky. Performance on the field would be more important the talent. That early loss would be just as bad as that late loss. Last year TCU gets in over Baylor and Ohio State. This year Oklahoma is playing Alabama and Michigan State is playing Clemson.

I bet many computers out there would agree with me there. But some people don't like computers deciding things. They like other, imperfect people making the decision about who the top four should be. They like to blame someone when their team doesn't get in. They don't like formulas that they don't understand deciding the fate of who they will watch on New Year's Eve. I would be fine, also, for a committee to decide the top four teams based off only record and strength of schedule. But only if they are completely unbiased, don't care at all about how the teams look, and don't think about how well the teams will do in the future, but only what they have done so far. I don't think any person in the world, even I, would be able to do that. That is why the computer is our best bet on finding those most deserving four teams. Something like ESPN's strength of record (SOR) ratings.

Although the selection committee got their way through a pretty uncontroversial 2015 college football year, their rankings still looked a little off. Especially from #5 Iowa to #16 Oklahoma state. The selection committee is improving, but it will never be perfect. Now a computer with a formula based on only record and schedule, then we're getting somewhere.